Calming Your Child's ADHD Symptoms

From CNN's health blog, a piece by Dr. Claudia M. Gold, a pediatrician and author of "Keeping Your Child in Mind: Overcoming Defiance, Tantrums and Other Everyday Behavior Problems by Seeing the World Through Your Child's Eyes."

Five-year-old Max came to see me in my pediatrics practice because his kindergarten teachers were convinced that he had ADHD. They knew little about his life, yet they were pressuring his mother, Alice, to come to me in the hopes that I would prescribe medication, because his behavior in class was increasingly disruptive. Alice came to the first visit armed with the standard forms, indicating that he had scored in the high range for ADHD.
My approach to the diagnosis of ADHD, up a startling 29% according to a recent CDC report, has grown out of over 20 years practicing general and behavioral pediatrics, while simultaneously studying contemporary developmental science at the interface of genetics, psychology and neuroscience. I have come to recognize the essential role of understanding the meaning of behavior, rather than responding simply to the behavior itself, in promoting healthy emotional development.