Comments on: ADHD Medication for 3, 4 and 5 year olds?

By: tanya

tanya — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:20:49 +0000

I swear to you that you just described my 5 year old daughter to a T! the daycare situation and everything, i feel your pain, if u find a med that works plz let me know, jenkinstj1@aol.com

By: Jessaca

Jessaca — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:26:23 +0000

We have been to many specialist and are still on a waiting list for another. We did start him on 5Mg of folican and I noticed a difference for a couple days and then nothing, so after 3 weeks we just jumped up to 20mg and I have noticed a total difference. He has been great! At least from 30 mins after he gets it to after 4pm (8-9 hours). We are having a big loss in appitite and a little more emotional. I do realize 3 years old is super young to be diognosed with ADHD, with a lot of support from my pediatriciam and many tests and observations I do believe I am doing the best thing for my son. I breaks my heart reading some of these comments. Some people have no idea what they are talking about and unless they live in my house every day they cannot tell me my son is normal. I feel for all you mothers out there going through the same thing as me and I thank god every day I am getting help for him at such a young age

By: tanya

tanya — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:19:00 +0000

If you dont believe in it its bc your child is being a child and not a child with adhd, untill you have a child who truely has adha then u dont have a clue what a parent goes through with this, so stop judging ppl and obviously if the doc has proof of adhd through numerous test and observations then it must be true next to u being 1 person who think its a scapgoat!

By: Trish

Trish — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:54:31 +0000

It was with great hesitation, after more than 2 years of therapy and half a dozen doctors and an intense preschool special needs program, we decided to try some medications for our 4 year old. The first one we tried was daytrana. I wanted to use it because I felt I had more control over it. I could take the patch off and in an hour or so he would be off of it. In my opinion this medication was/is most flexible for a young child. It worked good but the rebound for my son was his worst impulsive behavior TIMES 1000! It was not worth it. At first it was 20 minutes of complete craziness than it got to about 2 hours…SO we took him off of it and he is on Vyvanse. The capsule is disolvable and can be equally distributed to lower doses…So we started with 2.5 mg. I felt like a mad scientist making his medicine but we saw a positive effect and NO rebound. We slowly, since Nov, have raised him to 10mg. His behavior is great! I can take him out for the first time in his life and not have to be on edge. Vyvanse has been a Godsend to him and our family. His preschool sp ed teacher even thinks that in the fall he will be able to attend a mainstream kindergarten class. THIS IS GREAT!!

To the people who think that medicating your child at this age or any is sinful. Or believes that we are talking about a hyper child; your understanding of having a child with severe ADHD is wrong and I pray to God that you never have to understand what we are talking about. I have spent the last 3.5 years of his 4.5 years of life getting him things that he needs and unfortunately he needed medication to survive. For further clarification…stimulants to a person with ADHD calm them. IF your child does not have ADHD and you give them the medication it would be like giving them speed.

By: sgt

sgt — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:29:44 +0000

I dont believe in all this crap, I was hyper as hell in school got into trouble and was adventurous all through elementary school did all the thing that they define as adhd. just like all other kids did, we didnt have this adhd scape goat back then, we would get disciplined for being bad, as we got older we knew right from wrong and some just choose to do one more than the other. 3,4,5 y/o adhd dont believe in it. A teenager having a hard time focusing, we have tutors to help, and that might be the time to even consider medicating them, wanna start drugging ur kid at an early age? I know a guy that sells crack so they can continue it as adults. Honestly just wait till they are a bit older before you start feeding them pills to keep them doped up and calm. I have a 5 y/o that acts just like I did as a child, I dont even consider it, cause i turn out just fine and never took a single pill.

By: Gina

Gina — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:29:03 +0000

We had a feeling our son had ADHD at age 3, but we could not put him on medication until we exhausted all avenues first. He also had allergies and we did not want to give him any more meds than we needed. my son is now 6 yrs old, in first grade and we started him on medication in Nov. 2011 on the 5 mg. of Focalin. We upped the dosage to 15 mg and now we are trying the 20 mg. there we/are some side effects that we have seen, loss of appetite, a little “clingy” the first hour. BUT his teacher did say she saw a tremendous difference in his behavior at school. We also work with a BSC – Behavioral Specialist, whom he really likes and she has some great suggestions, goals and plans for us. We too were struggling has a family, we have an older son (8) and the boys could not get along. If your state/country offers programs for medical assistance and BSC’s check them out. Then you know you have done everything possible and meds are the last resort.

