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Moderate_THIS
New member
Big Rick Rock said:
Easy enough, complain about strattera or other med's side effects until he goes the amphetamine route.
By golly doc the only side effect I have increased focus! And the occasional bloody nose!
How many of you have adult ADD / ADHD... How many of you had it as a child.
- Thread starter Big Rick Rock
- Start date
Easy enough, complain about strattera or other med's side effects until he goes the amphetamine route.
By golly doc the only side effect I have increased focus! And the occasional bloody nose!
Deus Ex Machina
New member
Synpax said:
I get so pissed off when docs prescribe kids ADHD/ADD meds like Pez candy. Nothing that a little discipline can fix. Parents just don't want to take responsibility to discipline their kids, so instead they give them meds to turn them into lambs...
Moderate_THIS
New member
WODIN said:
uh huh
D
DcupSheepNipples
Guest
WODIN said:
A Wicken on Adderall, good times!
Ooh, ooh, ooh, me, me, me!
I didn't get "diagnosed" 'til my late 20s though, after I bombed out of grad school. The four years between graduating with a BA, and attempting grad school, were enoung for me to forget all my study and coping skills, skills that I didn't even know I'd developed.
Mine seems to be getting worse with age, I'm having a harder time coping with things that I used to have enough discipline to work around. Reading anything longer that a couple of paragraphs is a major chore for me now.
I had a bad experience with my brief attempt at treatment. In the mid-1980s, some idiot Psychiatrists decided that Haldol was good for adult ADD. That's a fucking anti-psychotic! Turned me into a zombie. I stopped taking it, and never went back.
I didn't get "diagnosed" 'til my late 20s though, after I bombed out of grad school. The four years between graduating with a BA, and attempting grad school, were enoung for me to forget all my study and coping skills, skills that I didn't even know I'd developed.
Mine seems to be getting worse with age, I'm having a harder time coping with things that I used to have enough discipline to work around. Reading anything longer that a couple of paragraphs is a major chore for me now.
I had a bad experience with my brief attempt at treatment. In the mid-1980s, some idiot Psychiatrists decided that Haldol was good for adult ADD. That's a fucking anti-psychotic! Turned me into a zombie. I stopped taking it, and never went back.
Buddy_Christ
New member
Synpax, Dues Ex Machina - in some cases, both of you may be correct. but not in all. i hate seeing it when parents can't take responsibility and raise their kids right. you need a license to drive a car, but don't need one to have kids. it sucks, but how can we change it? i do not think that you can make a blanket statement about all ADHD "cases" and say that all parents just want to medicate their child and not deal with the problem.
do either of you have children? it's been my experience that a lot of non-parents believe they know how to raise children and have all the answers. i'm not trying to flame or bash either of you. not trying to start an arguement, just having a discussion. i do see this situation a lot though, and it really pisses me off. i am not trying to point fingers at either of you and say "you don't konw what you're talking about because you don't have kids." and yes, i do agree that a lot of the time, parents just want to blame everything except themselves for how their child acts. those are the people that should not be parents. again, not flaming or bashing either of you, just making a statement.
spend a few days with our little girl, unmedicated, and i think you'll agree that ADHD and ADD do exist.
My step-daugher is ADHD. there is no doubt about it. no amount of discipline can get her to even pay attention to you for a 30 second conversation. she can't sit still without fidgeting. if you say that we havn't disciplined her enough, then what do you want me to do? the last thing i could do is beat the living shit out of her. i'm not joking. that is how bad it is. we've tried and continue to try. that's all we can do.
here's the other thing. she craves attention (so help me god if someone says attention Wh___, that's not even funny, we're talking about a child). it's part of being ADD and ADHD. no amount of attention is enough. it's a drug to them. they do not care if they are recieving positive or negative attention. if you're not giving an ADHD child positive attention when they want it, they will begin to mis-behave in order to get ANY attention. we've tried to ignore it, but guess what? when she decides to pick up a toy and wail her brother in the head with it (he's only 3) or is breaking shit in the house to get attention, what the hell am i supposed to do? ignore it and it will go away? and this is not a joke, this has happened. we do discipline though. she runs in the house, we've started making her walk across the house 2, 3, maybe 4 times, to try to drive the idea into her head that she HAS to walk (we have hardwood floors, our son fell once, chin hit the floor, and almost bit his tounge off, he bit into it DEEP, i don't want a repeat of that with her). she inturrupts, she gets ignored. she mis-pronounces words (she does this on purpose), she'll end up having to say it 3-4 times afterwords (this is working quite well actually, i'm impressed). each behavior has a punishment, and they're constant. the corner is utilized as well. she's not sitting in a chair in the corner though. she's standing (yeah, some therapists say sit the child in a chair in the corner...fuck that. stand...hands at your sides, not leaning on the wall). i can tell you honestly, we do everything discipline wise that we can short of hitting her. you can't hit your kids. if you do, you're a bad parent. the school finds out, they'll call Child Protective Services and they'll take your kids away. bunch of bullshit IMO. i think if the kid won't listen any other way (and you've legitimately tried) then giving them a whack is a good way to "wake them up." but that's just my opinion.
