What to do???

As I alluded to several posts ago, Nathan has been seeing a behavioral therapist for a couple of weeks now.  At the first session she diagnosed him with "oppositional defiant disorder."  If you are asking what it is, the title pretty much says it all.  The symptoms she described fit him perfectly...hostile, openly defiant, not following adult requests, angry, lies or accuses others, spiteful/seeks revenge, has a temper and several other things.  Of course this is hard to hear as a parent because you wonder where you went wrong.  Because his two younger brothers see Nathan act like this, they are starting to think this is normal so I need to get it nipped in the bud before all three boys have to go to a behavioral therapist. 

After our first meeting she asked if he has ever been screened for ADD/ADHD and I told her no.  She sent home several papers for me to fill out and I was to try to get his school teacher from last year to fill out some forms also.  His first grade teacher filled out the forms and so did I.  When I meet with the therapist, I admitted that I may have been to lenient on some of the answers because this is my child as his teacher gave him high scores on most of the questions.  At the end of the session, she said that Nathan fits all the criteria for ADHD.  That was two weeks ago.  I have not taken him to the doctor yet as the only late day appointments they had were three plus weeks out.  Bruce says to medicate him, but I have some reservations.  How long have these drugs been out?  What kind of long term side effects could they cause?  My husband had two cousins who were on Ritalin several years ago and they are just different now.  Not sure if that is because of the personalities they were born with or the result of the Ritalin.

Someone told me that if he had diabetes and needed insulin you wouldn't hesitate to give him that, so what is the hesitation of giving him something so that he can focus?  Even though I know it is a brain chemical imbalance, part of me thinks that he should be able to "shake it off" and fix himself.  I know that isn't logical, but I can't seem to shake that thought.

By the way, if Nathan fits all the criteria for ADHD, his younger two brothers will have to be screened some day also.  In my opinion, all the criteria of ADHD fits his two brothers also if not more so.