'What a shame Michael did not get proper medical treatment when he was young," said Dr Parker. My wife and I looked at the child psychiatrist with something like hatred, as we took from his hand another prescription of Ritalin for our teenage son.

When he was two, Michael started having terrible tantrums, during which he banged his head against the wall so hard that it seemed a miracle he failed to do himself serious harm. We hoped it was just the "terrible twos", and he would grow out of it, but he hasn't. We now know a great deal more than we ever wanted to about child guidance services, psychotherapists and child psychiatrists. We know how hard it is to get any of them to take parents seriously. We also know about the professional trench warfare in which parents and children seem to count as little more than bystanders on the battlefield, collateral damage in a war over issues which have no relevance to their lives.

At first, Michael's tantrums occurred mainly at home. I took notes, but one day Michael found them on my computer. In an agony of remorse and shame, he deleted the lot, and didn't have a tantrum for perhaps 10 days. So today, I can only tell you that a tantrum meant shouting furiously, and kicking and head-butting the walls and doors, and, sometimes, me. Between tantrums he was an intelligent, lively, talkative, charming little boy. He did not know then, and does not know now, what triggers his tantrums.

When he was six, we contacted the local child guidance unit. We called several times a month, in various stages of distress, for six months, and each time were told that our case would be put to a team meeting to decide whether to offer us an appointment. At last, they gave in, and we were granted an interview with a psychiatric social worker, Mrs Smith. Years later, Michael wrote a short but moving account of how he was "wriggling" as we walked in, painfully conscious that he was being brought here because his parents were in despair.

Mrs Smith assumed that the problem was over-anxious middle-class parents. After that first meeting, she refused to see Michael again, and gave us a series of patronising lectures about "setting boundaries". She rebuffed my offer to show her my notes of his behaviour with a kindly, world-weary smile. No, she said, she did not think Michael needed the help of a psychiatrist or psychotherapist.

Then Michael's school referred him to the unit. Suddenly, Mrs Smith was full of urgency: he ought to be statemented; had we thought of a special school; the psychotherapist could see him next week. We firmly rejected the first two, but looked forward to his first meeting with someone who might be qualified to help our son.

The psychotherapist insisted that each time she saw Michael, both his mother and I had to be with Mrs Smith for the full hour. She saw Michael three times. Then we spent three months badgering to be allowed to know her opinion, and what treatment was to be offered. The therapist would not give an opinion except in the presence of Mrs Smith, and Mrs Smith had a full appointment book.

Eventually, the four of us sat down together, and the therapist said: "Now, what is your view of Michael?" That set the tone. They answered all our questions with another question. "Does he have a psychiatric illness?" we asked. "Well, do you think he has one?" "Is there a biological cause?" we asked. "What makes you ask that?" And so on, for an infuriating, wasted hour. Then they made their offer. Michael could have an hour with the therapist every Wednesday at 11am - but only if both his parents spent that hour with Mrs Smith.

In vain we pleaded that this meant half a day's work lost for both of us every week, which our family could not afford. We begged for a compromise: could I not come one week, for example, and his mother the next. Mrs Smith looked at us and said: "I know it is painful." But the problem with Mrs Smith's unstructured chats was not that they were painful, just a maddening waste of time.

We insisted, before we gave up on the unit, on having their psychiatrist give an opinion: might there be a biological reason for Michael's troubles? The psychiatrist saw Michael, and wrote to me: "You asked for my professional opinion about Michael's condition. I am not sure whether you are familiar with the multi-axial classification of childhood problems that is used by British Child Psychiatrists. I am sure that Michael fulfils the criteria for the ICD 9 description of a child with a disturbance of emotions specific to childhood and adolescence."

I found a friend to translate this for me. Apparently, it means he has terrible tantrums. Thank you, doctor.

Michael was coming up to the time when he would transfer to secondary school, and had only escaped being excluded from primary school because we and the school worked hard together to find ways of containing him. We had somehow to find a way of settling him into secondary school.

We grabbed at every straw. There are only two. One is therapy, and we went to both the Anna Freud Centre and the Tavistock Centre, in London. The other is the doctors who believe in physical causes and chemical remedies - the attention deficit disorder (ADD) doctors. The therapists diagnosed unspecified but deep-seated psychiatric problems, and prescribed therapy four times a week. These doctors diagnosed ADD and prescribed Ritalin.

But these two sets of doctors are at each others' throats. The ADD doctors advised us not to let the therapists get their hands on him. The therapists were shocked at the idea of giving Ritalin, saying that the drug had never been properly tested and could do great harm. Both sides implied that the other camp was a set of quacks. The child guidance unit we had attended was, apparently, in the therapy camp - which was why they had sneered at us whenever we asked if he had an illness.

It was like dealing with two fiercely opposed religious or political sects. To the ADD people, Ritalin was the One True Way. To the therapists, therapy was the Path of Enlightenment.

So Michael started secondary school with four sessions of therapy every week and Ritalin tablets every day. Over the years, we have reduced the doses of both. He now has only occasional sessions with his therapist and takes Ritalin when he feels he needs it. He has survived secondary school so far, with occasional outbursts that require us to go and see his teachers.

But it is at home that the worst tantrums occur. We are no nearer to knowing what triggers them, or how to avoid them. He can often go for weeks without one; then, he is an interesting, amusing teenager, who pushes boundaries and doesn't do enough work, much like any teenage boy.

But when the outbursts happen, they are worse than ever. He is large and athletic: doors come off hinges, their panels get broken. He hits them, not just with his feet and fists but also with his head, as hard as he can. It would certainly frighten us if we had not decided from long experience that his head must be tougher than our doors. I once ended up with a huge bruise down my arm which took a fortnight to go away. For an hour or so, he is like a huge and rather frightening wild animal rampaging round our home. It upsets him almost as much as it upsets us. He once asked if I had any idea what it was like to be him, and to have to see the doors he had broken every day (we gave up having them repaired ages ago, or we would have had a carpenter more or less taking up residence).

Are either of the treatments any use? Therapy did not uncover the root cause of his problems, which remain a mystery. It may have helped him think more clearly about his behaviour and its effect on others. As for Ritalin, its enemies call it a "chemical cosh", and its advocates say it transforms behaviour. Neither is true: it is an amphetamine that helps you concentrate. Michael takes one before school in the morning to help him focus during lessons. The Ritalin doctors have lowered their claims since we first met them, and now say its value is only that it enables the child to do better work and therefore have higher self-esteem.

Recently, the therapist camp lost control of the child guidance services where we live, and the ADD faction planted their flag on the ravaged battlefield. Triumphantly, they told us we could now get our prescription locally. That is why we are seeing Dr Parker now, and why we find it hard to forgive him for smugly telling us that if only Michael had been properly treated when he was young, everything would be fine.

· Names have been changed.