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Post by flossie on Feb 4, 2019 9:45:12 GMT
Lola aged 8 has been on a slowly increasing dose of methylphenidate for adhd for a couple of months. There was no noticeable improvements initially but her last increase has meant I am able to get her to school in the mornings! However she often refuses to take it, I don't think she likes the lack of control it gives her and she has some side effects which do settle after a while. Also it seems to peel off the layers of aggression and leaves behind a frightened little girl... Hypervigilance has increased and she often looks petrified of loud noises and life in general. We've struggled with her school refusal and aggression for so long but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with what the medication is doing to her.....
Anybody got any experience of advice to share?
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Post by moo on Feb 5, 2019 11:58:18 GMT
Hugs flossie xxx No personal exp of the drug you mention sadly... but similar..... we were advised to give it 3 months of stable dosing system & to then re-evaluate pro's & con's....
Overall things were marginally better...
Sadly we too had horrific struggles with entrenched hostility & obstructive behaviours from school.... Things went from very bad to so much worse.... we stuck it out, skweek suffered terribly.....
Luckily for us secondary is a breath of fresh air, really supportive & really get issues.... Some schools sadly never will & scar our children even deeper creating bigger voids in self esteem, self loathing, developmental trauma & shame xxx imho... Hth...
Sending many hugs to you for stength xxxx
Xx moo xx
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Post by runmum on Feb 9, 2019 9:15:23 GMT
We had the same thing with our Monkey Boy for a while and he still does it from time to time. He started on Concerta and now Elvanse - both essentially Methylphenidate it 's just that his drugs are long acting, slow release whereas standard methylphenidate is short acting.
1. Our psychiatrist was always really careful to explain that the medication does not take away control. It gives you control - it gives you a chance to make thinking choices rather than impulsive choices. He reiterates this each time we see him. He just says we all have different chemicals in our brains, some kids and adults have a different balance and it makes it hard for them to control their choices. We want you to have more control and this medication helps shift the balance of chemicals to give you the same chances as your friends. 2. Our children need to feel some control and if we make a big deal of meds being really important then they might tend to seek to refuse to take them to feel some control. Of course we know the meds give them more control but when they are refusing they don't have control because they haven't taken the meds yet! We have managed this with what I can best describe as nonchalance. You say the meds help her get off to school so no doubt you feel some stress about getting the meds in because you want to get her off to school. We had the same and we had to really work on ourselves first - 4,7,8 breathing etc to calm ourselves down. If we are chilled and nonchalant it's all much easier. Is she ok with swallowing? With methylphenidate and Elvanse you can dissolve it in a drink if that's part of the issue. You have to swallow concerta. 3. Our children are complex they often struggle with the impact of trauma and neglect at the same time as having things like ADHD which go along with drug and alcohol use by birth Mum as well as sometimes just being something they have for no particular reason just like any other child. We found that once the ADHD was treated we got a good look at the impact of trauma and neglect which was very useful as we were then able to get specific interventions to manage those symptoms now that we knew they were symptoms of trauma and not something else. Hypervigilance is about trauma distractibility is linked with ADHD but they both look very similar. If you know the ADHD is robustly treated then you can go onto the next step of helping her start to heal from the trauma and become less hyper vigilant. We also noticed that once his medication was stable Monkey Boy was better able to express sadness and fear because he could control his anger. We are now getting therapy to help him with the sadness and fear.
All in all I very much doubt the things you see are negative effects of the medication - it's just the meds illuminating her complexity and giving you the best chance to find appropriately targeted treatments.
Often people (and professionals) go for the psychological therapy before thinking about ADHD. We did this - it didn't work. Now the ADHD is treated we understand why. We had to go private to get it done this way - we think this is very sad and we and Monkey Boy could have been saved years of distress.
Good luck with it all.
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Post by flossie on Feb 10, 2019 11:09:08 GMT
Thanks so much for the replies.
Psychiatrist has said it there is any dangerous behaviour or if we feel unable to sit it out to reduce the dose. Decided to keep at the higher dose and without the stress of school in the mornings everything has felt much more manageable . Lola has had multiple therapeutic interventions but once adhd was diagnosed we have been started on family therapy which does not include her currently...I do feel she needs help with managing these new big feelings now that they've emerged!
I have just been putting the tablets next to her breakfast without discussion, the problem is she's started throwing them which results in a reaction from me as I try to retrieve them before the dog does! I have a box of leftover Christmas crackers that I might use next week...take the tablets you can pull a cracker (Lola loves Christmas crackers!)
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Post by rosie on Feb 11, 2019 11:11:02 GMT
Really agree with Runmum to try and keep going with the medication. Our daughter is on Concerta combined with Sertraline for her anxiety. It has made a lot of difference to her life generally and definately to her college work. We are now seeing more clearly the trauma based behaviours which can now hopefully be worked on. Really wish we could have got her diagnosis earlier; as I think it would have made a lot of difference. Hope you can find a way to get her to take medication.
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Post by flossie on Feb 18, 2019 5:11:13 GMT
So we are now changing to atomoxetine, the continuing side effects coupled with a significant weight loss made the decision for us really. Have done a quick search on it which wasn't a positive experience! Hopefully this will be the right medicstion...
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Post by moo on Feb 18, 2019 19:14:52 GMT
Good Luck xxx
Xx moo xx
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Post by doubletrouble on Mar 4, 2019 9:12:56 GMT
One thing I would say about ADHD meds. they can open up a new world of other traumas and problems our adopted children may have which would have been masked by the ADHD. I'm the mum of two both with ADHD and one with ASD as well. We found that yes we got other behaviours but we feel that this is because the ADHD was masking the other things that were going on underneath. We now have a diagnosis of Sensory Processing disorder for DS as it became very obvious that he had trouble with loud noises and crowds once he was on the meds. This has made a massive difference to his life and we have been able to look at his Sensory problems with a sensory diet and was able to have input from CAMHs occupational therapists which was a great help.
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