Hyperactivity - from a medical view - is a pathology. There is a tremendous and frighening increase of medical treatments of hyperacitivty with Ritalin, causing long-time risks especially for kids who are medicated early in their life.

From my own experience, instead of directly going to medical treatments it makes sense to look for additional behavioral offers. I know a Karate-group with kids, where some of these kids are diagnosed of being hypeactive. However, the training in Karate was like a good treatment. The changes between tension and hard work with meditation and concentration had some effect. It took more than half a year, but now many of those kids integrate much better in keeping the queit and mditative phases in the training.

Another example is a biography of a pianist I already mentioned in another contribution: Helene Grimaud. She also was very nervous and unconcentrated, and teachers suggested to her parents that she should play a musical instrument. She began to learn to play piano with nine years, and now she is one of the very first-class pianists in the world. The piano gave her a possiblity to  to put her inner tension into a productive creative process. My hunch is that this is why she has - from my point of view - a very special and convincing way in interpreting Robert Schumann's work.

I used to think that hyper-activity was a side effect of living in this century where we are overwhelmed by the hight speed of things, by the quantity and endless possibilities surrounding us. Reading Montaigne made me realize it is an old problem. Here is an interesting quote on the subject from book III chapter X on managing the will:

“Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for themselves, but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves; 'tis their tenants occupy them, not themselves. This common humour pleases not me. We must husband the freedom of our soul and mortgage it only on the right occasions; which are in very small numbers, if we judge sanely.

“They thrust themselves in indifferently wherever there is work to do and obligation, and are without life when not in tumultuous bustle: "They are in business for business' sake."- Seneca. They seek business only for busyness.

“It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot stand still: like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no further. Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark of understanding and dignity: their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle; they may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends, as they are troublesome to themselves.”