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I worked for several years at a residential camp, and I had quite a few of the "takes Ritalin during the school year but does not take it during the summer." That's bullshit. If your kid needs meds when he/she is your responsibility, don't dump an unmedicated kid on an unprepared, underpaid, and stretched-too-thin camp counselor.
(This is the general "you," as I don't have any reason to believe parents in this thread are sending their kids off to summer camp like this, it's just a general rant.)
That said, I have intimate knowledge of several kids medicated for ADHD who have terrible eating habits and the like. I tutored a kid who was 9 years old and refused to eat pretty much anything but Pop Tarts. Situations like this raise a serious eyebrow for me...your kid is eating processed sugar six times a day and you are surprised he has a hard time concentrating on his math homework?
That's not to say ADHD doesn't exist, or that it should never be medicated, only that I think it should be a last resort once a kid has a good eat/sleep/exercise routine. Them drugs have side effects (note also that this is my default position on virtually any medication, not specific to ADHD, or even psych meds in general).
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