I have a boy this year who has gone off his meds a few times. His behavior is drastically different from when he's on them. I don't know what the answer is. I have read so much about how smaller families contribute to socialization problems. If there are only 1 or 2 kids, cooperation isn't so important. Kids don't share rooms anymore... tv and video games of course have their share of the blame. Parents and really communities that don't pay attention and hold kids accountable to a certain standard of behavior. There is so much movement, we don't get to know our neighbors.

Behavior does play such a huge part in what students learn at the lower grades. Some kids spend so little time actually in class because of their behavior. When you have 25+ kids in a room, you can't have off the wall behavior. And really I am talking about things that most people would say don't belong in a classroom. And you don't always notice the "quiet" ones, who aren't misbehaving, but aren't attending to instruction either.

Veronica