This is off topic, but . . .
Yes, there are people who get SSI for ADHD, and like anything else, there are people who abuse the system. A disability lawyer sees a lot of this, I would imagine.
In my pediatric practice, though, I can only think of 2-3 patients who get SSI for ADHD, and we have lots of ADHD patients. The kids who get diagnosed, by and large, really have the disorder, and it impairs them to varying degrees. Our brightest kids can compensate well for many years, so it goes unnoticed. Most ADHD practitioners agree that at least half of people who have ADHD go undiagnosed and untreated.
I am *not* saying that joylivg's son has ADHD; I'm just saying that practitioners and parents are less aware of the symptoms than maybe we should be, and certainly there's a lot of denial about the disorder.
ADHD doesn't have to manifest everywhere; it has to manifest in at least 2 areas of life. So if there are no problems outside of school, probably that's not ADHD. But just because a kid can sit and do legos at home for an hour, that doesn't rule out an attention disorder. This is complicated stuff, as all human behavior is, and that fact that behavior is a spectrum makes it harder to pin down.
