Questions about meds

Ah Kathy,

There are 100 answers to this question. I can only give you one.

Yes, I wish I had medicated my child sooner. He might have learned to read by now (he’s 10 also). I have medicated him for a year. It has been a struggle to find the right (combination) of meds - but for him it works. Now, I wouldn’t have it any other way - but I really struggled with the decision when my husband and I made it.

My husband’s point was “Let’s give him every chance he can have - if the meds don’t work, we can always take him off of them.”

A friend who is a teacher said “If he was diabetic you would give him meds, wouldn’t you? This is the SAME THING!”

So I “caved” and it was the right thing to do.

Lil

The decision to medicate has nothing to do with the school system. It has everything to do with the well being of your child, and what you think is best.

My son has the distractibility type of ADD, so he was plenty pliable already. He was in such a fog that he made no trouble for anyone, unless someone wanted his atention. I can tell you that medication is no magic bullet. He still struggles to concentrate and continues to need help with social skills But medication gives him a fighting chance. Without it, he wasn’t fucntioning.

There were side effects, but they were insignificant as compared to the problems he was experiencing with no medication. We could deal with it, and he is past it now.

It’s an individual decision, where you have to weigh your son’s needs against your comfort level with meds and your knowledge of what medication will and won’t do for him.

I have to admit that back in ‘94, I didn’t have that much knowledge about adhd and hadn’t heard the biases against medications. I didn’t even know anyone who had adhd. I had read Driven to Distraction first (just happened to be first paperback printing) so all that I had found at that point was positive.

Considering how frequently we had gone to the docs before with everything from ear infections to getting tonsils out, I saw this as just another intervention, much like wearing glasses (the analogy used in D to D). I saw a positive difference in my son in just two days of taking medicine. It was nothing short of amazing compared with how things were prior to his taking medicine.
His grades went up, instead of crying, falling out of the chair or hiding at homework time, he went quietly to the table and sat down ready to work. It’s not a cure but a tool to help him, which it does. He has had academic concerns since 1st grade and qualified for sp.ed in 4th.

I have not one time in 8+ years had a teacher tell me he was lazy or any of those other negatives, they always enjoy him in class and tell me how he gives 110%. He has add/inattentive.

I have a younger son who is also on medicine for adhd, he is hyper and you can tell the difference in him when he is on and off meds. Without, he is all over the house like a tornado. I used to tell my mom, if I’d had him first he would have been an only child. He hasn’t had the academic concerns that my older son has had all these years, in fact does very well in school and is also enjoyed by his teachers.

Hope this helps you. Best wishes.
Amy

Our son was 10 when we started the medication. He is ADD-inattentive. He also had few friends, poor grades, and low self-esteem.

I agree with everything everyone else has said so far. Yes, I wish I’d medicated him sooner, but I was so busy trying to understand his LDs that I didn’t even recognize that it was ADD-inattentive. Meanwhile his self-esteem plummeted to nothing. By the time I finally started dealing with his attention problems and had an ADD assessment done, he was convinced he was stupid. The medication was like a miracle at our house. We were lucky that the first medication (Ritalin - later Concerta) worked for him. It turned his whole life around. This formerly “lazy” child is now a high performer (still with LDs). His grades are amazing. His social skills have improved and he’s made new friends in middle school.

Side effects:
- No appetite. He has lost weight.
- Sometimes he has a let-down effect after the meds wear off. Lasts about 30-60 minutes. Some days he’s lethargic and depressed during that time, others he’s just plain irritable.

Is life perfect? No. The meds only help while he’s taking them (ie, during the day). Since he can’t take the medication at night, homework in the evening is still unbearable.

If we had never tried the meds, he would never have known that he could be so successful in school. He would have been stuck in his “I can’t” rut. Now he knows he can.

I questioned medication myself both as a parent and a teacher and this hard decision is a parent’s to make. As a teacher, though, I would need to say medication is not to make your son more pliable. It is a sad fact that our nation’s schools are the right schools for every child but it’s even sadder to see what happens to children sometimes who don’t fit in to the expectations of school.

