ADHD diagnoses in general are really scary. I know some people swear by d-amphetamine or methylphenidate prescriptions for children, but the author of http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/childrens-a... really seems to know what he's talking about and his conclusions make ADHD diagnoses almost seem like child abuse.
the author of . . . really seems to know what he's talking about
The word "seems" is the operative word in that sentence. I know many colleagues of that author, other professors at the University of Minnesota, where I participate in the weekly journal club on human behavioral genetics. The key fact to note is that the author of the New York Times opinion piece is a child development psychologist, so his professional disciplinary point of view is that parent influence in early childhood counts for almost everything, and genes or nonparental environmental influences (including medical interventions) count for very little. But that's not what the best research shows about ADD/ADHD. There is good-quality evidence, especially gathered by Russell Barkley, who has conducted several of the better longitudinal studies, that prescribed medications can be helpful for many persons categorized as having ADD/ADHD. There is a lot of intentional fear, uncertainty, and doubt spread around about ADD/ADHD by persons who don't have legal authority to prescribe prescription medicines to patients, who fear losing business for their approaches if psychiatrists treat ADD patients.
Most people who have attention problems may be helped by a both-and approach of taking prescribed medicines along with lifestyle approaches like getting adequate sleep and outdoor exercise in daylight, learning organizational skills, hiring a secretary, or other helps. I've read some very striking personal testimonials from HN participants, full-time hacking programmers, who found that their personal productivity enormously increased when they started taking prescribed ADD medications as adults. I can't advise anyone here specifically what to do (I am not a physician), but I can suggest checking sources of advice for scientific validity
and making sure to get a reality check from your own in-real-life friends and colleagues if you have this issue and want to treat it successfully. A successful treatment is likely to be noticeable to other people and wouldn't be deemed successful just based on your own personal observation not backed up by anyone else's observation.
AFTER EDIT: The journal club I visit most weeks just had a discussion about being older rather than younger when starting school. We may revisit that issue in a while. The short answer is that there can be bad academic effects, which show up in IQ test and achievement test scores, from delaying exposure to reading instruction and elementary mathematics instruction. Sometimes those disadvantages outweigh the social advantages of being taller or stronger than other children in the same school grade.