By: Nicole M. McKinney

Nicole M. McKinney — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:48:31 +0000

I am literally typing this in tears right now. If there is one thing on this earth that I love more than life itself it’s my 4.5 year old amazing, smart, loving, little boy. He has been going to therapy with a child psychologist for over a year now and had been diagnosed with ADHD & EBD (*Emotional Behavioral Disorder) in May of 2011. I am a single mother and his father is not involved (his father, by the way, has the same two disorders & has struggled his entire life with them.) Daycare is our means of taking care of him so I am able to work and create an income for us both. He had been going to this one specific daycare since he was 6 months old. About a year and a half ago, he started showing terrible attention problems so I thought maybe it would benifit him to be in a daycare where there were less kids in his class…thought maybe it would help him focus and calm down. So I found a daycare (with the same legal 12 child to 1 adult ratio) that had less children attending in that age. There were about 8 in his class and sometimes there were more than one teachers helping out in there. He was doing good for about a month. Then the owner of this daycare told me that he could not stay on task AT ALL and was having behavior issues. Everyday for a month I got phone calls at work to either come and get him during the day or talk to him, followed by a stern meeting with the owner everytime i would pick him up about how he needed to be on some medicine immediately. I didn’t appreciate that she was telling me to put him on medicine, not trying to educate me and help me explore options. Her daughter had been put on medicine at age 5 and she said “my daughter has been a different child ever since, no more problems.” ‘Every child is different. What worked for your child may or may not work for mine,’ is all I kept thinking. I felt like she was trying to force me to. I called a program here in our area called “First Steps” for them to come to the daycare and evaluate him and work with him one on one. Instead of coming and seeing him they just called me and asked how he was doing developmentally and with his speech and motor skills. They crossed him out and ineligible for the program (over the phone without ever have meeting or watching him interact at daycare) because he only had a small lisp and was above his age group developmentally and had no physical ailments. The daycare owner then told me that they could not handle him and that i had to put him on some medicine or take him elsewhere….so. I took him elsewhere. Tried another daycare. I explained to them what was going on, how he was acting, and how bad it hurt to hear people give up on my baby so easily. They said, “that’s rediculous, he’s just a boy and he’s so young.” They took him, but within a month they were telling me they couldn’t handle him because he couldn’t stay on task at all and was being resistent to his teachers (who were all high schoolers btw with no children of thier own). So I had to move him again. I took him back to his original daycare at this point. His behavior got worse and worse. He was starting to be violent with his friends and teachers: hitting, throwing chairs, yelling “no,” etc.. His ability to focus on anything since then has just been deteriorating and behavior issues have escalated. Then he picked up on bad language from his father’s house and took it straight to daycare. We could not get him to stop for anything. He was getting punishments at home everyday, phone calls from me and my family to talk to him throughout to day about making good choices while at daycare, and this lasted for about a month. They were MORE than lenient to let him stay that long with the words he was using. He ended up causing four other children to go home and say those words to thier parents and the parents complained. They had to kick him out. That daycare LOVES my son like he is thier own, a good christian daycare with people I trust and love like family and I know for a fact that it killed thier hearts to have to let him go, but I understand they had to look out for the other kids as well. So daycare hopping we go again. I didn’t have much notice to switch and find somewhere new and the only daycare that had any openings was the one I didn’t ever want to take him to. I had no other options though besides quitting my job, which was not really an option. I told the owner of this new daycare his issues and why he had been kicked out and she explained the rules to me. We pep talked him all weekend at home, me, my family, and my friends. Explained the great outcome of good choices and not hurting our friends and teachers physically or with those bad words. I’ve tried making him a “good choices” chart to keep on the fridge with his personal responsibilites on it like picking up his toys, getting dressed by himself, using good language, good day at daycare, etc. and bought stickers to put on each one as he completed them. I told him he would get a reward for doing all these things. I didn’t want to tell him he would just get a reward for making good choices at daycare beause I didn’t want him to think that he should get something in return for trying to do the right things. I want him to understand that we control our actions. I do believe he has ADHD, but I also believe there is alot of it that he purposely doesn’t control