Parents are always talking up their kids. Well, other than the fact that mine are smarter, cuter, and just all around better than yours, I have one definite trait that I can measure against.
My daughter is on ritalin. A lot of ritalin.
I’m sure there are dopers out there with kids on ritalin.
I’m trying to find someone with a kid with a heavier dose than mine…
she takes a total of 35mg a day, 10 in the am, 15 at noon, and 10 in the afternoon.
This makes her just barely able to maintain her schooling. She still gets distracted, and sometimes still looses control of herself, but overall this dosage works.
Having taught elementary school for 11 years, I’ve never had experience (or even heard of) a child that young taking that much Ritalin. I’m referring only to mainstreamed students, of course.
Wow. I knew she was on a lot, but I wasn’t sure what sort of scale I was dealing with.
For the record, so as to avoid a slew of folks screaming at me, once a month, we pick a weekend and skip the pills. These are not fun weekends, but we do them so that we can guage where she is without them.
It is our hope that as she gets older, she will learn to deal with her disorder (I did, though it took a long time). Until then, the Ritalin helps her actually manage school. This is a good thing!
Tristan, the most I’ve seen in early elementary students, dosage-wise is 20mg (10 in the morning, 10 at night). This may be because I’ve only ever taught in international schools and they are far less likely to medicate. Mostly because we didn’t have the facilities for kids with any sort of special needs and we had a screening test.
I know that there are some children who learn strategies and skills to better adapt to their challenges, hopefully, your daughter is one of them.
Just wanted to give a little support to you. My little brother is on ritalin, and CONSTANTLY I hear about how children are put on ritalin for no good reason and all that crap. I’m sure you hear the same thing. Anyway, if they’d grown up with him when he wasn’t on anything they would know why he’s medicated.
I think there are some children on it who don’t need to be, but that doesn’t mean that EVERYONE who’s on it doesn’t need to be.
I guess my post doesn’t have much of a point. Just wanted to support you, and wish you and your daughter luck!
It doesn’t sound all that high to me, Tristan. My kid’s on 5 but he could go as high as 30 without my needing to check it out with the paed. We’re probably at the point of needing to increase the dose but we were getting the anti-anxiety drugs sorted. Drug cocktails are such fun to manage ::sigh::
10mg in the afternoon and she sleeps? That’s impressive.
My brother was on ritalin as a child (not sure of the dosage, but I think it was 10/10). Anyway, now that he’s an adult (32 yrs old) he’s on lithium. Amazing the difference. When he’s on Li he’s rational, thinks clearly and makes good decisions, and communicates without long pauses while he retraces his thoughts to figure out what he was saying. I said all that to say this:
I wonder if ritalin is actually the answer for severe cases like my brother? Why did it take his growing into adulthood for them to figure out that Li was the answer?
Although I admit you’d have to be a parent dealing with ADD to get the joke.
My son was on 10/10 from the first through the sixth grade. He had a very mild form, but it made such a difference in school.
Now he’s 12 and going without it. I suspect that he would be better able to focus with it, but his behavior is borderline enough that we’re hoping a lot of education and behavior modification will do more for him in the long run.
Needless to day, I get very annoyed at the scare reports in the media about over-medicating children. You really have to be there, on the scene, to judge the truth.
Can’t help you with the why, but I’ll offer some help on the how.
“Did you hear the one about the two hunters who go into the woods? The first guy falls down on the ground, he stops breathing and his eyes glaze over…”
Rhum- I fail to see the humor in your joke. I am constantly bombarded from people about how my daughter doesn’t really “NEED” to be on drugs, I’m just doing it because I’m lazy and a bad parent. If you’d care to say that outright, I’ll see you in the Pit.
Thanks for the support folks.
The ritalin makes a huge difference, but it is my fervent hope that she grows out of the need as she grows older.
And yeah, she sleeps. Oddly enough, when she doesn’t have her pills, such as our ‘drug free’ weekends, she rockets around until around 2-3am. Her complaint when we try to get her to lie down is that “Her brain is too awake to sleep.”
