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My child has been diagnosed with ADHD at 6 years old by 2 Neurologists, now 7 years old. I choose not to medicate for many reasons. The area of weakness displayed are:
1. Extreme Lack of Focus: must be redirected a lot. You must constantly be nudging him or tapping on the desk to bring him back to the schoolwork at hand. Otherwise he just drifts in his mind, thinks about things he saw on tv or whatever goes through a little child's mind.
2. unable to complete a task.
3. He does display a small tic (a head turn), but not really that noticeable.
4. Hyper: cannot stay still. always moving, touching, fiddling with his fingers ...
Otherwise he is happy, always wants to play, always smiling & laughing, affectionate.
His schoolwork/tests are suffering. His teacher says he is bright when he focus, he gets the lesson when he focus and that last about 10 mins or so. I had him evaluated by the school district 2 times and at each review the results were He is Not Deficient in All areas and does not qualify for an IEP. Presently we have a 504 on file with the school, is in a classroom with a regular teacher and a special ed teacher. That is all he gets.
The neurologist says the medication will help, the teacher/school psychologist gently implied too, though Never said medication.
Is medication the solution??? What are the long term effects? Don't we all have some kind of a disability that we learn to compensate for without medication. I am not anti-medicine. If he was in his teens, sure lets give it a try. But he is still growing and developing.
You know...when your pregnant or trying to get pregnant you are not to ingest anything that will harm or might harm the baby. Now that the baby is in the world, lets give it adhd meds and see if we can find one that works for him. Doesn't make sense.
Thought and suggestions are welcomed. Thanks for reading.
If he needed glasses-would you get them for him?
The medication might help him see things more clearly.
If his schooling is suffering-his self esteem will too. If he is a behavior issue or distraction, the other children will come to see that as well.
I would not take medicine lightly under the drs supervision and your contact with his teacher I would very strongly consider it. I would think the dr would start with a very low dose and monitor-eating sleeping focus-
Once he reaches his teenage years it will become harder. First, you won't have one teacher working with him all day to see how he is reacting to the medication-you will have 8 periods with 8 teachers. Second, he will have several more years under his belt of struggling in school and possibly socially. Teenage boys-although wonderful- come with own set of issues outside of ADHD. This will go away by itself.
Just my two sense-its never easy being a parent-good luck.
My child has been diagnosed with ADHD at 6 years old by 2 Neurologists, now 7 years old. I choose not to medicate for many reasons. The area of weakness displayed are:
1. Extreme Lack of Focus: must be redirected a lot. You must constantly be nudging him or tapping on the desk to bring him back to the schoolwork at hand. Otherwise he just drifts in his mind, thinks about things he saw on tv or whatever goes through a little child's mind.
2. unable to complete a task.
3. He does display a small tic (a head turn), but not really that noticeable.
4. Hyper: cannot stay still. always moving, touching, fiddling with his fingers ...
Otherwise he is happy, always wants to play, always smiling & laughing, affectionate.
.
That sounds like just about every kid that grew up 50 years ago. Leave him alone, ignore doctors who want to label kids with some syndrome, and let him develop. He will probably have the best looking girlfriends, own his own business, and be successful as hell.
You know...when your pregnant or trying to get pregnant you are not to ingest anything that will harm or might harm the baby. Now that the baby is in the world, lets give it adhd meds and see if we can find one that works for him. Doesn't make sense.
Thought and suggestions are welcomed. Thanks for reading.
I'm not really sure what this has to do with LI but....
You say you're not anti medication, but you are. If he had diabetes, would you give him insulin? If he had cancer, would you give him chemo? If he had chron's disease, would you try to manage it?
I suggest you do some research on ADHD, instead of fumbling around half truths and rumors. ADHD is a disorder of the brain. I have twins - one has ADHD, along with some other issues, the other is fine and seriously nearly perfect in almost every way. People always want to explain away my son's issues with 'well maybe if you did/ had done [fill in the blank]...." and then I say he has a twin and they shut the hell up. Because trust me I wasn't conducting some social experiment on my kids where I did everything one way for one of them and everything a different way for the other. And hello? Prenatal environment? The same for both of them.
There is research by the NIH that supports the fact that kids who are left to flounder with their ADHD take much bigger risks in adolescence than kids who get the support they need. Think back to kids you went to school with who were disruptive and always getting in trouble. THink they might have had ADHD? You have to decide what that's gonna be - but I will tell you my sister is a teacher and parents who expect the school to solve all their ADHD kid's problems drive her up a wall. You are a partner in this whole situation.
I understand that you are starting down a long and scary road, or what feels like one. But it's not the end of the world and you are right, he might outgrow it. But if your child couldn't see correctly, would you insist he sit with no glasses? If he had an auditory issue, would you encourage him to sit as far from the teacher as possible?
Sometimes medications do more harm than good, especially certain medications for psychological issues. (How many people have we heard of that have committed suicide on anti-depressants.....ironic, right?)
Let him have a normal childhood and screw the medication....
That sounds like just about every kid that grew up 50 years ago. Leave him alone, ignore doctors who want to label kids with some syndrome, and let him develop. He will probably have the best looking girlfriends, own his own business, and be successful as hell.
Oh exactly! The OP should do exactly what Howard Stern says his father did to him (scream "Shut up! Sit down!" a thousand times a day). The child should grow up to be at least as successful and refined as Howard is! (Can't argue with Howard's financial success ... but he didn't get there being "normal.")
And my post has a LI twist ... Howard ... so there!
ADHD while it is diagnosed behaviorally is a very real neurological difference in the brain. Children without ADHD will react to ADHD medications in a very different way than children who do have ADHD do.
The biggest problem is finding the right dosage as individual children react differently. My granddaughter was on time-released ritalin for about 2 years. It worked really well to keep her behavior in school reasonable and to allow her to focus on her school work. This year though it stopped working - she is starting puberty and the hormones messed up her system, so we had to change meds to stabilize her. She was being labelled bad in her classroom and they had to change her to a different class because of other students (and parents) complaining. Since the med change and the class change, she has been doing really well. She still has self-esteem issues though from the feeling she had of being *bad* and not good at reading.
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What are the long term effects? Don't we all have some kind of a disability that we learn to compensate for without medication. I am not anti-medicine. If he was in his teens, sure lets give it a try. But he is still growing and developing. 
