I have two sons, aged 13 and 9.  My eldest was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of five, began taking Concerta, and responded wonderfully.  Then at the age of 10, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  Again, he responded wonderfully to the medication (Lamictal and Rimeron).  My youngest is a totally different story.  At the age of three, drs said ADHD--then we began playing musical medicine.  In Head Start, he had trouble initiating play with other kids, was aggressive when he felt "backed into a corner," and was subsequently diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder.  Add to the ADHD meds--Strattera at the time--Risperdal.  Confused, heartbroken, and desperate, I read everything I could get my hands on about children with behavioral problems.  My pleas for further testing and diagnoses from both peds and psychs were brushed aside, and I was repeatedly instructed to "be consistent," "use charts and stickers," "take away his games and television."  In other words, they had done their job by writing the prescriptions, so I must be failing somehow because he wasn't the poster child for successfully treated ADHD that my older child is.  FINALLY, his ped walked into the exam room and witnessed him kicking the wall and grunting because he wasn't home in time to watch Pokemon cartoons.  Her response?  This child is dangerous and out of control!  We need to institutionalize him right away!!  After 4 years of my pleas and arguing for more help, they want to lock him up--let's pour a five-gallon bucket of water on this tea light candle that this mother has been waving in our face for years.  Then we begin the gauntlet of psych wards for children.  The only place that has a bed wants me to bring him down there, drop him off, then not see him or talk to him for two weeks.  He was 7, and had NEVER been away from home for more than a day or two, and had never been away from family.  Okay, let me get this straight.  My child has problems--problems I have been faithfully reporting to you for several years.  Your response has consistently been to keep giving him drugs and figure out what I am doing wrong.  (BTW, I only have Medicaid for my kids, which meant the only way I can get any kind of treatment other than their regular pediatrician is with a referral from said ped.)  When you finally see what I am talking about (and he had of course lost interest in the tantrum within 15 minutes of the doc's insistence of hospitalization), you again refuse to listen to me and steamroll your opinion on me.  You want to rip this insecure child from his one constant--his mom and his brother--and throw him into a group hospital with God knows what other kinds of patients.  Finally, after I refused the bed at the group hospital, they gave me a referral to a child psychiatrist who specialized in tough cases.  I spent ten minutes describing my child's behavior, then the psych spent twenty asking--Does he do this?  Yes.  And this?  Yes . . .  What about this?  Yes!!!  Easy--your son has Asperger's Syndrome.  That day saw the beginning of some real progress.  The tantrums tapered off.  He began sharing games.  He actually had friends at school!!  He would even play the games that his brother wanted to play instead of insisting (rather noisily and destructively) to play HIS games.  Then we started third grade.  On the first day, same as every year before, I went to meet with his teacher and fill her in on how to deal with his idiosyncracies.  She had never even heard of Asperger's, so I brought her several articles that I had found online.  I also let her know techniques that we had found to be successful in handling his anxieties.  Based on her actions later, this teacher apparently decided that this was just a bad kid whose mother was making excuses for him and she proceeded to do more damage than you can even imagine.  Rather than offer him extra work or allow him to read his library book when he finished his work before the other students (a daily occurrence), she let him bring his pokemon cards out in the classroom and play with them.  None of the other students were allowed to, but she "made an exception" for him.  He was told that if he felt like he was going to lose his temper, go out in the hall and look out the window!!  By the first week of November, he was out of school and hospitalized.  My weekly calls were met with glowing reports of his excellent behavior, then I get a call from the principal reporting that several incidents had occurred over the last few weeks.  The final straw included chairs being thrown across the room.  At the hospital, he reported that his teacher "told the other kids not to pay attention to me because I am crazy in the head," that his teacher said he was a bad boy who needed some discipline, that his teacher "told me I needed to chill out or I would end up in jail before I get out of high school."