We are considering medication for my son, who exhibits all the characteristics of add inattentive type. Over the past 5 yrs we have tried everything, and nothing has worked. He will be in middle school next year and he is really starting to struggle at school. We are really worried about medication though, and its side effects. Please share your positive experiences with medication. I have previously been opposed to medication, but his grades and self esteem are suffering now - and I feel he cannot reach his full potential without some serious help (meaning meds).
For those that have kids with this type of ADD, what meds have you been happy with and / or which haven't worked?
Thanks for all the advice. Yes, we have tried EVERYTHING you all have listed over the course of 5 plus years. I am pretty confident that I also had ADHD as a child, but my mother was VERY against medication. I deeply regret that she did not medicate me. I wanted to be a Doctor and was very ambitious, but my ADHD hindered me and I was unable to pass all my college courses. Who knows what I could've achieved if my mother had gotten me the help I needed.
We put my grandson on Ritalin at age 4 1/2. It is like a miracle. He pays attention, can sit and learn, can retain what he learned, etc....
He was on half a pill in the morning, half a pill at noon. Now he's up to a whole pill in the morning and 1/2 pill at noon.
We've had such good results with this med that we are leery of trying a time released version of anything. I imagine we will though, at some point.
Whatever you do, get him to a psychologist for a GOOD evaluation and diagnosis. This is not something that should happen in 5 minutes at the pediatrician's office.
My son is 10 today. Since he started school at 6, I had noticed that he was always about 2 years behind his peers, socially. I shrugged it off and didn't think much about it, until his 2nd grade year. He was acting out aggressively more and more, and SOMETHING had to be done before he got into a LOT of trouble. At first I was looking at ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), which I had first considered a bogus diagnosis for "all those poor foster kids" (I've since learned a few things).
I brought my research to our family doctor. SHE was not comfortable giving a diagnosis one way or the other because all the signs and symptoms of ODD are also the signs and symptoms of ADD and the treatments are too different. She, and I, didn't want to turn my kid into a guinea pig.
So she gave me a referral to a psychologist. We finally got in to see one right at the end of his 2nd grade year. After a summer of testings and questionnaires, my son was diagnosed with ADHD and (now defunct) Asperger's. From there we tried some behavior modification therapy that helped a little, but not enough.
Around Christmas last year I finally broke down and agreed to try a medication. I HATE taking pills just to take pills. I'm having a super hard time remembering to take my prenatal right now.
But anyway, my son has been on the generic version of Concerta, 27mg for almost a year now, and WHAT a difference. It has really helped him in SO many ways.
My oldest son is 15 and tried meds last year. He was first given an EKG to make sure that he didn't have any heart issues that would make stimulant medication dangerous. To my surprise, his EKG was abnormal so we had to have a cardiologist review it and he was then cleared to start.
He tried Concerta first and said that he could understand school much better, but that everything interesting and colorful was now gone from his day. He said something like "if real life is this boring to normal people I'd rather not be normal." He ended up having chronic headaches from it so we stopped it after about 6 weeks.
His second medication was Adderall. I saw what seemed to me to be positive changes in his attentiveness to school work, but he was also ridiculously talkative on it. I couldn't tell if it was the medication making him a motormouth or coming off of it at the end of the day that was triggering it, but it was something that quite a few people commented on. It was like a combination of truth serum (he had no filter so everything was suddenly on the table for discussion) and speed, because his speech was so, so fast. But it was usually at the end of day or into the evening, when the meds should have been out of his system. Anyway...he took it regularly for a few weeks and then started "forgetting" and once school was out, refused to take it at all. At one point - and I don't know if he was on it or off it at this point - he was incredibly irritable, to a degree that other people noticed as well. After maybe a week of that, he was back to his normal self.
He was working as a field assistant to a land surveyor this summer so I had him take his medication the first few days because I really wanted him to be able to focus and learn how to use the equipment. One day he refused to take it and his boss remarked at the end of that day "I don't know what's different about him today but he was in a really great mood and was really on and focused the whole day and did really great work today." That was off the meds, so he stayed off of them and hasn't gone back yet.
So that's where we are. He was diagnosed when he was 7 and we tried "everything but" until he was 14. Trying meds wasn't the end of the world but I'm disappointed that we didn't find one that was a good fit for him and now he's unwilling to try anything else, which is fine for now. He's old enough to have a say in his own healthcare and I'm not going to force meds down his throat. He's the one who has to live in his body and brain and deal with the consequences of his impulsiveness and inability to focus. We are going to try more of the "everything but" route...we're looking at a new line of supplements, hypnosis, and testing for celiac or gluten sensitivity.
Good luck with your son - I hope that you find something that works well for him.
As he is not hyperactive, I would recommend looking into non-stimulant medications first.
My youngest is an inattentive type as well. Strattera didn't work out for us. It made him depressed and angry (as is a common side effect for that drug and should be watched for). We've had excellent results with Intuniv. It takes care if the focus, but doesn't make him feel depressed. We did notice that it makes him feel tired for the first few hours when he takes it, so he takes it at bedtime, sleeps great, and since it's a drug that builds in the system over time, he's covered all day long. He gets A's and B's in all his subjects.
Has he been diagnosed. My son learned to channel his energy which in turn helped him tremendously in school. He was working at a farm and then with fox hunting hounds since he was 10. He is now a NYC firefighter and does heating on the side. Never used meds.
Find something your son really likes to do and build on that.
One of my kids has adhd inattentive-type and benefits greatly from Vyvanse and Adderall. The only notable side effect was loss of appetite, but that eased up somewhat after a few months.
She wasn't diagnosed until age 17, but she was probably having trouble by 6th or 7th grade. I wish we had gotten help sooner. She's so bright that she was able to compensate for a long time.
Medications for add can cause heart problems later on in life. Maybe you can try a tutor to help him or maybe a learning center
You said you've tried everything. Have you detoxed your home and also his body? Chemicals are stored in fat cells and make the body..and also the brain, not function as it should.. Even walking down the cleaning isle at the grocery store can affect you. Realize what you smell are not spills but chemicals leeching through their bottles. If you have truly detoxed your home ( not just remove bad stuff but also stripped old residues from surfaces) then there are natural alternatives to help with dopamine levels...that is what Ritalin does synthetically with long term side effects.
I personally don't think pharmaceutical medication should be used unless there are dangers involved if not used. My mother opted for me to be able to wait until I was an adult to make my own decisions for numerous things that doctors said were necessary. They obviously weren't because I am better now than ever before. Good nutrition, absorbable nutrition, is completely necessary. It can be done, efficiently and cost effectively.
Hope this helps....
M.
answering your med question only:
your son is a singular event. Recommendations for meds are useless.... since everyone responds/reacts differently.
I wish you Peace & a rapid transition for your son. I applaud you for basing your decision on his needs....at this point of time in his life. :)