because of two reasons. One: at home it is only he and I. He has no one that he has to fight with for my undivided attention. He does NOT act out at home AT ALL like he does at daycare. He is nothing other than a normal four-year-old boy with a normal (and manageable) four-year-old attention span and behavior issues. Two: He knows that at daycare (because of law) they cannot do anything punishment wise for his bad actions besides time-out, long talks, light seclution, and taking away toys or activities. To him, that is no big deal. It makes him a little angry, but it doesn’t anger him enough to change what he is doing. He takes FULL ADVANTAGE that they can’t do anything more severe. The first day at this new daycare he was using foul language, climbing on the doors numerous times, screaming no at the teachers (all of them at the daycare tried to talk to him), threatened to “tear up everything”, tried to hit his teacher twice, and wouldn’t listen to a word. I got calls. Then i kept him home for a day and took him back the next day. He was good for about two and a half hours after getting there, then took a turn for the worst again. I got told to come pick him up and that he had one more chance to do better before being kicked out. I cried my eyes out. Not just because this is severely threatening my job & my nerves, but more than anything I have an amazing little boy that keeps having to get taken in and thrown out and taken in and thrown out of environments. I know this is hurting him worse to not have stability in that area and having to transition so much, but I don’t know what else I can do. I feel like the only daycare that never gave up on him is the original one he went to, who made it very clear to me that once his behavior was straightened out a little more he could come back. Since the first day he was at the new daycare he hasn’t had any more language problems, but has been doing all the other things still. I feel like I’m just waiting nervously all day, each day, for a call from them telling me he can’t come back and wondering what in the world I am going to do after that. It probably helps to know these other things too: my 14-year-old brother has ADHD also, my son’s father has been in and out of his life since he was about a year old, he goes to bed at 8 pm every night and has never had problems sleeping until recently. He has had about 6 episodes in the past 7 months of these “night terrors” I guess is what they would be called. Where he would wake up and be looking right at me, but crying for me and calling out my name saying he wants me. I keep telling him over and over “i’m right here baby,” and he continues until I hold him tight to me for about fifteen to twenty minutes and he begins to REALLY look at me and seems to be completely coherent. It almost seems like he is asleep with his eyes open, it’s crazy. I thought about in-home care for him, but can’t find anyone that I trust and feel comfortable with. I have tried research, changing his diet, psychiatry,…the only other option now that I haven’t tried (or that I’m aware of that I haven’t tried) is medication. I honestly think he is too young and after hearing how alot of the medications zombify kids or take almost thier entire personality away, plus the side effects too, it scares me to pieces. Facing possibly having to quit my job, knowing it’s our main source of income, is the one thing that is pushing me to try it. I have not allowed everyone telling me he needs to be on it be a factor in my decision. He is MY child first and foremost, and the only person that truly matters in this situation is HIM. What is BEST for HIM, not what is best for everyone else. I have read this entire column, and am so glad (and saddened of course) to hear so many other parents having the same issues. It hurts so bad to know that the most important person in your life has an illness that you can’t control and is hurting them, emotionally, environmentally, and possibly longer term with the outcomes of having to be moved over and over again. I need opinions, advice, more stories, support, and most importantly YOUR PRAYERS for my son and our family. I am at a loss….i don’t know what else to do. I’m so upset that it’s having to come to this, but maybe it will be a positive thing. Praying for the rest of you and your situations with your children, and thankful for any advice that can be given.

By: tanya

tanya — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:09:19 +0000

Has anyone tried methlyn chewables and how has it worked?

By: JESSACA

JESSACA — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:16:41 +0000

i can not believe some of the comments i have read on here. I have a 3 year year old who with out a doubt has ADHD! I am having the hardest time deciding weather or not to start him on medicine. HIs behavior is so bad that we cannot leave our house. i have 2 other children 23months and 5 months. My son is so violent I cant leave him in the same room as them alone. He doesn’t sleep more than 5 hours a night and he wont sit more than 1 min at a time.
i am so disgusted with the people who think its the parents fault. I would love to see you handle my son for one day.
anyways i went to the ped. again today and he wants to put my son on 5mg of focalin xr Does anyone know anything about this med?

By: Tuttle

Tuttle — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:35:29 +0000

Let me know if you find anything out