new to meds

Hi. I can’t help with your meds question, but other knowledgeable people on this board will certainly try to help.
Please make sure to discuss things with your doctor as well, and if the doctor you have won’t talk to you in detail, see if you can find another doctor who will.

My purpose in writing to you now is to warn you of a problem and ask for your help. There is a person who is nicknamed a “troll” who reads this board and makes a point of posting very hurtful, violent, and often false things. He is especially anti-medication so your post is a likely target.

If one of these unpleasant posts appears here, please do NOT reply. He watches the board and will continue to spew verbal abuse as long as he knows you are reading. So don’t reply and give him the attention and the opportunity.

You can go to the top of the page, click on LDOnline, and sent a private message by clicking pm. If you copy an inappropriate post and send a copy in the pm that makes it even easier to trace. The LDOnline moderator will remove any post that is abusive, violent, obscene, or definitely untrue.

The moderation on the board is getting more active, so please just leave it to the moderators and don’t make yourself a target. (I am used to being a target so let me take the flak here.)

Back on topic, there are lots of caring parents and teachers here who will be happy to try to help you. You will probably get many positive replies soon.
Also you can go back and read the old posts on this board, and you can use the search option at the top of the page to look for topics of interest by typing in your key words.
Hoping this all helps.

How old is your son? And what is he having trouble paying attention to? Is he very intelligent, perhaps gifted? Two of my kids were very perfectionistic and also had a hard time paying attention to things they felt they already knew about. I had the oldest tested for high IQ, because I felt he would qualify for “gifted” programming, but the school said no at the time. After several years of homeschooling, he tested in 6th grade and came in highly gifted in math, which is what I had believed.

There can be more than one reason for not focusing, and it is easy for the school to put the “ADHD” label on any child that doesn’t come along with the curriculum as they designed it, even though we know that not everyone learns the same things at the same rate in the same way.

As for the medication, we never used it, so I have no personal experience, but it is my understanding that different kids react differently, and something like 30% or so don’t respond favorably to stimulants. I would trust your own observations and get back with your doctor and share what you have observed. It seems like the doctor was expecting very quick results and they haven’t happened. Maybe others can share if this has happened to them.

Mellisa,

As the prior posters have suggested, you really should consult with your doctor about this. FWIW, 10 mgs of adderall is not a very high dose, generally speaking and it may be that your child requires a higher dose in order to see effects. Interestingly, stimulant doses are not based on weight or age. Instead, how much is needed may depend on how fast a person metabolizes the medication. Because they tend to be fast metabolizers, children may need relatively higher dosages than teens or adults. It is highly individualistic and it can take a while to find and fine-tune the proper dose. Also, a child may respond to one stimulant but not another or, as Steve points out, may be one of the approximately 30% that don’t respond to stimulant treatment. The important thing is that you consult closely with your doctor in the process of figuring all of this out. By the way, I wasn’t big on meds for my inattentive ADHD kid and I also resisted the idea that he had ADHD because he wasn’t hyper. I though his big problem was LD . It wasn’t, not by a long shot. As it turned out, addressing his inattentive ADHD (our choice was meds, others might make a different choice) was the key to everything. Once the ADHD was treated, he was able to benefit from remediation directed to his LD. Before meds, the same remediation just didn’t work and he became more and more frustrated, unhappy and unwilling to even try anything at school that he thought would be hard. For him, failure was not an option and, if he thought he would fail (and he usually did think that) he would simply refuse to even consider trying and would totally shut down. That never happens anymore and he even likes school.

This in encouraging to me, I want nothing more than to see him do well in school. I know its only been 6 days , and I want to educate myself as much as possible for his benefit, I owe him that. He doesn’t see the doctor for 6 weeks, but he does see the therapist about every 2 weeks in which I can discuss and change his meds if nessesary. I was told this by his doctor they are in the same office. How long should I give the meds to see a change?

My son takes a combination of Strattera and Metadate. I didn’t notice an immediate response to the stimulant. But after one week his teacher at school said he was doing so much better. I still didn’t notice much of an improvement at home. But after a couple of weeks I did notice that he did his homework without the huge struggle. I aslo noticed that I had to get him to do the homework IMMEDIATELY after coming home from school before the Metadate wears off.

You have to keep in mind that although the root cause of your child’s inattentiveness is ADHD, that some of his behavior might actually be learned. He may have learned to be resistent or other behaviors that ADHD kids exhibit due to their high level of stress and frustration. It might take a few days for him to relax and just go with it.

Have you talked with his teacher about his behavior at school? If so, what does he/she say? Like us, you might not be noticing the improvements at home, but the teacher might. Talk to the therapist about this stuff at your next appointment.

Hayley

[quote:8815579a74=”Hayley”]
Have you talked with his teacher about his behavior at school? If so, what does he/she say? Like us, you might not be noticing the improvements at home, but the teacher might. Talk to the therapist about this stuff at your next appointment.

