Anonymous
Post 07/31/2023 06:57     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
I see that most adhd kid at school come across 3 below big challenges. What are the most important factor (among 3 below) for parents to decide their elementary school kids to take adhd med? Kids

- academic grade
- school behavior/disruption
- social friendship/self esteem

To me, my child easily gets As, school behavior is okay, and he has some random casual friends. Adhd affects him the most at school is his social friendship, but self esteem is okay because he is excel at academic.He has asd, so I can't know if adhd med can help with social friendship with peers. He makes a lot of casual friends at camps/school, but he just does not know how to keep friendship. I think this problem is coming a lot more from asd than adhd.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 21:10     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:To OP- there are a few different nonstimulants. My kid was sad and worse behaved on guanificine. They are doing fine on a different medication now. I’d at least ask for a med check with your doctor if it’s been more than a while. There might be something else that is a better fit.


Op here - thank you! Same meds. Will try for new
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 17:36     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
To OP- there are a few different nonstimulants. My kid was sad and worse behaved on guanificine. They are doing fine on a different medication now. I’d at least ask for a med check with your doctor if it’s been more than a while. There might be something else that is a better fit.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 17:34     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:Instead of experimenting with drugs, how about experimenting with diet and lifestyle changes. Cut the processed crap out of their diet, get them outside and limit electronics. Improvement will happen, you need and should make the effort to change the direction of your child’s life now. Either you teach them to be dependent on drugs for the rest of their lives or not. Your choice.


You have no idea what you’re talking about, please get off this board. Virtually every parent of a kid with ADHD I know has tried all the no - medical options and has worked harder than you will ever know but decided, in consultation with their doctor to add medication on top of all the other interventions they continue to do. So so so much activity in my kids case. You have no idea.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 17:28     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:Instead of experimenting with drugs, how about experimenting with diet and lifestyle changes. Cut the processed crap out of their diet, get them outside and limit electronics. Improvement will happen, you need and should make the effort to change the direction of your child’s life now. Either you teach them to be dependent on drugs for the rest of their lives or not. Your choice.


Please stop your discrimination. ADHD is not caused by bad parenting from parents who aren’t making the “effort” to “change the direction of children's lives”. Processed food, lack of exercise and too much electronics are not the problem. ADHD is a neurogenetic difference. Despite exercising, 2 hours a day in a tough sport out in the natural environment, my DC, who had little time for “electronics” and ate thousands of calories a day and was deemed by his doctor to be in top physical shape - was still coping with the effects of ADHD.

You would never tell the parents of a child with a physical disease that they shouldn’t take medicine and would be cured if they just ate better and stopped playing on their iPad. You would never describe a parent trying to get the right mix of beta blockers and steroids to control POTS as “experimenting” with drugs.

You are perpetuating stigma.

Shame on you.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 16:54     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Instead of experimenting with drugs, how about experimenting with diet and lifestyle changes. Cut the processed crap out of their diet, get them outside and limit electronics. Improvement will happen, you need and should make the effort to change the direction of your child’s life now. Either you teach them to be dependent on drugs for the rest of their lives or not. Your choice.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 16:50     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:If teachers are annoyed by your kids's bounciness and talkativeness, then it's a problem at school. He's disruptive and maybe disrespectful. You think your kid is cute and his quirks are adorable, but to a teacher who is managing a classroom of 30 kids, disruptions are so incredibly difficult.

I would keep trying to find the right meds, but don't give up altogether


I am a tutor who works one on one with my ADHD students. Some are very impulsive and interrupt verbally frequently. This is fine in a one on one environment in the sense that I can manage it, it doesn’t create negative feedback, BUT it is actually very bad for the student because if is disrupting their train of thought, their ability to follow, repeat and execute multi step processes and explanations and makes it harder for them to store information. And, everything takes more time with these detours.

On the surface, to the parents, tutoring seems to “solve the problem”, but TBH for a substantial portion of my students the need for my services would be diminished if they were on a good medication. Medication helps 80% of people with ADHD.


Actually there is little evidence that stimulants produce long-term academic aims. They do reduce distruptive behavior.


So do you have a kid with ADHD or not? Cause it sounds like not. My kid got As before and after starting stimulants. The difference was she wasn’t crying and depressed saying how hard staying focused in class was and how homework took her all weekend. I am no proponent of medicine - we held off till she was falling apart in MS after receiving a diagnosis in elementary. Stop trying to convince people that stimulants don’t change a lot of children’s lives for the better.


Stop trying to claim your n of 1 is universal, in the lack of strong evidence.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 16:49     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:If teachers are annoyed by your kids's bounciness and talkativeness, then it's a problem at school. He's disruptive and maybe disrespectful. You think your kid is cute and his quirks are adorable, but to a teacher who is managing a classroom of 30 kids, disruptions are so incredibly difficult.

I would keep trying to find the right meds, but don't give up altogether


I am a tutor who works one on one with my ADHD students. Some are very impulsive and interrupt verbally frequently. This is fine in a one on one environment in the sense that I can manage it, it doesn’t create negative feedback, BUT it is actually very bad for the student because if is disrupting their train of thought, their ability to follow, repeat and execute multi step processes and explanations and makes it harder for them to store information. And, everything takes more time with these detours.