she does get praised for behaving. she does get praised for being good. when she does something good, she is given positive attention. don't try and tell me she's going for negative attention because she's not getting enough positive attention. that may be the case with some children, but not the case with ours. attention is a drug to her. doesn't matter how it comes, as long as she gets it.
as part of the constant desire for attention, the other day in school since the teacher was ignoring her bad behavior, she decided to pull her dress up over her head and try to strip down to her underwear, claiming the dress was making her itchy. this was after she had been wearing the dress for over 3 hours and hadn't complained or been scratching before hand. well, she won, she got the attention she wanted. the school can't let her run around in her underwear. all her previous attempts for attention through bad behavior had failed, so she got as extreme as she could.
she started on Ritalin last Febuary i believe. she was on it for a month and a half. the ritalin made a drastic difference in her attention span....it suddenly increased dramatically. she was a bit calmer, could sit still longer (not as long as most kids her age, but any improvement was great), and was trying harder in school. she started to develop a tolerance to it, however. the dose was increased, but after 2 weeks, the doctor decided to switch her to Strattera and drop the ritalin completely. the transition onto Strattera was rough. it starts at a low dose for 4 days, then you increase to your maintenance dose. the first 3 days on the low dose she was like a zombie. day 4 she was a bit better. then we went to the maintenance dose, and it took 3 days for her to adjust again. i felt bad for her. after she adjusted to the mainteance dose, however, her moods and attitude started to improve. she wasn't as jumpy, fidgety, and unfocused, yet she was happy. it was great. she never acted like a zombie or just completely out of it. she was a normal child with a slightly shorter than normal attention span. she was not a perfect child on strattera. she still required a lot of discipline. it was not a "cure" but more of a "tool" to help not only us, but her, so she could focus in school. family and friends could see a difference, but she was still hyperactive. life with her was good. we could have conversations. she'd ask me how things worked and i could explain them to her. granted, i'd have to refocus her every minute or two, but it was much better than w/out medication.
we, however, lost sight of the fact that the strattera was a "tool" to aid her and us, and not a "cure." she ended up back on ritalin AND strattera. this is where we screwed up. we are both adults and can admit it though. i also talked to one of my uncles. one of his children is ADHD (he has 4, the other 3 are fine). they put their son in a similar situation....he was over medicated. they took him off of all medications, waited 2 months, and put him back on strattera. it's been a year and a half now and he's doing great. the doctor took our girl off of everything, but then perscribed her Wellbutrin. that was a huge mistake. it's a damn anti-depressant. i have no clue what in the hell he was thinking. it was like she was smoking crack when she was taking that. we took her back to the doctor after a month, we told him that the Wellbutrin was a bad idea and what her behavior was like, he increased the dose...and the behavior got even WORSE! after 2 weeks, we took her off of it on our own. her behavior settled down within a few days. still overly hyper and inattentive, but much less so then while she was taking Wellbutrin.
as of this morning, she went back on Strattera. i feel bad for her because she's not quite herself. it will take a few days before she adjusts to the drug. i'm looking foreward to that, i hate seeing her like this, but this is just something that has to be dealt with for a few days. she doesn't have much of an appetite either. i just keep reminding myself that this is temporary. if this is how she would act all the time on strattera, i wouldn't put her on the drug.
strattera is not an amphetamine like ritalin or adderol or any of the other ADHD drugs out there. there is no potential for abuse with it, unlike other ADHD medications. this time around, we will treat it simply as a tool to aid us. we both need to work on her behavior, and we need to have a set course of action for each behavior we need to change in her. while we have done this before, we've lapsed, and that's our own fault, not hers. it takes all of us to make a change in her, not just medications. we will treat the strattera as a tool, nothing else.
hope we can make it work this time around
do either of you have children? it's been my experience that a lot of non-parents believe they know how to raise children and have all the answers. i'm not trying to flame or bash either of you. not trying to start an arguement, just having a discussion. i do see this situation a lot though, and it really pisses me off. i am not trying to point fingers at either of you and say "you don't konw what you're talking about because you don't have kids." and yes, i do agree that a lot of the time, parents just want to blame everything except themselves for how their child acts. those are the people that should not be parents. again, not flaming or bashing either of you, just making a statement.
spend a few days with our little girl, unmedicated, and i think you'll agree that ADHD and ADD do exist.
