Your experiences with ADD/ADHD meds wanted!

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, my seven year old will soon go through evaluation for ADD or possibly ADHD. I’m certain that he will be diagnosed, as are his pediatrician, his teachers, his daycare providers, and his various therapists (he has minor other physical issues as well). I’ve been aware for some time that it was a possibility, but I tried behavior modification for a loooong time. And to some degree it worked, for a while, but lately things have been getting bad again. Last week he came out in the morning with his shirt on inside out, his pants on backwards, and his shoes on the wrong feet. Every morning is a nightmare- between me helping him so we can get out of the house and me trying to make him be responsible and learn to care for himself. Every evening is a nightmare, with me constantly keeping him on track through his homework, his dinner, his bath, getting pajamas on, etc. I’m always making him lists so he can remember what he needs to do and needs to take/bring back to and from school. He has lost 4 jackets this past winter, and winters are quite short here. He couldn’t participate in the pizza party his teacher had for the students that turned in their homework last week, even though it sat in his backpack right there in the classroom for a solid week.

I’m becoming more and more frustrated with him, and times are not so good between us. Of course, I try not to (and almost always succeed) be too critical of him and be as supportive and loving as I can. But we can’t go on like this, so we’re seeking help. With his insurance, his pediatrician can’t just prescribe him something, he has to go to behavioral health for the eval and prescriptions.

What I would like to know is, if you’ve been through this with your child, how did things change? Was there a huge improvement with happiness and joy all around? Or do these behaviors become habits that aren’t that easy to improve?

Not looking for a debate here- if you intend on posting your opinion that we shouldn’t be drugging kids, or this is normal behavior for that age, blah blah blah, start a new thread. I may or may not join in. Just looking for experiences, and what kind of expectations I should have. Thanks.

2

No kids myself, but I’ve had ADD since approx. the same age as your son. I didn’t have the hyperactive behaviour along with it, but I was a constant daydreamer, had problems focusing on things unless I was incredibly interested in them, and had a lot of trouble getting to sleep at night because my brain was processing thoughts at such a rapid rate that I simply couldn’t slow it down enough to go to sleep. I didn’t get diagnosed till I was 23. If your son is to be helped by meds, the key is finding the right one. Everyone responds differently - drugs like Ritalin are not a cure-all. My shrink tried me out on Ritalin first, which gave me constant dizziness and made me jittery. Next he tried me on Dexedrine, which has helped me greatly with no noticeable side effects. I can’t tell you how relieved I was the first time I fell asleep within 5 minutes instead of 3 hours! I used to think it was normal for people to take that long to fall asleep. And my days aren’t interrupted by a wandering mind anymore.

I’ve heard that a diet adjustment can also make a difference in ADD behaviour without drug intervention - cutting out processed foods and sugars, etc. At any rate, I hope that something will work well for him.

3

I’d say the big variable will be the “other physical issues” (and whether they are manifested in or manifestations of psych or emotional issues). My son responded immediately to Ritalin in terms of his ability to focus, his ability to control impulsiveness, and some other directly ADHD problems. Unfortunately, he had (ands has) a lot more issues, so the simple prescription of medicine did not turn his life around.

In addition, you need to continue the behavior modification. Stuff that he simply never understood because the AD(H)D prevented him from learning will not suddenly become clear once he is on meds–he still needs to learn the things that got past him.

Whenever the issue of medicating comes up on the board, one or two posters will testify that their kids (or they) had amazing turnarounds with the meds, but my memory is that such people were diagnosed and medicated later, when they had already learned what they needed to do, but had not previously been able to implement their knowledge. At seven, any kid still has quite a bit to learn about organization, appropriate behavior, left, right, inside, outside, etc. (with individual variations in degree, of course). A child who has not been absorbing everything for the last several years may need a bit longer to catch up.

Ritalin, Adderal, Cylert, Dexedrine, etc. are not miracle panacaeas. They are tools to help a child (or adult) focus long enough to organize themselves. To the extent that the organizing skills have not yet developed, the child still needs support and reinforcement.