Hayley[/quote]

Following up on this thought, lots of inattentive ADHD kids don’t have big problems at home except for when it is homework time. So, you may not notice huge changes when you are with him because the things tht create problems for him occur mostly in the school setting. Do give the whole thing more than 6 days. You can discuss with your doctor when to increase the dose or when to give up and move on. Consider trying more than one type of stimulant and consider trying Strattera, a non-stimulant treatment. Remember as well that the medicine does not miraculously create good behavior or academic prowess, it only makes the child more available to achieve these goals. The rest still has to be taught and learned.

I understand he won’t get rid of his frustration without reasurance and help from home and school, but the doctor said we would see results immediately. Do you know what he meant by this? Although he did say it would be good timing as far as him seeing the therapist 2 weeks from his visit with him. Did I misunderstand him in some way. His teachers are afraid as the year goes on he will fall further behind, and that his frustration seems to of gotten worse since christmas vacation. We have been going through this since early October , which probally isn’t long to some but It just breaks my heart to see this 6 year old so unhappy. Sometimes I feel like this could be my fault too! He is one of 4 children and maybe I can’t give him all the attention he deserves.

Mellisa,

Remember: the doctor only knows what the pharmaceutical company says is true about medication. I wouldn’t completely trust what the doctor has to say about ADHD unless he has a kid of his own with this problem.

I can’t make this point strongly enough—[b]not all of the behavior of a child with ADD is due directly to ADD[/b]. Much is due to learned behavior due [i]indirectly[/i] to ADD (the associated frustration and high level of stress can for instance make a child behave in a resistent fashion). It might take some time for your son to “forget” about these habits. My son was very negative and resistent. And although he may immediately have been able to concentrate better on his meds it didn’t make him stop being negative and resistent… that took a few weeks. Now his teacher tells me he’s so positive. MY KID? You gotta be kidding!

However, if you think things have gotten worse, perhaps Adderall is not the medication for him. I know Strattera doesn’t work for all kids, but in combination with Metadate, it has worked really well for my son. I had high hopes that Strattera alone would do the trick (wanted to avoid stimulants), but it wasn’t cutting it for school work. It did however make homelife much better.

To put how long it takes into some perspective, we started with medication in August. Things didn’t look positive in his school environment until about 6 weeks ago. We just had a PAC (pupil advisory council) meeting at his school this morning, and it was the first time that we heard really good things about him. He still has some catching up to do, but this was our fourth PAC meeting this year, and they are now saying that they think we can just start working directly with the teacher on his issues. It takes time, and when your child is suffering time is agony.

Hang in there!
Hayley

that cause ‘school problems’. Everything you have been told is very possible…but think of this additionally: If he has ADHD/ADD PLUS a true LD, such as visual dyslexia — then the meds may help concentration — but he is still not being taught properly.

My son is a visual dyslexic, verbally very advanced but quite shy and tends to avoid anything that is ‘hard’. In Gr. 1, he was in a ‘whole language’ classroom — well, they SAY they do ‘phonics’, but they really don’t. Kids are given ‘predictable’ texts and are supposed to memorize ‘sight’ words. There is no direct, specific teaching of the ‘code’ you need to learn to decipher written english. This is fine for many learners, as they will ‘pick it up’, but those who don’t thrive ‘right off’ in a whole language environment — will NOT learn to read with this type of teaching, IMO. Or at least, not very well!

His 1st grade teacher felt he was ADD — after much research and consultation with our family Dr., I felt he was NOT. But obviously, something was wrong. He was no further ahead in February than he was in September - and all sorts of anxious behaviours were starting, in response to school and academic work. I felt that we had a LEARNING problem, not an ATTENTION problem.

So we decided on a summer program at a local private school, which offers ‘Spalding’, a direct, specific phonics program. The teacher, a ‘dyslexia’ expert with 20 yrs experience in special ed, said she also saw many ‘ADD’ behaviours, but told me she thought we should see how he responded to her teaching before we ruled one way or another, and then I could take it ‘from there’ in deciding what to do next.

Instead of the ‘guess and go’ whole-language texts, which he had been using his excellent memory skills to fake ‘You read it to me first, Mum, and then I’ll read it to you’, he brought home the little phonics books that you cannot guess with: ‘Bob and Tom go to the hill’. Bob says ‘Go, Tom! Go!’ etc.

Miracle of miracles, at the end of two weeks…he was READING those readers…and enjoying school, even if it was ‘summer’ school! We went along in leaps and bounds from that point — by the end of the 8 week program, he was reading ‘Easy REaders’ at a end-of-first grade level — and his confidence had soared. All the ‘anxiety’ behaviours (‘ticcish’ type little habits ,common in my family) had disappeared.

Now, 6 years later, I have learned that my kid DOES often look ‘ADD’ — when the work is beyond him. But it is not an ATTENTION problem — it’s a LEARNING problem.

Sorry to be so long-winded — but my point is, make sure he is not suffering from LD’s as well as, or as opposed to, ADD/ADHD. If you treat the ADD/ADHD but not the LD — he will not show much improvement at school! In fact, he will possibly get worse — failure has a way of messing with one’s self-esteem!

Good luck! I hope you will hang around and let us know what happens…best wishes to you and your family.

