I wouldn't overblow it. Your son was not treated at that point for his ADHD, and this was an incident largely the result of an impulsive decision at the time without forethought about outcome; that's pretty textbook ADHD in a way. Let that one go unless you see further animal cruelty. Chasing birds in the yard isn't really cruel if the birds are able to fly away; they're okay. It sounds more like immature behavior -- kind of ADHD typical, something a smaller child might do. It's fine to point out that he doesn't need to be doing that, but it also isn't along the lines of real animal cruelty either.

Our middle child has ADHD; she's 24 now. She is also transgender which was not something we were aware of until about two years ago. As a child, he (he was raised as a boy) was impulsive. He did a few things along the way that in retrospect make more sense but at the time they were alarming. I can say that as an adult, she has not continued to display those same behaviors, so my message is to be careful not to pathologize too much. They can and do often grow out of many of their quirky childhood behaviors.

I would be more concerned about your sons aggression toward his sister. Our son, when he was younger, was also aggressive toward his younger brother, and it was actually worse than we were even really aware of because the younger brother didn't always tell us everything. Watch this. It had a harmful impact on the younger sibling and long-term on their relationship with each other. They are both in their 20's now, and are still navigating that old history. I think they've managed to find a way to get along more, but they are not close by any means.

The whole fear of fire alarms and dodging cameras is really odd behavior, and that doesn't sound like ADHD behavior. If he is not doing that at school (schools have alarms and cameras too), then perhaps he is doing it to get a rise out of you. Have you asked if he does the same thing at school? If not, he may be playing you a bit there.

As an adult, our daughter has had this to say about how his ADHD was managed in his childhood: He hated taking medication. We did discover he often spit it out or hid it in his room. He was probably often unmedicated because he didn't willingly take his meds. When we did start having him see a therapist, and he was at one point hospitalized, he again rarely took medication consistently. He feared addiction to medication. After graduation, he did take college courses for a few years, completely unmedicated and without special education accommodations . . . AND he was very successful. In retrospect, she feels she was given too many accommodations in school at times and too often the adults around him, including us, did too much for him. As an adult, she has discovered she has the ability to learn better coping strategies for dealing with inattentiveness, impulsiveness, etc. than she was expected to have as a child. In other words, she feels like she was enabled quite a bit because so much of her problems were pathologized and excused because of the pathology.

It's a balancing act. I feel for you. This was our biggest parenting challenge. I can only tell you that in the end, she has turned out to be a very loving, very hard working, very moral and kind human being. We made lots of mistakes along the way. We were often working with only part of the information because she didn't tell us everything and we often didn't watch carefully enough, particularly in the sibling interactions. We often enabled her and excused behaviors that we should have worked on more -- some of which have become adult behaviors that still drive me a bit crazy like her inability to keep a clean room or bathroom (and I'm not expecting spotlessness, just basic cleanliness). So . . . still working on these as an adult.

Hang in there. Stay alert. Don't pathologize but don't enable at the same time. This is not easy.