4

i dislike the medication as a whole, although i’m sure there are some who the medication can be helpful.

in my opinion, did i need it? sure as fuck not. i liked what i was/am. why should i feel the need to change that?

now, you ask “does it change anything?”
i answer: “it most cretainly does.”

see, what it feels like to be on ritalin…you sit there in class and stare at the teacher and you get the focus. however, it feels like you’re in a mental choke collar. i wanted to say something in class (even positive things), but when i opened my mouth, nothing came out. i wasn’t me. i wasn’t a kid. i was a robot. that’s when i realized that teachers and parents like the drugging thing and when i realized that in 20 or 30 some odd years, when we look back upon it, it’ll be a black streak on our culture. we knowingly drugged our kids to make them managable. we did this just to make our lives easier. really, it’s easy to see why parents and teachers would want this. life is hectic enough, why have to have kids swinging from the chandeliers when you don’t have to? teachers have overcrowded classrooms and demon children to wade through.

this is where distinctions come in. there are kids (and adults) that can benefit from the medication. i’d even talk to other kids on ritalin and ask them what they felt like on it. they more or less echoed my feelings, but they LIKED the feeling of the internal control. either they liked it because they knew they needed the help or they were told they were bad and got yelled at when they were themselves and life was (ironically) easier when on the drugs.

the worst thing i’ve ever done to my body.

my advice is to listen to your kid when/if you put them onto the drugs. if he starts disliking what he becomes, get him off the drugs and roll with the punches.

5

I appreciate the responses. And I definitely understand what you’re saying, LOUNE. That is a concern of mine, that the meds will change his wonderful, special, unique personality. And I’m not just saying that, if you knew him you would definitely say he’s a very charismatic person and it is important to me that he keep that special quality.

However, at this point, my biggest concern is that his problems with focusing and staying on task are actually harming his self-esteem and the way others perceive him, and that they actually go a long way towards harming his personality. I will certainly monitor him closely if we do start meds.

I’ve probably understated the problems, as when I honestly think about his future, I can’t imagine how he could function on his own. I do understand that organizational abilities are still developing at his age, but as the mother of two older boys, it’s not hard to see that he’s in trouble when I compare how they were at his age.

He isn’t, I believe, hyperactive, nor does he have any mental health or social troubles, fortunately. We have been through quite a lot medically in his life, but it’s mostly in the past and while he’s not quite “normal” in some ways, he’s very intelligent and socially adept, with language and communication being his strengths. He will go on to become a game show host, watch for him.

I hope for more replies!

6

Piffle.

Every once in a while I encounter this response. My guess is that you were prescribed the wrong medicine for your condition or you had other life situations that made you want to avoid the medicines. Yours is not a typical response.

My own son’s description of the difference between being on the medicine or off is that when he is off the medicine, his thoughts fly around his head too fast for him to even see them and that with the medicine, he can catch a thought and work with it. A friend’s daughter has been known to come and ask for her medicine because “things are going too fast.”

I would never drug my son to make him more manageable for me. For one thing, it would not work; he is still capable of running and playing and raising hell. For another, the purpose was to help him control his own thoughts–a point that he explicitly announced, himself.

I agree that we should seek constant feedback from the kids to ensure that we are not prescribing the wrong medication and that the meds are not harming the child. However, the idea that any large number of AD(H)D kids are being drugged into zombie-like passivity is simply false, based on over 30 years of experience that has already been recorded.

7

pshaw…don’t you piffle me!!
(this is humor, not snippiness)

that’s what i found when i talked to other kids that were on the medication. they felt the same way, but they welcomed the feeling. to each their own, i suppose.

i grant that there are some kids that would benefit from medication in order to sharpen their focus. i’ve just seen it first hand that too many kids were diagnosed.
the paper tests they’d give you to determine if you were a candidate for ADD is completely ludicrous (this is assuming that your doctors had the same/similar tests). almost any functioning adult could be seen as ADD because of how vague the test was. the doctor i saw was also recommended by a mother of a very good friend of mine because she was the biggest prescriber of ritalin in the area.

medicating the children is part of it. medicating the elderly or having “better life through chemistry” is a negative thing, in my eyes. people are too indoctrinated into taking pills. the number of prescriptions for ADD drugs has gone up. have we changed? have our children changed? what about our standards? are we making life more managable by medicating some of the people that are different? was the percentage of the population that’s diagnosed with ADD the same 100 years ago as it was now? (of course we can’t answer that one) it does, however make you wonder.

the ritalin made the thoughts much more organized. the ritalin made me concentrate in class. but i sat there in class and would say nothing because i was into the task at hand. some like it. i sure as hell didn’t.

i DO question why some kids would like this feeling. i already put my assumptions of why they’d like it in my previous post.

