I wish I could help, but I wanted to let you know that you're not alone. DS12 was always at or above standards in school and was not a behavior problem at all, so his lack of paying attention in school was rarely noticed, and when it was, it seems like it was just attributed to a personality flaw of some type. We suspected something was not quite right for a long time, since his school performance was so different than what we had seen from him before starting school and really struggling (despite always performing fairly well, if inconsistently). When he switched schools last year, the teacher noticed that he seemed to take a long time on tests and homework and suggested he might have trouble paying attention and suggested we might want to look into it. The school did not, however, make a referal, so we had to call our insurance provider and ask which psychologist would be approved to evaluate him. I actually didn't end up liking our psychologist much, even though he was educated in gifted children. The assessments we filled out (us, his new MS teachers who barely knew him, and his previous teacher who really didn't get him), came back all over the place, but suggested their might be a mild attention issue. In conjunction with an IQ test that had dropped 20 points from one he had taken years before, we decided that attention issues might be at play and the psychologist suggested a trial of Adderall. We then, of course, had to go to his pediatrician to actually get the prescription filled and had to head off the complete reevaluation she wanted to do on her own (we felt no need since we'd just done it!). In the end she agreed to write the prescription.
The results for my DS were not dramatic, as we were told was likely since he was being treated for inattentive ADHD not hyperactivity, where the results are usually dramatic. But, we did see him not losing his train of though when he was speaking, he no longer forgot something in his locker almost every day when we picked him up from school (this rarely happens now), and we did see his grades go up. He still has to work really hard at school, but he does seem a bit more together in general now. It hasn't been a magic bullet for us, but it's helped a bit, and the success of the meds, mild though it is, does seem to confirm that the diagnosis was correct.
I should also note that, since we had a private evaluation, we had the option to not inform the school of the results. We liked this. Eventually (after 5 months on the Adderall) we told his teacher that he was taking meds, but we have not told his current school because his behavior is not an issue and he now seems like any other kid in his class. We just worry, rightly or wrongly, about them looking for problems and don't want him pigeonholed or their opinions of him affected by anything other than what they see.
HTH!