[quote=”MELLISA”. Did I misunderstand him in some way.[/quote]

Honestly, Mellisa, I think you probably did misunderstand him. What is the problem with calling him now and asking your questions, even if the appointment isn’t until later? In any event, I suspect that what your doctor meant is that when you reach a therapeutic dose, you will see results. As I said before, your child may need a higher dose to see an effect, he may need a different stimulant or he may be a non-responder to all stimulants. Perhaps our experience will make this a bit more clear: My son started with 2.5 mg of regular adderall. He had no response to this at all. We upped the dosage slowly, adding 2.5 mg every few days. At 12.5 mg, we saw a definite change, but it wore off pretty quickly. 15 mg lasted for the whole school day. At the doctor’s suggestion, we went up to 20 mg, but he became too quiet and kind of sad at that dose. We went back down to 15 mg. As he advanced in school, homework became a problem, so we put him on the XR version of adderall. He was fine at the 15 mg dose until he grew 5 inches and gained 20 lbs. At that point, we raised his dose to 20 mg of adderall xr. It worked, but wore off before homework time, so we went to 30 mg. That has remained the effective dose for him for the last year or so. You can see from this that there is a lot of trying and tinkering and monitoring involved, and from what I’ve read, lots of people have to do a lot more than we did. Talk to your doctor about what you are observing and see what he has to say. It is his job to monitor your child’s response and not just during appointments scheduled way to far apart.

I have talked to his teacher, and at the doctors request he would like the school to do a visual processing test. we have already done the audio processing test, which was normal. I just hate waiting for the school system, they want to wait until he is on the meds for 3 or 4 weeks. My son is wonderful in school, the teachers love him he puts much effort into his work only to fail and say he is an idiot. He does not disrupt the class ot lash out at other students. He hates to lose at a game or fail at classwork and thats when he becomes angry.. Its like he can’t express himself – only by showing anger. His teachers want to do everything possible to help him I think he is lucky to have them or he would of been forgotten. He does have two older brothers that tease him terribly and I am trying to get them to understand that this behavior is not healthy for him and we need to help him as a family. This site has brought much relief to me for my husband is in denial and believes he is just a kindergartner and if he doesn’t want to sing he does’t have to or he is only 6 leave him alone. I can’t just sit back and watch him suffer like this.

It is a good idea to wait on the visual processing until you know the medication is working. I say this because our experience was the opposite of ElizabethTO’s. Our daughter tested severely perceptually impaired (visual processing) without medication. Retesting on medication showed at first low to normal and then later above average. This was done by separate doctors. The one who tested for perception was the one she was seeing for vision therapy. He told us that the fact that the medication made that kind of difference indicates we had the correct diagnoses of adhd. Put another way, medication will not fix a true learning problem. She was presenting as dyslexic but not after starting medication. If she was truly dyslexic then she would have still been dyslexic on medication.

We did notice changes right away with my younger child. They were little but significant. However, with my older daughter we didn’t right away. It took a little while to get it to where it was helpful to her. I agree with guest that there is no reason why you can’t call to talk to the doctor now if you are concerned or have questions!

My experience is similar to JenM’s. My son was seen by an OT for visual perceptual impairments as well as motor skills. Had she tested him before we started the stimulants she would have found problems. But much to her surprise he tests within normal range for visual perceptual. She did however find that he tested on the very low end of average for his motor skills. But this problem is pretty minor.

I know it’s hard to see him struggle, but you need this time to make the correct next steps. Don’t rush it, or you may find yourself regretting it. Think of it this way: kindergarten is pretty early to be discovering these problems… you actually kind of have a head start!

Hayley

Please do come down firmly on the older kids’ teasing. Not just trying to get them to understand, but letting them know unequivocally that this is NOT acceptable behaviour and you will not allow it. The teasing can be terribly damaging to any child but especially so to one who starts out far behind already. Think what you would do if they were putting his physical safety in danger, oh, say for example taking him out in the river when he can’t swim — you would make sure to stop that in no uncertain terms, I suppose — and then treat the teasing on the same level because it is just as harmful.

Take care, and try to reach a happy medium between getting help when you need it and being patient and leting the help do its work.

I also agree with Victoria. My older less adhd impacted child had little patience and understanding about her sister. She especially did not understand anxiety. I absolutely forbid her (actually both) from calling her stupid or making fun of her in anyway. I also had the doctor explain a little about anxiety and what it really means. I figured coming from the doctor it might reinforce all that I’ve been trying to say.

However, sometimes there are still problems that arise. I recently overheard my older daughter being very nasty to my younger one. If it’s just a disagreement that they are working out I usually don’t get involved. However, this I thought was very mean and verbally abusive. I punished her for several days (no tv, computer) for verbal abuse, told the kids they had to come to an agreement and present it to me or no restrictions would be lifted at all, and my older daughter had to define verbal abuse in writing and explain how and why what happened was abusive. My younger daughter also had restrictions because she had antagonized her sister in this case. I canceled our planned Y swim the next night because that was supposed to be a treat. After school the next day by the time they had walked home from school they had an agreement. Still had to finish serving the punishment but very dramatic improvement after that. Let’s hope it continues to last! Sometimes they can make me crazy with their fighting!