Medication helped one of my sons tremendously. In the ideal world, there would be a school in which my son could have been successful without medication but he lives in the real world. That same son, now in college, is currently exploring the possibility of going back on medication as he acutely feels his struggle to be successful in the greater challenge of college.

Good luck.

You will notice that there are more questions on this board about meds than any other topic. Should you do meds? Which meds? how much? There are few perfect answers. Most of us do the best we can but reactions to meds change as kids grow, new meds come out, etc. It is tough to find out solid information on meds and a physician who really knows their meds past ritalin, adderall and concerta. Welcome to the great dilema.

In the end, it is a very personal decision - most of go this route simply because we don’t know how else to help our children.

In our case, it was very much a trial thing. The difference was night and day immediately.

Good luck

My 14 year old has fairly mild ADD—predominantly inattentive. We decided to medicate at the end of 8th grade. (Among other things, the psychologist talked with us about giving non-medicated ADD kids a drivers license—it really made me sit up and think.) Besides the vast improvement in his ability to study for longer periods of time and the ease with which he now takes tests, there has been another huge change in our family because of the meds. His conflict seeking behavior has just dropped away. He doesn’t pick fights and argue just for the sake of fighting and arguing. In watching some old videos this weekend, it’s obvious that the conflict-seeking behavior has always been there. We did lots of behavior modification things to help him deal with his big feelings and to act appropriately, but the medication has allowed us to be together as a family in a much more harmonious way. He’s still a teenager, and he still does all the appropriate separating stuff, there’s just not the edge that was so difficult for him and for us. I’ve come full circle in my thoughts about meds. He, as a 14 year old, is really happy for the change and very glad we pushed him to do the meds.

On the negative side, he lost weight initially—almost 10 lbs in a week. His appetite has returned to a large degree, he regained half of that weight over the next few weeks, and he is gaining weight steadily now. If he has caffeine in addition to the meds, he will have trouble sleeping, too.

Good luck in your decision. It is a tough one.

I have to say that it does sound like a situation where something needs to be done. I have a child who is ADD and LD. I have seen him improve with interventions outside of meds. We did interactive metronome. After this therapy he could sit through an entire baseball game and recently a football game. Last year he went to a football game and dropped his soda on the person in front of him and couldn’t sit for the entire game.

My husband used to hate to take him to games but now he looks forward to it. My son comes home telling me about the plays certain players made. It is pretty amazing.

Other improvements in attention include:
He can get himself dressed without constant reminders about each specific step.
He starts homework without a hint of trouble.
He can clean his room with reminders. Before if I asked him to clean his room he just could not do it by himself and would cry and ask for help.
He stopped fidgeting in school.
He was removed from the LD class and is doing well without accomodations in a regular class. He isn’t perfect. He still annoys his brother with what I can only call a compulsion to tease.

There were other motor and sequencing improvements as well. My son never had social issues so I haven’t noticed a change there.

I realize not everyone has the time or money to do this and for some kids the problem is just to severe and needs a different approach.
As my son gets older, (he is only 8) and demands increase, I may decide to medicate him, but for now I will just keep plugging away with therapies.

My dd was diagnosed at 6, we started meds just after 7. She is 9 now. She has ADHD Inattentive with “learning differences” (moderately dyslexic plus the ADHD affects memory for learning). In fact, this year she is in transition moving to special ed declassification in challenging 4th grade and is so far handling it very well (cross your fingers for me - I may be a basketcase after next week’s parent/teacher conference - but I don’t think so this year! ). Most who know her very well can’t believe she didn’t get the combined diagnosis, b/c she is hyperactive with family/friends but not at school.

The decision whether to use meds or not is highly personal and at the time, the hardest parenting decision I/we made. Plus, I despise the fact that there is so much misinformation, stigma and myth associated with them.

