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[quote=Anonymous]I am pretty sure that medication will be on the table once we complete the full evaluation with the specialists for my 7 year old DD. I am 70% OK with this but still have 30% reservations. DD hyperfocuses on certain things (science, math, art) and can not focus at all on things like reading, language, worksheets which make up 90% of her school work. She can pick something new up pretty quickly but then stalls out when they have to repeat doing it a zillion times.

Reasons to medicate
DD is extremely bright but she spends all her energy at school trying to remember or figure out what the instructions are that the teacher just gave. She feels very bad that her mind wanders and can't seem to force herself to pay attention if something isn't interesting to her. She is a good writer and has a good vocabulary/analytical skills but is always the last child to finish and often doesn't finish her work. She feels very bad about this and is embarrassed. I do not want her to develop poor self esteem and stop caring about school. If a pill can fix this, then she can be confident in her schoolwork and move on to more challenging things.

Reasons not to medicate
I feel like this is medicating a square peg child to fit into a round hole. She can learn, has a brilliant mind, and excels at many things..just not the verbal instructions, worksheets, and reading comprehension activities that make up so much of school. Altering her mind through pharmaceuticals to make her fit into the mode of instruction on one hand seems very wrong.

I am nervous that there are not long term studies on the effect of medication. I am nervous about finding an overly aggressive practioner that would get into cocktails ie medicate for ADD and if the child becomes withdrawn as a side effect adding another medication on top of this.

I am also nervous that this may affect areas where she hyperfocuses. She gets great joy from doing certain things, is highly creative, and this is an important part of her personality. If the medication evens everything out by definition she lose some of her hyperfocus tendencies which are not necessarily a bad thing to have.

I'm sure others have gone through this decision making process and was just wondering how you weighed the options. [/quote]

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