On the surface, to the parents, tutoring seems to “solve the problem”, but TBH for a substantial portion of my students the need for my services would be diminished if they were on a good medication. Medication helps 80% of people with ADHD.


Actually there is little evidence that stimulants produce long-term academic aims. They do reduce distruptive behavior.


If I'm able to stop disrupting my own thoughts and learn from the teacher, how would that not result in academic gains? Or maybe that's not what you meant by long term?


actual research doesn’t support it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34254328/


Tutor here. FWIW, I am also the parent of a kid with ADHD. He takes medicine of his own accord because he says it helps him to be able to focus and get his work done, particularly to read. He wants to take meds because he recognizes the positive impact they have on himself and his ability to do required tasks.

I encourage people to go this link, which is a meta-analyses, which means it is a study looking at other studies already done to draw overarching conclusions. IMO, the problem with many of these studies is that what is used to measure “academic achievement” really doesn’t sync up with how grade work in the real world.

Also, the evidence seems mixed even with this meta-analysis. For example, tbe meta-analysis says, “Five of these studies concluded that methylphenidate improves academic performance. However, three of the four lowest-bias risk studies concluded that the drug is ineffective. Five studies assessed the long-term use of methylphenidate, and four of them concluded that it does not result in better outcomes in the school setting. Most included studies had considerable limitations and significant heterogeneity regarding methodological design and academic performance measurement criteria.”



I’m all about critical analysis of research. But the more important point that needs to be made here are that the outsized, exaggerated claims and scare tactics about ADHD meds are not bygone conclusions . I don’t doubt you personally believe you see a difference in academics. But it’s important for OP to know that it’s not some sure and absolutely proven thing as she is weighing the costs and benefits.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 15:59     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:If teachers are annoyed by your kids's bounciness and talkativeness, then it's a problem at school. He's disruptive and maybe disrespectful. You think your kid is cute and his quirks are adorable, but to a teacher who is managing a classroom of 30 kids, disruptions are so incredibly difficult.

I would keep trying to find the right meds, but don't give up altogether


I am a tutor who works one on one with my ADHD students. Some are very impulsive and interrupt verbally frequently. This is fine in a one on one environment in the sense that I can manage it, it doesn’t create negative feedback, BUT it is actually very bad for the student because if is disrupting their train of thought, their ability to follow, repeat and execute multi step processes and explanations and makes it harder for them to store information. And, everything takes more time with these detours.

On the surface, to the parents, tutoring seems to “solve the problem”, but TBH for a substantial portion of my students the need for my services would be diminished if they were on a good medication. Medication helps 80% of people with ADHD.


Actually there is little evidence that stimulants produce long-term academic aims. They do reduce distruptive behavior.


So do you have a kid with ADHD or not? Cause it sounds like not. My kid got As before and after starting stimulants. The difference was she wasn’t crying and depressed saying how hard staying focused in class was and how homework took her all weekend. I am no proponent of medicine - we held off till she was falling apart in MS after receiving a diagnosis in elementary. Stop trying to convince people that stimulants don’t change a lot of children’s lives for the better.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 14:00     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:If teachers are annoyed by your kids's bounciness and talkativeness, then it's a problem at school. He's disruptive and maybe disrespectful. You think your kid is cute and his quirks are adorable, but to a teacher who is managing a classroom of 30 kids, disruptions are so incredibly difficult.

I would keep trying to find the right meds, but don't give up altogether


I am a tutor who works one on one with my ADHD students. Some are very impulsive and interrupt verbally frequently. This is fine in a one on one environment in the sense that I can manage it, it doesn’t create negative feedback, BUT it is actually very bad for the student because if is disrupting their train of thought, their ability to follow, repeat and execute multi step processes and explanations and makes it harder for them to store information. And, everything takes more time with these detours.

On the surface, to the parents, tutoring seems to “solve the problem”, but TBH for a substantial portion of my students the need for my services would be diminished if they were on a good medication. Medication helps 80% of people with ADHD.


Actually there is little evidence that stimulants produce long-term academic aims. They do reduce distruptive behavior.


If I'm able to stop disrupting my own thoughts and learn from the teacher, how would that not result in academic gains? Or maybe that's not what you meant by long term?


actual research doesn’t support it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34254328/


Tutor here. FWIW, I am also the parent of a kid with ADHD. He takes medicine of his own accord because he says it helps him to be able to focus and get his work done, particularly to read. He wants to take meds because he recognizes the positive impact they have on himself and his ability to do required tasks.

I encourage people to go this link, which is a meta-analyses, which means it is a study looking at other studies already done to draw overarching conclusions. IMO, the problem with many of these studies is that what is used to measure “academic achievement” really doesn’t sync up with how grade work in the real world.