We had tried everything else, behavioral and academic intervention, etc. - anything and everything to avoid the med decision. During that awful year between 6 and 7, I saw that even with the “correct” interventions her self esteem could still plummet and behaviorally, there were more serious cries for help. I thought, if we had all the correct diagnoses and interventions but not meds, she could do OK - but learned otherwise.

I learned the nuances of how ADHD and learning differences can negatively play off each other. I now can identify which issues are learning differences and which are ADHD. She will have enough on her plate getting through school with ADHD, so I am glad she has made tremendous improvements in learning - she couldn’t have done it without the help of meds (I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the special ed committee’s jaws drop due to skyrocketing test scores).

It also ties back to the best decision for your child - not anyone else’s opinions. I have seen my dd’s self esteem rebuild and the twinkle is now back in her eye. Unmedicated, she hurts no one but herself - she has never been a behavior problem in school - and that is my concern regardless of anyone else’s opinion of how we choose to parent her (btw, she has never appeared “drugged” on meds).

The positives - med benefits extend to social relationships, sports and learning her routines at dance, getting homework done, little/no impulsivity/safety scares and a more peaceful family life. The negatives are we struggled with weight loss for two years, but I think she has leveled off - I now see her eat very well, so I’m hoping the next check-up shows this.

Good luck with making your decision. BTDT.

Classic ADHD until recently (last sixty years) did not have a treatment which worked at all other than the herb - the coffee bean/related herbal stimulants/alerting agents.

Just because a child is diagnosed with ADHD is no guarantee than any ADHD med will work for them.

ADHD can go untreated or treated but a person at some point in their lives should be told that there are ADHD medicines available which help some persons (not all persons).

In my view it is a great crime never to disclose the existence of the ADHD medicines (the stimulants/alerting agents) and never to try them even if only for a short period of time to see what they can do/not do to the ability to pay attention, focus, and concentrate for children and adults who do have real difficulties with inattention.

Another neurological condition known as epilepsy was not treated until fairly recently (the last 125 - 60 years or so) with anti-epilepsy medicines. It is also a great crime (my view) to fail to tell those who have epilepsy that there are anti-epilepsy medicines available which help some people (not all people).

Good luck.

PDG,
ISNT IT A GREAT CRIME TO TELL SOMEONE THAT THEY HAVE AN ILLNESS, IN WHICH MANY TIMES IS FALSE, AND ISNT IT A CRIME TO ONLY SUGGEST MEDS WHEN THERE ARE OTHER METHODS OUT THERE. BETTER YET ISNT IT A CRIME TO WITHHOLD INFORMATION FROM PATIENTS ABOUT THESE DRUGS. YOU TALK ABOUT TRYING THESE MEDS FOR SHORT PERIODS OF TIME, WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO HAPPEN ONCE YOU PULL THE DRUG AND DISCONTINUE THE USE? AMPHETAMINES ARE HIGHLY ADDICTIVE AND YOU JUST CAN NOT STOP TAKING THEM(IN MOST CASES) BUT I DONT WANT TO GET TO THE POINT WHERE PEOPLE THINK THAT I AM JUDGING THEM.

Dear Concerned,

These are some pretty inflammatory statements. Can you back them up with research?

Andrea

I believe that honesty is the best policy, especially if you want your children to be honest with you. Lay out the options and their relative merits. Decide together. It’s a shared journey, and often a bumpy ride for both parent and child.

Why would you think amphetamines are addictive to an ADD person? The brain chemistry of an ADD person is different from a non-ADD person, so the amphetamine is used differently by the brain. Stop the amphetamine and all you have is untreated ADD, precisely what you would have if you never started it. I agree with Andrea, what study gave you this idea and where can we review the data? How do they account for ADD people who have gone off amphetamines abruptly with no withdrawal, as would be expected from someone addicted? Why no symptoms of addiction?

I’d be interested to know more about the source of your information, how the study was conducted, where, and their conclusions.

