SOme people say that their kids appear “glazed” or subdued on stimulants. To me they have been a liberation from a really awful experience that lasted many years. What’s even better I am now often just as good without medication- and I mean really good- attentive, engaged, contributing- alive.
Certainly there are a few challenes yet to be beaten, mostly old wrinkles in relationships. Nothing seems insurmountable now though.

A small comment for Melissa- when we aare not totally decompensated our ADHD symptoms are usually worst in areas of greatest emotional challenge. I see my ADHD as having arisen from possessing more emotional sensitivity than I could handle. When the symptoms are very situational it pays to look hard at the situation in which they arise.

I often thought when we were struggling that I needed to set up a wecam at home so I could go back and look at where I was going wrong. I wish I had- it was not a bad idea at all. Mind you I was so disorganised that a webcam would have been too hard!

The moral of this story: Parents, don’t wait too long to try the medications and find a school that is willing to work with you and your child! He was constantly in trouble at school and ADHD children are generally very, very sensative! The trouble at school constantly put him in an “aggravated emotional state.” He cried a lot, yelled a lot, threw a ton of tantrums. It was horrible. I cried a lot. I got a divorce (yes, I do believe that my son’s ADHD was a major contributor, because my husband never got any attention as my son required ALL of it, and we constantly fought over him). His teacher is wonderful, a true blessing and God send. I believe that the combination of his teacher closely monitering him throughout the entire school day, and his principal checking in on him throughout the day and noticing his dialated pupils and lethargy, was the key to finding the right dosage and medication for him. I know that his doctor (who by the way is excellent, and my first cousin), would tell me I needed to watch how he responds to the medication during the weekends, but I can assure you, watching him on the weekends while he rambunciously plays, has nothing in common with the setting he is required to function in during school. I do not give him the medications during the weekend, holidays, nor summer. I want him to eat. I don’t know if it has stunted his growth, because he is quite tall (one of the taller children in his class), although not near as tall as his other siblings were at that age (but I am very short so this could just be the size he would have been off the medications). For comparison purposes: my 10 year old daughter is 5′2, 88 lbs, 7.5 USA women’s shoe; 13 year old son is 5′10, 120 lbs, 11 men’s shoe. They are all VERY thin, like their father, so I can’t be for sure that the medication is causing Jonathan to lose weight, although he doesn’t eat near as much as the other children and before the medication he was not as thin as the other children.

I blame the public school’s policy of having mulitiple teachers each hour of the day for the delay in correcting his dosage, and the lack of keeping experienced teachers–all of Jonathan’s teachers were fresh out of college. I met with these teachers constantly, and the principal, and all I kept hearing was he works fine for me (math teacher as usual) and he does nothing for me (language arts teacher as usual). He was put into the classes for low achieving students or “Title One” which is federally funded, but making A’s with the note that he was below grade level. They suggested counseling, everything. My son has now been in Catholic school for just three weeks, and God has answered my prayers! If his teacher sprouts angel wings, I will not be surprised!

Movers and Moving Companies, thanks for your contribution. It is helpful to balance the picture for those who really have the ADHD condition and what the medication does for them.
While my oldest son was going through a lengthy assesment (the appointments available were spread out) and his final high school exams were approaching we tried him on a friend’s sons tablets.Identical response as yours as the straight forward conclusion from the assesments (final results were great, especially in the maths, a Distinction -without the scatty errors of their practice test failed due to those). It’s the same with me.

My youngest a decade ago gave into the wheedling of a disorganised friend to get a couple of tablets “to get high”. The result was the friend worked hard at all school tasks effectively being well behaved for the day, the only day in the whole year. Unfortunately this boy being the son of a Filipina widow with limited English never was assesed and since has had a chaotic life. A decade ago I persuaded my extremely exhausted husband ( a person who has not any signs of ADHD & is very capable, organised & efficient) to try just 1 and a half tablets to “help?” him with a teaching deadline. He regreted it as those around him enduring the tablets impact on him.He complained of his mind racing , feeling hyped up and was behaving verbally aggresively & just holding off similar actions, all this lasting for a day and a half saying it was like when he’d tried a purple heart at Uni, AWFUL. I’d never give this med to another after that plus discovered it wasn’t legal to do so.

