Today I helped a friend do some work on her house. We had a nice time doing our sister-work and then my friend served a lovely lunch. With us was another close friend, whom I'll call K. Over the course of lunch we were talking about our kids and about various issues and the topic of Little J and our search for adequate evaluations for him as well as my strong suspicion that he has ADD came up.

"Oh, I don't believe in that," K. said.

"You don't believe in ADD?" I asked.

"No. I mean, if they think he has it are you doing to give him that stuff? Whadayacallit? Ritalin?"

"If that's what they think will help we'll certainly try it."

"I would never do that to my kid."

I looked at her. She looked at me and realized what she'd said. "Oh - I'm sorry." She looked down at her plate. "Actually, I don't know what I'm talking about. It's just what I've heard."

The good news is that this woman is a wonderful person and someone who I feel I can be open with. I did not take offense. I understood where she was coming from. More good news was that I've heard this comment SO MANY TIMES from SO MANY PEOPLE who mean well but a)don't know our home life and b)have done no research except maybe to see an expose about the over prescription of Ritalin on Dateline or something that I know exactly what to say.

I didn't even need to take a deep breath.

"ADD is a biochemical disorder," I said. "The medication is to help compensate for the brain's faulty metabolism." I then explained how kids who have been institutionalized are at greater risk for ADD, as well as the fact that 50% of kids who've been malnourished end up with ADD. Nevermind kids who've been exposed to alcohol prenatally. "Look, I'm not just talking about a squirmy little boy," I said. "He's different."

"Right, right," she said. "I get it."

But did she? I don't know. I do think that most of my friends think we're crazy for trying to find out what's "wrong" with Little J. In public and at a party he's a lot of fun. He runs with the pack. They run from here to there, screaming, eating on the run, getting more and more worked up as the night progresses. Just his kind of thing. So they don't really see what's going on. They don't see him flinging dangerous items because he's been asked to put them down, they don't hear him calling his dad an "idiot" and then calling me a "stupid mommy" when I put him in time out. They don't see that he can't even sit and eat dinner for the 7 minutes we ask of him a night. They don't see him leaving our fenced-in yard for the eightieth time in a row because he's seen something on the other side of the fence even though we've drilled and drilled into him that he is not allowed to do it. They don't see him at school, where he is the only "difficult" child they have. They don't live in our house, where we are on guard every single minute (as we have been for the past 2 1/2 years), wondering where Little J is if he's quiet because he's so unpredictable. He's never "just playing." He can't "just play." The fact that it takes him 2 hours each night to fall asleep is not 'just a phase.' They don't realize how stressful it is to be parents to a child that really can't be left alone for a minute.

So, yes, if he gets diagnosed with ADD we will be trying the medication. And I don't really care if you don't "believe" in ADD or not. I do (and a great deal of research backs me up), and that's all that matters.