Anonymous wrote:I have a HS magnet kid who is ADD. She won’t ever be a truly top student because we won’t medicate. I’d rather her be closer to average in the program without drugs than be exceptional with drugs.

In the words of my son’s psychiatrist, ADHD mds aren’t performance enhancing drugs. The primary driver for most families is their kid’s psychological well being and happiness, not school performance. When we started medication, my kid became much happier, more social, able to resist the urge to argue with everyone and able to not act in ways that were really alienating to peers.

If you think it’s about performing better at a magnet school, then I wonder if your daughter is misdiagnosed.

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been medicated for 40 years. Growing out of it isn’t a thing in my experience. I’m very grateful that my parents recognized the issue and followed through with diagnosis and treatment.

I have a ton of respect for you. I know how tough it can be with most people out there pushing the drugs, as if they owned stock in big pharma.

Anonymous wrote:I think many of you are looking at this question as too black-and-white. There are certain aspects of ADHD that almost everyone will either outgrow or at least see major improvement on. For example: a child who is extremely hyperactive will almost certainly become less so as he gets older and matures. Therefore the child will get into less trouble and become less hyperactive.

On the other hand, if your executive functions are very impaired, you're likely to always have challenges. That said, people can work on this, develop strategies, use technology to assist them. They may learn to manage. But will this area always be a relative weakness? It is quite likely.

My life is much more difficult as an adult because the demands are so much greater. As a child in school, I actually managed quite well by making a HUGE effort and spending an enormous amount of time on homework. I do think that the total lack of support, though, caused a lot of anxiety for me.

I’m a pp with an adhd sister. Yes I agree with this. The hyper can be outgrown. And it seems to after childhood. That part bothers me, I think some teachers don’t like hyper kids. I do see the benefits to learn to focus etc, but the hyper part gets me.

My son has asd which I know is also very different. But he already slowly outgrown some things. I’ve read similar literature in ASD to outgrow it. Kids struggle in some areas but it doesn’t look like asd anymore. It definitely is not black or white and less mild cases are not for sure meds yes.

Anonymous wrote:As an adult with ADHD I really resent that my parents refused to seek diagnosis and treatment. Struggling through school and getting yelled at all the time for being disorganized and late on homework was horrible.

This. I feel exactly the same way.

I’ve been medicated for 40 years. Growing out of it isn’t a thing in my experience. I’m very grateful that my parents recognized the issue and followed through with diagnosis and treatment.

I have a HS magnet kid who is ADD. She won’t ever be a truly top student because we won’t medicate. I’d rather her be closer to average in the program without drugs than be exceptional with drugs.

I think many of you are looking at this question as too black-and-white. There are certain aspects of ADHD that almost everyone will either outgrow or at least see major improvement on. For example: a child who is extremely hyperactive will almost certainly become less so as he gets older and matures. Therefore the child will get into less trouble and become less hyperactive.

On the other hand, if your executive functions are very impaired, you're likely to always have challenges. That said, people can work on this, develop strategies, use technology to assist them. They may learn to manage. But will this area always be a relative weakness? It is quite likely.

My life is much more difficult as an adult because the demands are so much greater. As a child in school, I actually managed quite well by making a HUGE effort and spending an enormous amount of time on homework. I do think that the total lack of support, though, caused a lot of anxiety for me.

Anonymous wrote:You sound like a pharmaceutical sales person.

No, I'm someone who is really frustrated by fuzzy thinking on issues where the science is well understood. With stimulant medication, the good and the bad are well understood.

I'm not one to minimize the bad --- my kid has chosen to wean off of stimulant medication as he's gotten older because he hated the side effects -- difficulty sleeping and loss of appetite. Also, it seemed to aggravate his anxiety (or maybe laying in bed unable to sleep did that, but it ended up being the same thing - he was tired but unable to sleep and laying in bed for hours worrying about that). I tried stimulant medication to treat my ADHD but discontinued it because I didn't like how it makes me feel.

However, I also know how hard untreated ADHD is for kids. My kid used to get so stressed about school (as an elementary student) that he would cry and bang his head on the floor. After starting medication, his stress went down immediately and he started to enjoy school and do well. At that time, the benefits outweighed the side effects. Now they don't. That's always the calculation. But, we understand both the good and the bad pretty well.

As an adult with ADHD I really resent that my parents refused to seek diagnosis and treatment. Struggling through school and getting yelled at all the time for being disorganized and late on homework was horrible.

Anonymous wrote:Growing out of a neurological disorder is news to me. Perhaps, what you mean is, are the impacts of the side effects less noticeable as the kid gets older? If that's the case, then yes, a kid can learn to adapt without medication and with the help of therapies be better capable of managing themselves. It doesn't work for every ADHD child. In K the school principal told me in DS's IEP meeting that he firmly believed that DS (diagnosed with ADHD-combined) would never be a success without medication. By the end of K, DS was on grade level in all areas, except one, where he was advanced. DS is in 5 grade and most people that interact with him don't know that he has ADHD. He is not on medication. We chose to change his diet and his environment, and add all the therapies that he needed to be a success. He's on grade level in all areas. In the future, if DS decides that life and school has gotten to hard to manage because of ADHD, then we will revisit putting him on medication.

You can absolutely grow out of a developmental disorder.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately many with ADHD who are not put on meds ultimately self medicate.

This was our biggest fear and our developmental pediatrician warned strongly about it. My DD is now 14, takes ADHD meds and anti-anxiety meds. I struggle wondering if the anxiety is caused by the ADHD meds and if we are just creating a big circular issue, but then I think back to before she was on meds and remember that she always had stomach aches (a hallmark of anxiety). She is also dyslexic and school is a struggle. She can now articulate how the meds help her get through school in a reasonable manner and lessen her anxiety. She has a long way to go and still has issues, but I think (and she thinks) she would be worse off without them.

ADHD and anxiety are highly comorbid conditions.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think people outgrow it. I think those people never truly had it.

The school environment change, loss of gym/recess time (too short), full day Kindergarten, and a push to more academia at a younger age has normal kids in normal developmental stages (particularly boys) seem as if something wrong with their behavior when I’m fact it’s normal.

I do have 2 very focused boys that never were in trouble, good students and good in class (11 and 13) and have seen some friends that I thought were acting normally for young kids in the early elementary years get the push to medicate.

My brother definitely would have been a candidate for meds in the 70s/80s and I don’t think he has or had ADHD. He was fairly naughty and hyper.

You "thinking" on this is meaningless. There are actual studies by actual scientists that show otherwise.

You sound like a pharmaceutical sales person.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is cruel to not at least have the child examined to see if this might help him. Do you also refuse to get his eyes examined or refuse to buy glasses?

Not remotely the same thing.

+10000

Putting glasses on a child's face does not involve putting a psychotropic drug into a developing body.

You do know that using stimulant medication to treat ADHD is one of the most studied uses of any drug for any application in the history of psychiatry, right? And that this research has been going on since at least 1963?

People who are reflexively anti-medication (in my experience, often people who don't have or personally know any kids with ADHD) like to claim that we don't know the effects of these drugs on developing minds. They are wrong. We absolutely do know. We know the effects of these drugs on minds of people who were diagnosed as children and are now in their 60s and have been taking stimulant medication the entire time. We have 56 years of studies. We really do understand these specific drugs pretty well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can a brain scan prove a neurological disease?

Yes, a brain scan shows Parkinson's, dementia, epilepsy, brain tumors, etc.

What about a chemical imbalance?