Zen Scanner, I agree with your post and your reading of the literature.
I still hate the piece about why French kids don't get ADHD because their parents feed them dinner on a schedule and spank them. Lordy.
The choice to medicate is not IME usually taken lightly; nobody's a huge fan of giving medications to kids in principle. In our community, I see it operating as a last-ditch thing that people try after having tried a number of other ways to make life workable for their children, and I see that it is typically associated with unjustly shaming the parents first for having an uncontrollable or out-to-lunch kid, and then for drugging the kid.
I will say that I see medication being pushed as a first-line choice by doctors. This is consistent with the research, which shows that it's what dosctors say to do, regardless of the evidence that this isn't what should be tried first. I don't think PARENTS want to do it as a first-line defense, but doctors are often very, very insistent that it's necessary.