It’s an important contribution when those who with ADHD treated with the medication with definite improvements relay this. Thus more with the condition or their parents become more encouraged to seek proper assesments & access treatment if appropriate.

My sons seemed to have half of their school year friends made up of kids that were bright with ADHD characteristics, a couple got assesed & had it.All were performing at juniour levels the same ( my sons weren’t diagnosed or treated then).By 19 yo the assesed, yes ADHD, treatment lot, commenced performing really well, & now at 29 are doing well professionaly & personaly. The other ADHD suspects, not assesed by 19, appeared to decline, never achieving anything matching their earlier brightness and friendly dispositions. It can’t be known if they really have ADHD, but if it was, being so responsive to treatment it’s a shame the unrealised potential in our current competative limited employment market.

It’s especially the doubts about the value of treatment,misconceptions around ADHD that deter a lot regarding the seeking assesments. A fair proportion of those with undiagnosed ADHD earlier in life have had this condition raised as a possability.

At present I am not attempting to write anything in the mode of even my background studies and profession.
I do actually have an awareness of how to evaluate research (excluding that reliant on detailed terminology & knowledge of medical, pharmological & other specific technical areas) and a multimodal knowledge( theory/practice applic) base – to a fair extent – on psychosocial, physical and other general environmental factors in their impact. I’ve a BA in social science followed by a BSW. I have worked as a social worker (amongst other things earlier) and had to do for my course and assisted others in some research.
On the personal side I’ve got ADHD, and so have my sons. We are significantly far more capable on medication while frustratingly patchy (for us and others) in our performance and general living skills without it.

Our formal studies, the disciplines we come from and then had to apply through work end up shaping the way we process things as much as our personality and background.Likewise not having a formal degree when intelligent and becoming self educated involves other processes regarding how one evaluates things. I’m not suggesting that any is superior over another, but contain differences in the mode & methods of evaluation and use in the terms of appraisals.

Recognising differences like these facilitates the understanding of the semantics used helping a diversity of people to get on the same page. Different disciplines and everyday life can have subtle differences in the meanings terms and words hold when they are being used.

When you stated that you had “done plenty of research on ….etc..” I realised I really was unclear of what and how you may have dealt with it or how general you meant your conclusions to be taken plus another example you’d used. I’d only be guessing in my responses without knowing where you were coming from more fully.

While there are some studies that are not perfect, it isn’t in the favour of the pharmaceutical companies to do them on children where ADHD isn’t most likely the one and only condition from an optimum type of developmental environment,to see the outcomes of the medications’ efficacy.These are the children that indicate the most limited benefits , if any, for the medications compared to alternative interventions and the most disadvantages.
Most persons without ADHD when given the medications to treat this condition, end up feeling and acting worse. If lucky, they may have the brief impact of a stimulant regarding an initial sense of alertness that is usually followed by negative reactions, ranging from illogical irrability,extra activity, feeling awful to exhausted.
True ADHD responds by actually becoming calmer, more focused, cognitively more alert and productive, despite during the initial stage of medication sometimes producing the discomfort of some greater muscular tension, teeth clenching , and appetite disruption.There generally isn’t a need for continual increasing of the dosage rate ( or is it desired) once the optimum dosage and medication has been found for true ADHD. This is very different from a non ADHD person having it work as a stimulant like amphetamines for them, of those that like the temporary effects of an upper.

There have been more and better discriminating later studies, neurological investigations, plus some studies taken over a longer time scale. Many of these have demonstrated increasing evidence of the benefits of medication as well as ways of identifying this condition in neurological aspects.

Possibly in the USA in larger cities where medical practioners and welfare agencies are under massive preassure to seem to deliver some possible response ASAP combined with a greater acceptance of ADHD as a condition & treat it may seem to produce the “foster” kids etc.. possibly medicated wrongly, for a time.
Where I am in Australia, there is a tendency to under diagnose, under treat, limited numbers of practioners dealing with ADHD, an almost phobic fear of giving out these ADHD medications plus a much narrower range of pharmaceutical products for this condition. This then results in a far greater caution in treating suspect cases.

Most of all our welfare system is extremely careful and fearful of having any children in their care medicated with any psychotropic medications. This avoidance of these children being treated with psychotropic medications means it is hoped that social interventions will suffice, at whatever level they can. That is even when medication looks the better option.
Only the most extreme situations with non custodial parent consent end up medicated.
While it may be a bit more laissase faire in some sectors of the USA I’m sure a lot of it is responsible and has had a lot of more recent substantial progress with ADHD.