8

Kids are different, some respond to some meds and some don’t. Some, like our friend above, feel stifled or "dull"when on meds.

It’s true in adults as well. Each person’s chemistry is a little different.

That said, I will just tell you how it was for my oldest son.

Diagonsed ADD at around 5th or 6th grade, he was put on Adderol. It worked pretty good, as well as I can tell (I wasn’t around then). Until his mom decided it was good for her too, so his prescription was filled but he wasnt given the med.

In Junior Hi my hubby got custody and decided that the case of ADD was mild enough to treat with diet and rest. The boy went thru some ups and downs, but was happy that he was no longer dependent on meds 'case he wanted to join the Marine Corps and they won’t take you if you’re on meds.

(this is no slam on meds, several of my family take them).

Long story short, son went thru boot camp ok without them, is now in special ops training and has learned to work around his “ism”.
If this were my child, I would start with what the PDoc recommends, and pay close attention to what happens. I’m in a discussion group related to bipolar/depression/schitozophrenia and know a lot of people who are on a lot of different meds. There are a lot of meds out there now. There are just as many stories of a medication saving your mental health as there are scary horror stories about it. You are doing the right thing to try to find a good med for your son. Some people who chastize you for it, on the other hand, would have no problem with you taking him to the ER for a broken arm. It’s the same, isnt’ it? His arm isn’t broken, but as they say in the country “there’s a hitch in his git-along”. I applaud you for doing your best as a good dad to get him help.

Our younger son was on meds for a while and it was one of the best things we ever did for him. You wouldn’t pause to think of taking a Tylenol for headache or Tums for bellyache. Mental health meds aren’t that simple but the premise is the same. Modern science has an answer for some of these “isms” and you should take advantage of that.

Good luck trublmakr. My e-mail’s in my profile if you’d be interested in our mental health chat. :slight_smile:

9

My child has been on meds for adhd for 5 years now.
I have been hit with all the critisism that comes along with medicating a child and it was hard to take at first, but not anymore.

Out of guilt I have tried, off and on over the years to send him to school without his meds. It failed miserably every time. Employers frown on employees getting calls from the school every single day and the time missed from work because you have to leave and go peel your kid off the classroom ceiling and take him home because they can’t handle him. In second grade he was suspended from school 6 times.
I finally concluded that it was a choice between medicating him and giving him an education or not medicating him and having him perpetually suspended from school because of his behavior.

I feel for those of you that say the meds made you miserable. There were some that did that to my son as well and I cut those out immediately. We did eventually find one that works well and it has been a life-saver for him. I now only get calls at work about 3 times a school year as opposed to several times a week. He is still active, witty and socially outgoing. The only complaint I have is that it decreases his already small appetite and getting him to eat is a real chore.

He only takes his meds on school days, no weekends or summer breaks. He can bounce off the walls all he wants here at home, but at school he needs the extra help if he wants to succeed. It’s not a choice I’m happy with, but after trying other avenues it’s the choice I had to make.

10

thanks for bringing this up…it completely slipped my mind.

my appetite decreased as well.

it merits mentioning and consideration, no?

11

Yes. My son is petite anyway, most of that is his gene-pool. I have always been tiny and his father is not a large man either. But I absolutely see the effects of his lost appetite. At his regular med check ups, his weight always stagnates or even decreases during the school year, and then when I take him in at the end of summer before school starts he has always gained considerably after not taking the meds all summer. Last fall we went for his check up right before school started and he was up 14 pounds. We just went back two weeks ago and he was down a little from that.

He is generally healthy though, so as long as he takes a vitamin and eats at least one good meal a day I don’t fret too much.