I guess I could have said that it is a great crime to not provide your child interactive metronome to improve attention since this was what was successful for my child.

I would never say that.

I don’t think there are any easy answers here. I don’t think those on either side of the med issue should make such all or nothing statements.

Some people have their reasons for not trying meds. I think you should respect that in the same way your choice to medicate your child should be respected.

I genuinely like to hear stories where anyone finds help for their child. I think that is truely what is all about.

Well said, Linda F! Those on both sides of the ‘meds/anti meds’ issue need to remember that MANY similar symptoms arise from different causes. My child is dyslexic/gifted, NOT ADD or ADHD. His teachers can’t see the difference — but I spent 2 years researching his difficulties, and I KNOW the difference.

I never considered meds, but that is because I had good medical advice early on in my struggle, from a Doctor who has strong opinions about doing WHAT IS RIGHT for each individual. I landed in her office in tears due to ‘first grade reading failure’ and the kind comments of a teacher whose child IS (I assume) ADD, who saw similar symptoms and decided to help me by recommending her Pediatrician.

This (My family) doctor knows me, and knows my child, and explained very clearly WHY she didn’t agree I needed a referral to a PED. This is not because she is anti-meds — this is because (I believe) she has a firm grasp of the issues involved, and when and why a trial of meds are warranted. What she told me has been borne out by the information I have gained in two years of research for my child. MY child — I am an expert here, but about anyone else’s child I am just an amateur.

It is easy to judge others from your own corner — but before posting sweeping statements, just remember that each child is unique. Many of us whose children are NOT ADHD or ADD suffer from hostile reactions to ‘false pseudo-DX’ brought on by well-meaning elementary staffers, and this can cause one to think that NO child needs meds — this is WRONG.

It is very hard, in this climate of opinion, to use meds for your child — just as it is very hard, in some cases, to NOT use meds for your child. Let’s respect the choice of ALL parents who are faced with this dilemma, pray that we have each seen our child clearly and made the best decision possible, and SUPPORT each other — we are all suffering the same pain on behalf of our children, regardless of the cause!

Sorry, off my soapbox now! I don’t drop in here often since my child is not ‘adhd’ but PLEASE let’s remember we are all in the ‘same boat’ with regard to school struggles.
Best wishes to all parents, and prayers that we succeed in our most important task…

The only time statements seem inflamatory on these boards is when people dont want to hear the facts about this out of control illness that is labeling our children. Had you have done your research, which apparently you hadnt, you would have all your facts.
amphetamines are highly addictive, yes i agree more likely in long term use but there has been situations where children with addictive personalities have had withdrawl symptoms from short term use.How can a person say that adhd isnt a mental illness it is directly about brain functions, and the meds are supposed to work for the brain. Look i dont care what decision you made for your child, your decision, and im truly sorry if i gave the impression that i was judging your decision. People need to know the facts before starting meds and trying the drugs for a short time only in most cases cover up the problem and gives fasle sense of hope to parents because something is different with the childs behavior therefore it must be good. remember im in the same boat but unfortunately i wasnt asked my concerns or opinions when it came to my son , you see my ex-wife took it upon herself to try meds and didnt even research, now i have to go to PA in the morning to get a second opinion by a specialists. Which is necessary, all the time. Just please dont settle on one doctors theory and get your alternatives, lay it all out and make rational decisions based on information first hand

Dear Concerned,

I think you may have confused me with another poster. My question to you was, essentially, what research can you point to that supports the views you have expressed. There must be some source for the information you are providing. Tell us what it is so that we can see for ourselves.

Andrea

interactive metronome. I have seen these words used a lot lately. What is this?

interactive metronome. I have seen these words used a lot lately. What is this?

Drug Enforcement Agency DEA there is an entire page that describes exactly what Ritalin is and how our own government lists it as a class 2 drug. Also you should read your drug inserts from the prescription themselves.