In Australia some children who look likely to have ADHD ( but may not have had it or with another comorbidity or unrecognised social environmental defecits) with desperate parents do occasionaly get treated ,for a trial period which usually ceases.
No one here with the diagnosis of ADHD can continue recieving scripts without constantly being reviewed.Medication will only be available for more than a trial where there is evidence of sustained improvement of the symptoms being treated untill becoming an adult. Then no matter how much it is still needed, it becomes far harder to get the ongoing treatment.
Australia has a real paucity of service providers who will or have the preparedness or confidence in their expertise to treat adults with ADHD.

I’m fed up with the simiplistic pop critiques of ADHD and the benefits of medications to treat this by people who have not done extensive background exploration of scientific explorations and multiple studies of ADHD with their only appraisal based on a drop of commonsense basic child rearing & odd distant understanding of suspect child situations.

The medications are not a cure all for all facets of what has come with this condition as nor is any other medication for all other types of conditions weather they are from physical or psychological pathologies.

The ADHD medications only facilitate the brain chemistry to become closer to that of the “normal” brain permitting an improved capacity to sustain focus,appropriately timed alertness, properly considered responses, enactment of these etc., permitting more control over impulsive & distractable tendencies that create an overwhelmed exhausted fragmented mental state thus facilitating the expression of the persons true capabilities .

The person will still be subject to the same limitations of any defecits of diet, life style, psychosocial factors, stressors etc. In additiion they will often be dealing with the direct consequences that came with ADHD impacting earlier on them and whatever other limitations & frailties they have themselves and background had.
The positive for someone with ADHD who is treated with the medication with additional support in techniques to overcome such problems is that a treated person is in a better position to more effectively deal with these limitations at some levels.

At one point someone mused that I may have ADD. I took the tests online…end result of it, said that I show strong signs of having ADD. I am more cynical, as time goes by.

I have done plenty of research on big-pharma, how most medical journals tend to be sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. I think about how unethical it is to treat children as lab rats. We all know that the drug studies done all over in sub-contracted pharmaceutical testing centres, where adults are locked up for days or weeks at a time to get a cheque cut to them. Many of them do hop from study centre to study centre, I happen to know people that did do that. I don’t think these centres exist for children, to my knowledge anyways. So all the testing is done outside of the lab by seeing how little foster kid Johnny responds to 10 milligrams to this, and 5 milligrams of that, and if he has a bad reaction we will give this or that to him to curtail the side effects. Next thing you know little Johnny is so full of chemicals he wants to commit suicide.

When I do some thinking I can see how ENFP personalities are quite bothersome to the rest of the population, so I guess it is a lot easier to put an pharmaceutical straight-jacket on them.

Some little things parents could do to prevent hyperactive kids, is not feed them soda pop at all, and start reading and understanding what is actually in the processed foods everyone has conveniently switched to. Could the chemicals they put in the food so that we can easily microwave our foods, be at fault for ADD? The salad dressings are full of so many chemicals with very long hyphenated words for ingredients, nobody really seems to research what the heck it is.

A word to the wise, keep away from high fructose corn syrop. I am interested in a response doc.

We all know that the drug studies done all over in sub-contracted pharmaceutical testing centres where adults are locked up for days or weeks at a time to get a cheque cut to them. Many of them do hop from study centre to study centre, I happen to know people that did do that. I don’t think these centres exist for children, to my knowledge anyways. So all the testing is done outside of the lab by seeing how little foster kid Johnny responds to 10 milligrams to this, and 5 milligrams of that, and if he has a bad reaction we will give this or that to him to curtail the side effects. Next thing you know little Johnny is so full of chemicals he wants to commit suicide.

When I do some some thinking I can see how ENFP personalities are quite bothersome to the rest of the population, so I guess it is a lot easier to put an pharmaceutical straight-jacket on them.

Some little things parents could do to prevent hyperactive kids, is not feed them soda pop at all, and start reading and understanding what is actually in the processed foods everyone has conveniently switched to. Could the microwave be at fault for ADD?

A word to the wise, keep away from high fructose corn syrop. I am interested in a response doc.