12

I am in the midst of this with my 7yo son; this thread is where I’m voicing my concerns of giving drugs to my child and where I discovered that the phamacist had given him the wrong meds (adderal as opposed to ritalin). We tried a lot of things prior to giving him meds because we were hesitant to do it, but nothing seemed to help.

I’m still on the fence as to whether this is the right course. On one hand, when he takes his meds, he can focus better in school and on his homework and is less impulsive, etc. His teachers notice the difference. They seem to work as far as that goes. On the other hand, Jesus, I’m giving my son speed on a long term basis. How is this going to work out? we’re still in the wait-and-see stage.

Luckily, he has no other issues phisically or mentally; he’s very intelligent and creative and remains so, drugs or not. The thing I’m most concerned with is that he doesn’t self-medicate later on, like many untreated ADHD folks do.

13

I was diagnosed with ADD in the first grade and I’ve been on ritalin in one form or another ever since. It was the turning point; before that I was the kid that you hear stories about. I was Calvin, I was the problem child. I locked the babysitter out of the house. I turned off the lights in a social security office, I cleared the cash register at a sports store. And most tellingly, I had a very short fuse and would often deck other kids.

So you can imagine that my parents were on the point of a nervous breakdown. Did the ritalin help? You better believe it. Do I still need it now? Yes. Was it the whole solution? Of course not. It took years of counseling and self-ordeal before I gained the discipline I needed to go along with the medicine.

To sum up, ritalin works. There are obviously children for whom it is not the right medicine, and if your son is one of those children, you’ll know soon enough.

14

I am 33 and wasn’t diagnosed until I was 31, but have had ADD for as long as I remember. I just didn’t know it

I am taking Strattera, it is a non-amphetamine or whatever Ritalin and Adderall are, so it is much easier to refill your prescriptions, no doctor visit is necessary.

Straterra has been a godsend for me, it allows me to focus on the things I need to do, I find myself performing more efficiently without really even knowing why.

Side effects I have experienced were :

  • Upset stomach, solved by eating a bigger breakfast before taking my pill.
  • Increased thirst, I am drinking water all day now.
  • Occasional excessive sweating.
  • Drowsiness in the late afternoon.
15

What would happen if you sent your son to school in his pajamas?
Maybe the embarrassement of it all would be a good lesson to get his act together to lay out his clothes the night before and has to be ready at X time or the car ( if you drive) goes from free to a $1 a ride. Or if you miss the bus, how will you be paying me to take you to school: a dollar a ride or picking up the dog poop in the back yard when you get home?

( You might want to check with the school about this pj’s first.)
What if you didn’t replace another of his lost coats? Make his figure out what to wear to keep him warm and write a note to the teacher saying, " Until he replaces his coat, Little JOhnny does not get recess." Then show him the joys of Salvation Army for a coat and have him pay for it with his own money.

A friends son lost his coat and she sent him in the middle of winter to school with out a coat ( layered) and he came home with a new coat to him from the lost and found pile. I had no qualms with her logic (and the L&F pile has been picked over by parents earlier in the month, so everything now is up for grabs, IMHO.

My son forget his shoes a few weeks ago and he called up in distress, " Why didn’t you pack them, mama? I need you to bring me my shoes."

" It is not my job to pack your back pack. It is yours. Three things go in there every day. Your lunch. Homework folder and shoes. You forgort your shoes. Not me. I did my end the bargain: feed you and got you out the door on time. You didn’t do you job."

“But I need shoes.”

“Wear you boots all day.”

“I can’t …my teacher won’t let me.”

“well, sweetheart, all I can say is that I once forgot my shoes when I was in school and I walked around the entire day with wet socks. My advice to you is to avoid the puddles on the floor and in the bathroom. Bye.”

He hasn’t forgotten them since and constantly reminds me (as only a 7 year old can) of this problem all the time and i recant verbatim it wasn’t my problem to solve. It will sink in eventually.

I am not judging you at all, just offering advice. God knows I need it when it comes to two things: meals and giving one of my kids their medicine.

16

Just a few thoughts, based on my experience as a veteran of Ritalin, Cylert, and Dexedrine

If my parents ever question my experimentation with soft drugs, I intend to say to their faces that I feel no qualms whatsoever, based on having been drugged for reasons of convenience as a child.