My step-daugher is ADHD. there is no doubt about it. no amount of discipline can get her to even pay attention to you for a 30 second conversation. she can't sit still without fidgeting. if you say that we havn't disciplined her enough, then what do you want me to do? the last thing i could do is beat the living shit out of her. i'm not joking. that is how bad it is. we've tried and continue to try. that's all we can do.
here's the other thing. she craves attention (so help me god if someone says attention Wh___, that's not even funny, we're talking about a child). it's part of being ADD and ADHD. no amount of attention is enough. it's a drug to them. they do not care if they are recieving positive or negative attention. if you're not giving an ADHD child positive attention when they want it, they will begin to mis-behave in order to get ANY attention. we've tried to ignore it, but guess what? when she decides to pick up a toy and wail her brother in the head with it (he's only 3) or is breaking shit in the house to get attention, what the hell am i supposed to do? ignore it and it will go away? and this is not a joke, this has happened. we do discipline though. she runs in the house, we've started making her walk across the house 2, 3, maybe 4 times, to try to drive the idea into her head that she HAS to walk (we have hardwood floors, our son fell once, chin hit the floor, and almost bit his tounge off, he bit into it DEEP, i don't want a repeat of that with her). she inturrupts, she gets ignored. she mis-pronounces words (she does this on purpose), she'll end up having to say it 3-4 times afterwords (this is working quite well actually, i'm impressed). each behavior has a punishment, and they're constant. the corner is utilized as well. she's not sitting in a chair in the corner though. she's standing (yeah, some therapists say sit the child in a chair in the corner...fuck that. stand...hands at your sides, not leaning on the wall). i can tell you honestly, we do everything discipline wise that we can short of hitting her. you can't hit your kids. if you do, you're a bad parent. the school finds out, they'll call Child Protective Services and they'll take your kids away. bunch of bullshit IMO. i think if the kid won't listen any other way (and you've legitimately tried) then giving them a whack is a good way to "wake them up." but that's just my opinion.
she does get praised for behaving. she does get praised for being good. when she does something good, she is given positive attention. don't try and tell me she's going for negative attention because she's not getting enough positive attention. that may be the case with some children, but not the case with ours. attention is a drug to her. doesn't matter how it comes, as long as she gets it.
as part of the constant desire for attention, the other day in school since the teacher was ignoring her bad behavior, she decided to pull her dress up over her head and try to strip down to her underwear, claiming the dress was making her itchy. this was after she had been wearing the dress for over 3 hours and hadn't complained or been scratching before hand. well, she won, she got the attention she wanted. the school can't let her run around in her underwear. all her previous attempts for attention through bad behavior had failed, so she got as extreme as she could.
she started on Ritalin last Febuary i believe. she was on it for a month and a half. the ritalin made a drastic difference in her attention span....it suddenly increased dramatically. she was a bit calmer, could sit still longer (not as long as most kids her age, but any improvement was great), and was trying harder in school. she started to develop a tolerance to it, however. the dose was increased, but after 2 weeks, the doctor decided to switch her to Strattera and drop the ritalin completely. the transition onto Strattera was rough. it starts at a low dose for 4 days, then you increase to your maintenance dose. the first 3 days on the low dose she was like a zombie. day 4 she was a bit better. then we went to the maintenance dose, and it took 3 days for her to adjust again. i felt bad for her. after she adjusted to the mainteance dose, however, her moods and attitude started to improve. she wasn't as jumpy, fidgety, and unfocused, yet she was happy. it was great. she never acted like a zombie or just completely out of it. she was a normal child with a slightly shorter than normal attention span. she was not a perfect child on strattera. she still required a lot of discipline. it was not a "cure" but more of a "tool" to help not only us, but her, so she could focus in school. family and friends could see a difference, but she was still hyperactive. life with her was good. we could have conversations. she'd ask me how things worked and i could explain them to her. granted, i'd have to refocus her every minute or two, but it was much better than w/out medication.
we, however, lost sight of the fact that the strattera was a "tool" to aid her and us, and not a "cure." she ended up back on ritalin AND strattera. this is where we screwed up. we are both adults and can admit it though. i also talked to one of my uncles. one of his children is ADHD (he has 4, the other 3 are fine). they put their son in a similar situation....he was over medicated. they took him off of all medications, waited 2 months, and put him back on strattera. it's been a year and a half now and he's doing great. the doctor took our girl off of everything, but then perscribed her Wellbutrin. that was a huge mistake. it's a damn anti-depressant. i have no clue what in the hell he was thinking. it was like she was smoking crack when she was taking that. we took her back to the doctor after a month, we told him that the Wellbutrin was a bad idea and what her behavior was like, he increased the dose...and the behavior got even WORSE! after 2 weeks, we took her off of it on our own. her behavior settled down within a few days. still overly hyper and inattentive, but much less so then while she was taking Wellbutrin.
as of this morning, she went back on Strattera. i feel bad for her because she's not quite herself. it will take a few days before she adjusts to the drug. i'm looking foreward to that, i hate seeing her like this, but this is just something that has to be dealt with for a few days. she doesn't have much of an appetite either. i just keep reminding myself that this is temporary. if this is how she would act all the time on strattera, i wouldn't put her on the drug.
strattera is not an amphetamine like ritalin or adderol or any of the other ADHD drugs out there. there is no potential for abuse with it, unlike other ADHD medications. this time around, we will treat it simply as a tool to aid us. we both need to work on her behavior, and we need to have a set course of action for each behavior we need to change in her. while we have done this before, we've lapsed, and that's our own fault, not hers. it takes all of us to make a change in her, not just medications. we will treat the strattera as a tool, nothing else.
hope we can make it work this time around
