While I certainly wouldn't affirm what your parents did or suggest it to be a preferred course of action, I'd also hesitate to suggest taking a child to Psychiatrists as any sort of knee jerk reaction. While you say you'd have had a better academic life if the "add is bullshit" meme was gone, mine would have been far better if the meme caught on faster. I hope you understand my wanting to disclose the following on a throwaway, but I was medicated HEAVILY for "ADD" for the vast majority of 2nd through 4th grade, and to this day some of my strangest memories are from those years, during which I developed broad slews of physical ticks and OCD-like behaviors that took me decades to train myself out of, and certainly compounded the damage to my learning and social development that the medication had already begun.

I would be TERRIFIED if psychological checkups became routine, and see that as near-dystopian as some aspects of brave new world. For so many people (I say this now being married to a psychologist of my own) including myself are diagnosed with disorders of extremely variable diagnostic validity at extremely young ages (beyond even what the DSM, with its already spotty contents, would recommend) and then medicated past functionality and/or told we have something wrong with us.

What would have helped me? If instead of being told "you need these pills to fix you" someone told me that "normal is a spectrum", and people even with behaviors we love to tag with fancy names and try and treat can learn to control them and live perfectly normal lives without drastic intervention.

Don't take this as a "we should ignore psychological disorders", it's not the intent at all. Take it as a, I've seen the culture that arises out of LOOKING for mental issues rather than encouraging growth and maturation, and I'd rather resort to a psychological approach as we do with antibiotics, _when needed and after extensive exploration of other options_, lest we unconsciously do ourselves further disservice. Although I have a different takeaway than you though, I'd echo the same guiding thought, "don't assume he or she is lazy or doesn't want to succeed" but would append "or assume they are broken."