It’s also worth noting that if your child grows up on these drugs, it’s very likely that he will never learn to function without them. This could be fairly disastrous for him when he becomes an adult, especially if he isn’t able to get medical insurance that covers this sort of medication.

Finally, this is how the dosage cycle works (I imagine it takes about three to four months from the dosage being inneffective to increasing dosa)ge:

Child is doing fine in school=> Child starts doing poorly => Parents notice child is doing poorly => Parents raise concern with Psychiatrist => Psychiatrist realizes that the child has outgrown the dosage he was on => Psychiatrist increases dosage => Child is doing fine in school.

F

17

Shirley Ujest, I didn’t take your post as a judgement, you make very good parenting strategy points. I think though that what parents of “normal” kids don’t realize is that using those strategies with ADD kids is like punishing a Tourette’s kid for cussing in class. The whole root of ADD kids problem is they often can’t, no matter how hard they try, utilize the ‘think before you act/speak’ concept.

It’s really hard to explain unless you’ve been through it.

Spatial Rift 47 I want to hug you. In describing yourself before meds you described my son to a tee. It’s heartbreaking to see a beautiful bright child looked upon as a menace to society when you know it’s not their fault. Ritalin did not work for my son, but adderall does. I hope he doesn’t have to take it for the rest of his life, but if it makes him a happier well adjusted person so be it.

18

Here’s something I posted recently in another thread:

Ritalin worked for my son at first, but he metabolized it like mad and the effects faded after a couple hours. Concerta worked much better (it’s time-released ritalin) but it became less effective after a while.

We tried Straterra, since it’s non-stimulant, but it didn’t work for him.

We’re on Adderal XR right now and doing OK.

In general. The drugs turned my kid into a normal kid - not a zombie. He doesn’t like the feeling when he’s out of control. At 9 years old, he’s self-aware enough to be able to express how he’s really feeling and he’s glad for the meds.

This article was linked in the other thread and I found it to be interesting reading.

19

If you were truly “drugged for…convenience” then I offer my sympathy, although I suspect that a number of people who make that claim are rationalizing other situations.

As to your second point, I have never seen the slightest shred of medical evidence to support this claim. There are people who “grow out” of the need for ADHD medicine and there are people who do not, but there is no evidence (after more than 30 years of use) that any ADHD drugs create dependence of any sort. Every responsible advocate of ADHD medicines (which includes the overwhelming majority of doctors, parents, and educators) explicitly note that behavior and education must be addressed in conjunction with the use of medicine. As a person moves through their teens, some discover that they have outgrown the brain disturbances and that their training has provided sufficient skills to survive and some discover that their brains are still too excitable when the medicine is not used. That is not developing a dependence, however,it is simply recognizing physical realities in the brain.

A child who is medicated without being provided techniques to deal with their situation is being (effectively) abused, but nothing in the OP indicates that trublmakr’s child will be set adrift with nothing but meds for support.

20

For those who haven’t read it in one of the many other ADD threads-

I was diagnosed with ADHD in the third grade. I was on various medications for it until the end of highschool. A few years after that, my psychiatrist thought I should go back on the meds. I am currently taking 54 miligrams of Concerta every morning.

My parents did get second and third opinions when I was diagnosed. They studied up on diet and behavior modifications, coping strategies, allergies and everything else that might improve things without using medication. In the end, dietary changes, coping strategies, etc weren’t enough. I needed the pills. Mom and Dad often felt guilty about it and frequently asked if I was experiencing side effects, if I resented them for ‘drugging me’, and if I thought I would be better off without medication.

My creativity and individuality were not stifled. I could actually control myself, sit still, and not feel jittery all the time.

Shirley Ujest While an ADHD kid has some degree of control, many of them cannot function without medication. Punishing them for not getting dressed on time, forgetting jackets, not taking baths will just result in a naked, very cold, smelly child who is also very sad. IMO, the fact that Lil Troublmkr didn’t do his homework(or possibly did it and forgot to turn it in) even though a signifcant reward had been offered, points to a serious problem.