angels~as far as removal of sugar goes, that is an urban myth. We have not only tried it, we have asked numerous healthcare professionals, many of whom we personally know. It didn't work for us, and, according to them, at best the reaction is because of an expectation of a reaction. In other words, the placebo effect, so to speak. As to why there is more of this illness now than ever before, there is more of every illness. Could be following Darwin's theories, essentially they aren't being bred out anymore through natural selection, could blame environmental factors, could blame modern medicine. Although I would kind of like to know, in the long run it just isn't as important as making sure that it is treated. And the meds are a parents decision based on their knowledge of their child. Not a doctors, teachers, counselors, ad infinitum. Noone but a parent has the right to decide this matter for a child. If you do decide to go with meds ever, be really honest with your child. He knows what he is on, that it is chemically like some street drugs, that he can NEVER mix these and why, etc, etc. He has always been told what we believed he could understand, so that temptation wouldn't arise without it already having been addressed at least a hundred times. As far as the weight issues, someone else who works for me and just went off these meds told me what their parents did, they wrote down for a month everything that the kid ate and when, and then made sure that they stuck to a similar eating pattern after the meds. They also have a rule in their house, one that a lot of us probably should have, no eating in front of the television or computer, ever. Fewer empty calories that way I guess. Good luck, and there are behavior modification tricks (age specific ones) that do help. For us they were not enough, but they did help.
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