Andrea, There is way too much information but I will forward you (1) link for you to go to and read. I doubt you will but I will send it anyway. It is evident you have not read your drug inserts on your medicine. There are plenty of places to find out that this drugs are not safe. Please be so kind and post some sites that say they are perfectly safe with no side effects.
http://www.adhd-biofeedback.com/ritalin.html

I totally disagree in drugging your children to support the Drug Companies in America.

Not only do they drug our children but adults too.

The principal at my son’s school is in agreement with me. He believes that there are other alternatives besides drugs.

My son has gone through 2 other schools and the other 2 schools are both supported by the Drug Companies. I had complete pressure to have my son on drugs. Schools recieve money from the Drug Companies to promote them.

The principal also informed me that in latest studies of Ritalin that when children come off of the drug they experience tics (I believe this is probably when they are on it for a long period of time). I don’t think that there is enough study of this drug and they are using our kids as guinea pigs.

Check out the site gary.null.com under world issues.

I fought with the previous 2 schools that my son was in. I was even threatened if I don’t put my son on drugs.

I am very happy to find this Principal of this school who is in agreement with me. He apparently was a principal of a school with 14 special classes in it with all kinds of problems so he is very well experiences in these issue. Don’t let society pressure you into thinking that drugs are the only way.

kmr6655 wrote:
>
> Hello everyone…
>
> My son is 10 yrs old and newly diagnosed with ADHD. I must
> admit I am way over my head in trying to get a handle on all
> of the aspects of this diagnosis.
>
> One of my main concerns is medication. On one side I
> question my right to medicate my child to make him more
> pliable to the school system, but on the other hand, I know
> my son has few friends, his grades are poor, and I see his
> self esteem plummeting.
>
> I would like to know about your experiences medicating your
> child. Do you wish you had done it sooner? Are there any
> side effects? Do you wish you had never introduced meds to
> your child?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> kathy

I totally disagree in drugging your children to support the Drug Companies in America.

Not only do they drug our children but adults too.

The principal at my son’s school is in agreement with me. He believes that there are other alternatives besides drugs. (Herbal, Support groups, personal praise at home). etc.

My son has gone through 2 other schools and the other 2 schools are both supported by the Drug Companies. I had complete pressure to have my son on drugs. Schools recieve money from the Drug Companies to promote them.

The principal also informed me that in latest studies of Ritalin that when children come off of the drug they experience tics (I believe this is probably when they are on it for a long period of time). I don’t think that there is enough study of this drug and they are using our kids as guinea pigs.

Check out the site gary.null.com under world issues.

I fought with the previous 2 schools that my son was in. I was even threatened if I don’t put my son on drugs.

I am very happy to find this Principal of this school who is in agreement with me. He apparently was a principal of a school with 14 special classes in it with all kinds of problems so he is very well experiences in these issue. Don’t let society pressure you into thinking that drugs are the only way.
kmr6655 wrote:
>
> Hello everyone…
>
> My son is 10 yrs old and newly diagnosed with ADHD. I must
> admit I am way over my head in trying to get a handle on all
> of the aspects of this diagnosis.
>
> One of my main concerns is medication. On one side I
> question my right to medicate my child to make him more
> pliable to the school system, but on the other hand, I know
> my son has few friends, his grades are poor, and I see his
> self esteem plummeting.
>
> I would like to know about your experiences medicating your
> child. Do you wish you had done it sooner? Are there any
> side effects? Do you wish you had never introduced meds to
> your child?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> kathy

Kmr6655-My son has gotten A’s and B’s on Adderral XR but when we have tried other meds, he started to get C’s and D’s. I feel I do not have a choice in some ways.His brain is missing /not using a neurotransmitter so How could I not help him with that? My husband struggled his whole life not even knowing why he struggled. We also work alot with schoolwork and tests that I make up before a real test. And obviously we try our best with behavior and consequences/charts.
Good luck with your choice.It’s nice to have others to talk to who also struggle with Adhd.
Anne B.