Medication and aggression | ADHD Information

My son, 6 yrs. old, was on Focalin for 3 months and was much more aggressive!  In school and at home.  He was also more prone to "melt-downs" over little things 

I did not realize it until after a partent/teacher conference, when I put all the notes from the teacher all together that his behavior got much worse on the Focalin.

We switched back to Ritalin and his aggressive/ defensiveness in school improved almost immediately.  His doctors don't understand it and can't explain it.  But I know what I see - he is much better on the Ritalin.

Good luck with the Focalin!      

We just started my young son (+4 years) on 5 mg of focalin(2.5 in the am,
2.5 in the pm). Things have been good but he really started biting his nails
and occasionally being aggressive with other children. My wife claims that
he seems more self aware (less distracted, more focused on what he wants
to do, more protective of his things). He's also had some sleep problem. He
has a speach delay so it's hard to know excatly what's going on with him at
times. We do feel however that he is vastly improved.

Has anyone had similar things happen with their children on these
medications?My son is on focalin .. same dosage as yours .. he is aggressive on it but less aggressive than he was on concerta, strattera, metadate, adderall which we gave a shot. It was horrible.  He is almost 8 and cannot handle too much stims.  And his weird thing is that he has an obsession with picking his nose when on it.  We are still not happy although content for now with the meds.  He is also on clonidine which calms him some but tends to make him sleepy .. and when he is sleepy he is cranky!This kid should see a NeuroPsych to test for ADHD and beyond, particulary high functioning autism, in which speech delays are legendary and reactions to stims can cause aggression (in ADHD stims should not cause aggression). I have a son first dxd. as ADHD, but he is PDD-NOS. He did poorly on stims, had a speech delay and later on it became appearent that he needed more interventions than for ADHD and no meds. I highly recommend it. ASD kids tend to get very anxious, chew on stuff, hate transtiions, don't socialize, have narrow interests, and speech delays is a red flag. Speech delays/problems are not a part of ADHD. Aggression is another sign that it's not ADHD, however any kid who takes stims will seem more focused, at least for a while. Find out the big picture. NeuroPsychs take a long time and evaluate very intensively with performance tests. Other professionals, frankly, do not. His attention span may be improved, but nothing else seems to be. We had the same thing. Good luck. OlderMom38830.7914930556