The rise in cases of children diagnosed as 'hyperactive' and the use of drugs to treat them may reveal some flaws in today's expectations of the youngest children, says Ruth Thomson
Lewis, aged three-and-a-half, is restless, impulsive and inattentive. His approach to life seems to be: why speak when you can shout, why walk when you can run and why hold something when you can hurl it instead.
Sitting still is, of course, out of the question. Last seen and without warning, Lewis trampolined off the footstool, somersaulted over the back of the sofa and landed head-first in a heap among the cushions. His mother smiles bravely in the face of his ceaseless exuberance and mutterings from relatives that such overactive behaviour surely can't be 'normal' and that the child must be 'hyperactive'.
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