ADHD: meds or not?

[petesgirl]

DS was diagnosed with ADHD last September but it wasn't really affecting his school work at that point so I decided against medication. Well, things got a little rough towards the middle of the year and during distance learning I saw how distracted he can get. I hate the idea of medicating, especially since he already takes 6 other meds for various things, but I really want to feel successful at school and to enjoy other activities that require concentration. Have most of you with ADHD kids chosen to medicate? What advice do you have for me about the different meds available?
Also, he is small- short and skinny- and I really worry about the effects the meds could have on his appetite and his growth.

[AngB]

DS was diagnosed with ADHD last September but it wasn't really affecting his school work at that point so I decided against medication. Well, things got a little rough towards the middle of the year and during distance learning I saw how distracted he can get. I hate the idea of medicating, especially since he already takes 6 other meds for various things, but I really want to feel successful at school and to enjoy other activities that require concentration. Have most of you with ADHD kids chosen to medicate? What advice do you have for me about the different meds available?
Also, he is small- short and skinny- and I really worry about the effects the meds could have on his appetite and his growth.

We are pretty sure DS1 has ADHD or ADD but besides needing lots of redirection/etc. he has done okay. My mom is a retired special ed teacher with 25+ years experience and she says one of her biggest parenting regrets was putting one of my brothers on ADHD meds in elementary school. (She took him off it after a year or so I believe, and I don't think he needed it for middle school or high school, definitely not college.) There are kids who NEED it to function at all in school and there are kids who can get by with other interventions. We are 100% against meds for our DS right now but may eventually pursue getting him diagnosed officially and a 504 plan. (He actually did really well with distance learning because he liked just being able to do his work on his own at the pace he wanted and then being done...his teacher last year was super talkative and I even found myself tuning her out-not intentionally- in our conference as she went over every.step. of a super simple assignment that I was able to understand in 1 second without her explaining it...) Our DS is also almost always one of the youngest in his class in many cases by a year and I have seen a stat that boys with late birthdays are like 70% more likely to be "diagnosed" with ADHD.

Sorry this is probably no help but I think you know your kid best and if you decide to medicate or not, it doesn't have to be forever.

[SASM]

He sounds like my DS and our family. I cannot guide you either way, as it's very personal. I WILL say that, should you decide to try meds, give them time. Listen to your son and observe/listen to him. If he doesn't feel like they are working after giving a certain med and various doses time, don't be afraid to try something new. Make sure that you have an MD (ped, psychiatrist, etc) that is OPEN try trying different meds. DS's MD wouldn't listen and kept increasing the dose of this one med, although we were both asking to try something new. MD finally agreed to try something different but by that point DS was soooo done with meds. Our area does not have a lot of child psychiatrists so no-one was accepting new patients. We had who we had...MD just wasn't flexible in listening to our family's needs. And the pediatrician highly recommended sticking with him and being more vocal because the meds were outside the standard stuff that she general prescribed...she really wanted DS to stay with the specialist. It was soooo frustrating. Just be vocal upfront...I hope you can find the right fit, whatever it may be.

[bisous]

Its so tricky. DH was put on meds and HATED them. BUT, I begged him to put DS1 on meds and he's done amazing on them. I think DH's problem is that he also had very severe anxiety. So the meds made him more able to concentrate on his anxiety... if that makes sense. DS1 doesn't seem to have that issue and for him the meds are great. He just tried a day without them with the encouragement of his psychiatrist. He said it was hard to focus all day and he didn't like the feeling. We have talked about being open and respectful of his feelings while he is on meds.

I'm seriously considering for DS3 who is very underweight too. He's struggling with so many things. I almost think he might GAIN weight on meds because part of the reason he is so thin is that he gets distracted from eating! But it is hard to say. How bad would trying meds be this year for you? We are remote learning the next few weeks (possibly months) so I figure this is a great time to experiment. Any bad results will be only around our family.

I will say that the right meds combo for DS1 was magical.

[smilequeen]

DS2 has ADHD Inattentive Type. We chose to do meds and they changed his life. I do think it’s a personal decision but for us...we talked to a lot of previously anti med parents who regretted NOT doing meds because they felt like they made their kids suffer needlessly. We preferred to try and take him off than regret not doing it sooner. We had an amazing neurologist, he just seemed to pick up on every detail, make great recommendations, and make changes when necessary. DS has had a very positive experience and the choice to continue is his at this point (13).

[PunkyBoo]

DS2 has ADHD, mostly impulse control issues, and some other factors. We have not medicated him. We are happy with the way his school principal and the school psychologist have handled his issues and have worked with the teachers to give them the tools to be successful with him. I have also found that his issues are far better (but certainly not gone) now that he gets better sleep than he used to.

