Oh look, shiny...

This morning during yet another parent/teacher conference regarding my son's apparent problems with following directions and focusing, the teacher roused the dreaded spectre of the possibility of ADHD. I am a firm believer that this "syndrome" is over diagnosed (there are obvious cases, and those children who need pharmeceutical intervention, but there are also those parents who just want a way to make their children easier to deal with), and it's probable that there are many children who are chronically over medicated as a result. But - this lack of ability to pay attention and focus and tendancy to "space out" is frustrating, and causing continued problems at school, and nothing that has been done in the classroom or at home has served to turn it around as of yet. In fact, if anything, we think it's getting worse. My son fits part of the profile of a child afflicted with the "AD" part of the diagnosis: male, under the age of seven, progressive issues with inattention and inability to stay on task which causes problems at school/home. I'm making an appointment with the pediatrician for next week, so that he can be evaluated. I think that we can work on some more issues of routine and expectation at home which might help there, but right now we're at a loss as to how to help him at school. The teacher has moved him out of group work to minimize those distractions, but now he's dawdling and being inattentive to work assignments - something that should take him a few minutes may take him the better part of an hour and usually ends up taking time away from other activities that he generally likes (like computer lab). He's had trouble with writing, mostly because he doesn't seem to enjoy it, but he can read a couple of grade levels ahead and is making improvements in math, as well, so he's definitely a smart cookie in the academic sense and the teacher thinks that he could be quite an accelerated learner if he was able to focus more. I want to insist that he just needs to be more disciplined about his work habits, but a part of me deep down agrees with the teacher, in that some of this may be out of his control. I just want to be sure that we're taking the right steps and not going to do any lasting harm.