You can’t cure bad parenting with a pill

ADHD — a psychiatric condition characterised by difficulties with attention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness — is in the news again after published research showed that younger children in a class were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with the condition.

Experts argued this seemed to suggest that greater immaturity could be what was driving the diagnosis, as parents and teachers misattribute their difficulties to ADHD.

For me, this further highlights why we need to approach a diagnosis of ADHD with great caution in children and consider if other factors could be contributing to their symptoms.

I feel very uneasy that so many children are given this label — and prescribed drugs such as Ritalin accordingly.

The World Health Organisation states that a diagnosis of ADHD can represent family dysfunction or inadequacies, rather than a problem with the child, and it’s this that worries me.

It’s easy to whack on a label and medicalise their behaviour rather than to accept, however uncomfortably, that it might be a problem with the parenting.

I say this not to blame parents, but to question how medicalising a child’s bad and disruptive behaviour really helps them.

Yes, it’s difficult to unpick complicated family dynamics that contribute to disruptive behaviour. But by taking the easy option and giving children — whose tender brains are still developing — behaviour-altering drugs, are we not letting down an entire generation by neglecting to look in to what’s really causing it?