a.d.h.d. child makes me stressed!

Yes these were the issues I was having with cameron.  I was at the point of being ready to just give up and just cry.  VyVance has make a HUGE difference in him.  It also cuts his appitite, but he is otherwise fine.  He eats a good breakfast, then has a snack when he gets home, but is never hungry for lunch at school.

 

Some kids just take longer to mature, and I suppose a child with adhd is going to take longer than the average kid.  I notice that already in second grade.  There are some kids that just know when to cool it, and then there is MY kid, acting like a lunitic. LOL
 

How long was he on the medication before you pulled him? Sometimes loss of appetite is common but it usually passes after the first month or two. It is a pretty normal side effect. Did you contact his doctor? Putting a kid on meds and taking him off too quickly can really mess with a kid's ADHD, add in his age and puberty, he probably is pretty wild right now.

I understand. Ask the dr about Concerta or Folkalin (sp?). Neither caused sleep issues or appetite issues with my dd or my nephews. THey are nonstimulant. I agree with Melsb, side effects sometimes lessen or go away. My dr told me it takes about 2 weeks to see the improvement. Same with the ritalin for DH. I also found that if I changed my behavior in how I dealt with my nephew especially I saw improvement. Seems kids with ADD or ADHD are all about instant gratification. Sometimes with each math problem we solved he got a high 5. Other times I just had to be in the room. Sometimes each page of homework or chore done gave him 15 min of video games. When I gave him chores or he was being especially difficult I had him put his headphones on. Believe it or not, when I would go to his house and he was fighting especially bad with his mom and brother I would give him a pepsi. THat helped calm him down. I also made sure that I stocked up on high protein snacks. He had to eat a high protein breakfast, a protein snack at school and one when he got home. That helped. When I first got my nephew he was not medicated and his parents were in denial. Since he was staying with us for a while and was a ward of the state I was able to push to get him tested. Now his father is a believer and they have him medicated.

I agree you may not have given him long enough on the Adderall XR. That is what my DD takes and she WAS very anorexic when she first started taking it. She became very thin even, but we stuck it out. She did get used to it and the anorexia went away. Sometimes you just have to tough it out.

Is this the first drug you've tried or you've been on others before? Most of the drugs have that side effect. We even had it with concerta.

What dose was he on? One suggestion might be to start at the very smallest dose this summer and slowly work your way up. That way maybe he'd be back on a therapeutic dose by next fall but would have longer to get used to it. Good luck! It can be hard to find a drug that works.
Edited by aliadam - 5/24/12 at 8:38am

My son has ADHD and autism and he has been on Concerta ER 27mg for about 2-3 months we had to change the dose as he was on a higher dose and it was too high like 54mg I think he was on before?  So we had to lower it as my son is only 8 and only 52 lbs. But his appitite is only gone after taking medicine and he does snack during the day here and there. I give him a big breakfast and I he eats supper most of the time and a big snack before supper.

To help him sleep he was switched from Tenex to Clonidine 0.2mg and Melatonine 5mg at night we give him 6:30-7:00 or so. We get our son ready for bed around 7pm at bedtime is 8:30pm. Almost always he goes right to sleep if no change in routine or no major sugar before bed. And his tummy is good and full before bed.

I hope all this helps it took a lot of different meds to find a good one that works. This one seems to work better than adderal and Ritalin short and long acting that he has tried in the past.

Melissa

Concerta made my 11 year old very "weepy" and over emotional.  The dr. said it does sometimes.  So, we swapped to Adderall XR, which made me SO very nervous since the Concerta DID work on the ADHD problems.  Thankfully, after one dose change, the Adderal XR works GREAT, is cheaper (like 1/3!), AND he doesn't have the emotional stuff anymore. 

 

I think that ADHD children need to be handled in a whole new and different way than other kids.  Sometimes that is hard for us to understand...and can be even harder to get others to understand..but in the end, it pays off.  Test out a few different approaches to see what works best for your child.  I know with mine, negative feedback does NOT work.  He gets so upset that the tears outweigh whatever the action was!!  We do a lot of positive feedback...and "scenario training"....Okay, so it happened like that....WHAT IF it had been handled like this instead?" kind of stuff.  ADHD children are generally very smart....and this allows THEM to be in control and use their brain to work things out. 

This is a perfect example of how the meds work differently on different kids and how so much of finding the right dose and drug is trial and error. My DD was the exact OPPOSITE of blessed's DS. The concerta made her so mellow. I loved her personality on it, but it didn't work much at all on her ADD. It made her LESS emotional instead of more, but we switched to Adderall XR because it wasn't helping her attention.