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[AnnieW625]

DS2 has ADHD Inattentive Type. We chose to do meds and they changed his life. I do think it’s a personal decision but for us...we talked to a lot of previously anti med parents who regretted NOT doing meds because they felt like they made their kids suffer needlessly. We preferred to try and take him off than regret not doing it sooner. We had an amazing neurologist, he just seemed to pick up on every detail, make great recommendations, and make changes when necessary. DS has had a very positive experience and the choice to continue is his at this point (13).

We have a very similar situation with Dd2, although as she has gotten older we have noticed she has impulse issues as well and at times is more hyperactive than she was when she was diagnosed at 6. The one thing I wish we would’ve done sooner was taught her how to swallow pills sooner (she just learned when she was 9....we would put the pill in milk or on a peanut butter spoon) and looked for a new developmental pediatrician as I had issues with the one we had been assigned to, and Dd2 thought of her condition as a major issue because of the doctor’s delivery (she made the mistake of always talking about dd2’s weight at one appointment and kept harping that Dd2 needed to eat more because she said she was losing weight....which she was, but as soon as Dd2 heard that she started fighting the meds.), and started fighting her taking her medication. We also found she was hiding pills after she told us she had taken them so we now have to stand in the bathroom while she takes them. Overall we can tell when the medicines work, and so far there has only been one medication (I forget the name of it), but it made her very anxious and she was fighting things like flu shots or getting blood drawn, and needles had never effected her before so we switched. She was on Vyvanse for the tail end of the school year, and has been on Ritalin prior, but we changed medicine when we thought it wasn’t working (but it also could’ve been that we didn’t give it a full trial because that was when she was hiding pills and saying she was taking them). Dd2 has been off of meds now for about 6 weeks and it has been okay, but I am not sure she could do a whole school day online without it; she couldn’t before. The other downside was that it made her super picky about food, and for me that is the worst side effect imho. She would eat almost anything prior to starting medication.


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[georgiegirl]

Meds were life changing for DS1. He has ADHD (very hyper and Impulsive) and anxiety. Since staring concerta, we stopping having to yell at him all the time. he’s also on Zoloft, and that leveled out his emotions (he was very emotionally volatile). DS feels better about himself because we aren’t constantly correcting him. He never had any issues in school until 4th grade, and that was mainly a teacher issue.


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[pharmjenn]

I can't comment on your choice to medicate, as I am not in that situation although DS12 could possible have a mild form. I did want to re-iterate Annies comment about kids swallowing pills. We have teenagers and young adults come into our ER and require liquid meds because they can't swallow pills. It is usually a very large volume of liquid medicine to get their dose, when it would have been a single tablet. A coworkers son is in his 30s with his own baby now and and still can not swallow pills!
We were lucky to teach DS at about age 3-4yo, as soon as his weight allowed for tablet size dosing, and it has been great with his other medications.

We have a very similar situation with Dd2, although as she has gotten older we have noticed she has impulse issues as well and at times is more hyperactive than she was when she was diagnosed at 6. The one thing I wish we would’ve done sooner was taught her how to swallow pills sooner (she just learned when she was 9....we would put the pill in milk or on a peanut butter spoon)

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[echoesofspring]

DS was diagnosed last fall, we have an IEP for him but didn't really utilize it during the distance learning, we got it the week before schools closed so it's wasn't part of our routine. (i'm not sure how we would have used it tbh since they were asking so little of the kids last spring, but I do intend to review it in case we need more support this fall. ) We haven't done meds yet - our OT suggested we might start thinking about them this past spring, which is as far as we've gotten in the convo. I'd need to do a lot of research to better understand what to expect and what I think would change in his behavior and honestly i'm not sure I would use this fall as a trial for us personally. It feels like what we're asking of kids just isn't fair, and I wouldn't want to assess DS's general needs against how he behaves in distance learning unless it was really obvious he was falling behind his class or performing significantly below what he's capable of. In general when I volunteered in school I didn't see that he behaved very different than many other kids in his class, but I know he's smarter than his grades and tests reflect and we know the issues we have at home, so we pursued the IEP as future proofing for the event that he needs more support at school. W/respect to how I'm thinking about the 'when to try meds' I think before we'd go down that path we'd still continue to try other interventions similar to OT, which was so incredibly helpful to him and DH and I. I'm looking at maybe an ADHD coach for example, and I really want to up the exercise he gets, there just wasn't enough on school days this past spring which was a combination of factors.