Also, the evidence seems mixed even with this meta-analysis. For example, tbe meta-analysis says, “Five of these studies concluded that methylphenidate improves academic performance. However, three of the four lowest-bias risk studies concluded that the drug is ineffective. Five studies assessed the long-term use of methylphenidate, and four of them concluded that it does not result in better outcomes in the school setting. Most included studies had considerable limitations and significant heterogeneity regarding methodological design and academic performance measurement criteria.”

Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 12:37     Subject: Re:ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
How long did the doctor say to give the medication before deciding it does not work? You can always change or lower the Medication but be sure that you give it ample time before saying it does not work. As a teacher, I want to say thank you for giving medication a try. It is not needed for all but for some, it is needed. Sometimes I sit and meetings and so badly want to say “the child NEEDS medication,” but it is not my place. There has been times when I had to let parents know that they do not seem themselves and together we agreed that it may be best to lower the dose. I have saw some students scores sky rocket because they are capable of sitting for longer than a second and focus on the test without distractions.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 12:28     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:If teachers are annoyed by your kids's bounciness and talkativeness, then it's a problem at school. He's disruptive and maybe disrespectful. You think your kid is cute and his quirks are adorable, but to a teacher who is managing a classroom of 30 kids, disruptions are so incredibly difficult.

I would keep trying to find the right meds, but don't give up altogether


I am a tutor who works one on one with my ADHD students. Some are very impulsive and interrupt verbally frequently. This is fine in a one on one environment in the sense that I can manage it, it doesn’t create negative feedback, BUT it is actually very bad for the student because if is disrupting their train of thought, their ability to follow, repeat and execute multi step processes and explanations and makes it harder for them to store information. And, everything takes more time with these detours.

On the surface, to the parents, tutoring seems to “solve the problem”, but TBH for a substantial portion of my students the need for my services would be diminished if they were on a good medication. Medication helps 80% of people with ADHD.


Actually there is little evidence that stimulants produce long-term academic aims. They do reduce distruptive behavior.


If I'm able to stop disrupting my own thoughts and learn from the teacher, how would that not result in academic gains? Or maybe that's not what you meant by long term?


actual research doesn’t support it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34254328/
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 12:16     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:If teachers are annoyed by your kids's bounciness and talkativeness, then it's a problem at school. He's disruptive and maybe disrespectful. You think your kid is cute and his quirks are adorable, but to a teacher who is managing a classroom of 30 kids, disruptions are so incredibly difficult.

I would keep trying to find the right meds, but don't give up altogether


I am a tutor who works one on one with my ADHD students. Some are very impulsive and interrupt verbally frequently. This is fine in a one on one environment in the sense that I can manage it, it doesn’t create negative feedback, BUT it is actually very bad for the student because if is disrupting their train of thought, their ability to follow, repeat and execute multi step processes and explanations and makes it harder for them to store information. And, everything takes more time with these detours.

On the surface, to the parents, tutoring seems to “solve the problem”, but TBH for a substantial portion of my students the need for my services would be diminished if they were on a good medication. Medication helps 80% of people with ADHD.


Actually there is little evidence that stimulants produce long-term academic aims. They do reduce distruptive behavior.


If I'm able to stop disrupting my own thoughts and learn from the teacher, how would that not result in academic gains? Or maybe that's not what you meant by long term?
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 11:22     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:If teachers are annoyed by your kids's bounciness and talkativeness, then it's a problem at school. He's disruptive and maybe disrespectful. You think your kid is cute and his quirks are adorable, but to a teacher who is managing a classroom of 30 kids, disruptions are so incredibly difficult.

I would keep trying to find the right meds, but don't give up altogether


I am a tutor who works one on one with my ADHD students. Some are very impulsive and interrupt verbally frequently. This is fine in a one on one environment in the sense that I can manage it, it doesn’t create negative feedback, BUT it is actually very bad for the student because if is disrupting their train of thought, their ability to follow, repeat and execute multi step processes and explanations and makes it harder for them to store information. And, everything takes more time with these detours.

On the surface, to the parents, tutoring seems to “solve the problem”, but TBH for a substantial portion of my students the need for my services would be diminished if they were on a good medication. Medication helps 80% of people with ADHD.


Actually there is little evidence that stimulants produce long-term academic aims. They do reduce distruptive behavior.
Anonymous
Post 07/30/2023 10:00     Subject: ADHD & Personality Change; is it worth it?
Anonymous wrote:If teachers are annoyed by your kids's bounciness and talkativeness, then it's a problem at school. He's disruptive and maybe disrespectful. You think your kid is cute and his quirks are adorable, but to a teacher who is managing a classroom of 30 kids, disruptions are so incredibly difficult.

I would keep trying to find the right meds, but don't give up altogether


I am a tutor who works one on one with my ADHD students. Some are very impulsive and interrupt verbally frequently. This is fine in a one on one environment in the sense that I can manage it, it doesn’t create negative feedback, BUT it is actually very bad for the student because if is disrupting their train of thought, their ability to follow, repeat and execute multi step processes and explanations and makes it harder for them to store information. And, everything takes more time with these detours.

On the surface, to the parents, tutoring seems to “solve the problem”, but TBH for a substantial portion of my students the need for my services would be diminished if they were on a good medication. Medication helps 80% of people with ADHD.