@embarrassed & HALLIEBETH87 - I thought the same thing about how the one doctor claimed that the child's needs were all medical, even though the parents were all for other forms of therapy. Too many psychiatrists, not enough psychologists.

They even said there were some symptoms (like saying things over and over) that medication didn't fix. There's your sign that his issues are cognitive, and not chemical!

And the bipolar girl... When she was four, certainly she wasn't "normal," but the footage of her parents just sitting there, completely defeated... You could TELL what kind of parents they were. And when her mother said she'd have to be medicated for the rest of her life, that even if the child couldn't feel it, the mother felt it for her... It broke my heart.

Four-year-olds are by nature very grandiose in their thoughts, but it takes such little effort to repeatedly tell them right from wrong, fact from fiction. The notion that she wanted to sit and watch TV all day might account for the "busting heads open" talk. It's the only way a child that young would learn such behavior.

@Junerain - I recently contemplated that I may have had developmental issues. My parents say I was an odd child. I didn't really like to cuddle, I loved to read, and I could read Dr. Seuss' "The Sneetches" by myself at the age of four. I didn't have a good grasp of social concepts until middle school (though now I'm pretty much the master of adolescent social psychology), and I had coordination issues through 3rd grade (now I have some of the best reflexes of kids my age, even if my hand-eye is still sub-par). I have a feeling that if my parents hadn't been as amazing as they were, and if I developed behavior problems because of that, I might have been diagnosed autistic or otherwise abnormal.

I thank my parents for giving me opportunities instead of medications. There is another Frontline program about kids with ADHD, and one parent said things worked best when they just kept their son busy. He learned fluent French and studied piano. I'm upset that so few parents are doing constructive things for children that may or may not need more attention than others. Instead of encouraging school attendance, parents turn to sedatives...

Ooh, it makes me so angry!