Anyone else feel like meds don’t help their adhd kid?
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Anonymous
| PP clarifying: I don't increase the dose when he gains weight, but I have to be proactive about asking the Dr to consider it. |
Anonymous
My son has the same symptoms (daydreams, very spacy, but not impulsive or hyper). He's done well on Aderrall. It doesn't bring him to the same baseline as others, but it helps. Workarounds for the appetitive issue include big breakfasts high in protein and big dinners. |
Anonymous
| Well, no answer, because haven't found the med yet, but feel the same as you. You are not alone. |
Anonymous
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For us the early elementary years were hard because stimulants didn't work well and had more intense side effects, as you describe. That was all better when we tried again in middle school.
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Anonymous
| I don't think that's ADHD, with most over 85th percentile and processing speed at 24th? My kid has super high in the areas of critical thinking--meaning 99th percentile, with a processing speed in the 3rd and visuo-spatial processing in the 9th. That's ADHD and low processing. What you have is an average kid. Be thankful. |
Anonymous
Keep in experimenting and try again in a couple years when there are more listening an exec functioning demands.. |
Anonymous
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If nothing works after trying then it’s ASD and it’s exec functioning deficits.
Then you have to just habitualize good habits with no help from meds. |
Anonymous
I suspect this may turn out to be the case for us. Vynase was great when we tried but the side effects of outweighed the benefits. But what do while still in elementary and being told child isn't paying attention and missing key info and that's impacting peer relationships?? |
Anonymous
Sometimes you just accept it is what it is for a while. I’m an adult with ADHD that had severe ADHD as a kid. All my report cards have comments about my not paying attention. But I still learned basic math and how to read—that’s all you really need in ES and you can learn much of it out of the classroom. Just make sure her self esteem doesn’t suffer. My parents never made me feel like I was dumb because I couldn’t pay attention all day long. ES school days are really too long anyway — it’s like 2 hours of learning and 6 hours of warehousing kids and behavioral normalization. On the peer relationships, it depends, but a social skills group might help or some individual therapy to work through some skills. But it’s also okay for her to be kind of the weird kid — that’s not the end of the world. Lots of us were the “space cadets” or “spazz” growing up—not every kid is gojng to be perfectly socialized at every point in their life, and that’s okay. It’s hard for us as parents because we want everything to be perfect and easy for our kids, but sometimes that’s not realistic. So long as she knows that you love her and accept her for who she is, that’s the most important thing. I know lots and lots of people who struggled with peer relationships but turned out to be well adjusted, confident adults because they had love and support at home. (I hope this perspective helps — I’m not tryi my to say that your kid is doomed to be a social outcast, that’s not at all what I’m saying — just saying that many of us with ADHD struggled with peer relationships at one or more times in our lives, and most of us survive it pretty well.) |
Anonymous
Achievement scores and processing speed measures are not criteria for an ADHD diagnosis. It is diagnosed by tests that measure attention and impulse control. |
Anonymous
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DD is inattentive and now an adult. As such, she can clearly communicate that she feels better medicated. She is worried about driving without her meds because they do help her focus even if they aren’t perfect. She refuses to skip a day even though we face medication shortages and I suggested she skip weekends to build a stockpile. Anyway, she did very well on Concerta but only the brand, not the generic. Eventually insurance stopped paying and denied our appeals so she had to move to generic. Thankfully we found the authorized generic was real Concerta and got around it. Then they stopped manufacturing it. Adderall wa a disaster. Now she’s taking Vyvanse which is better than nothing but not nearly as effective as Concerta.
She started showing ADHD symptoms around 8 but we didn’t recognize them as such so she was not medicated in elementary school. She did ok but lacked motivation. By MS, the need for meds was evident and her grades improved dramatically once medicated. |
Anonymous
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I’m not sure there’s any evidence for a medication to increase processing speed. That would basically be an intelligence enhancing drug and everyone would take it.
The best evidence on ADHD stimulant meds (actual evidence, not individual testimonials or pharma-sponsored research) is that it can improve behavior significantly, but does not improve academic outcomes. So for a kid who is primarily showing very disruptive impulsivity, it seems worthwhile to try. Otherwise it’s not the magic pill people try to claim. |
Anonymous
DP. I have a kid w similar discrepancy but no ADHD dx. I thought ADHD couldn’t be diagnosed through neuropsychology tests? But agree that OP is lucky. |
Anonymous
See if she has low ferritin, b vitamins/other types of anemia. Alot of things look like adhd. Not responding to meds may be a clue that it's something else |
Anonymous
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Mine is 16 and we finally stopped the meds after 8 years. We did:
Focalin Ritalin Metadate Straterra Vyvanse Jornay Concerta Guanfacine Nothing seems to have done a thing really. She’s pretty inattentive and has had periods of a lot of dysregulation. We also did Zoloft, Abilify, and Effexor. She gained 60 pounds in 4 years of experimenting with those. She’s now obese, off of everything, pretty regulated and doing fairly well in school. We are about a month off of everything. |