"Rebound" is only during that period when the meds are leaving the body. Daytrana is in the body about 3 hours after the patch is removed. The half life (the time for the amount in the blood to decrease to half) of methylphenidate is only 2-4 hours. You should have an idea over the couple of days that follow discontiuance, how well he is doing without meds. There may also be more frustration from him if he is struggling without the meds (having trouble with school work, friends or family). It also depends on the symptoms he normally displays without meds.
When we did this formally (the doctor likes to check this every year), we needed a baseline evaluation from the teacher, so we went for 2 weeks without meds because my daughter has alot of ups and downs. We recently forgot her meds for 1 day and saw a big difference in homework (4 hours and frustration, rather than the normal 1/2 - 1 hour to do the work on meds).
dcarsen, lots of people like this med and I think somebody wrote about something that they sprayed on the skin that helped with the irritation...go check out the thread on Daytrana.oh that is so not good...i just got this as a med today for my 7 year old...we have tryed every drug for adhd and still nothing that helps. agh :-( does anyone have anythign good about htis med??? it seemed like a great thingThere has been lots of good reports on the daytrana patch, and information on removing the backing of the patch, and how to handle the skin irritation if it happens. This unfortunatly did not work for Sheila's son. Try these threads:
http://www.adhdnews.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=20458& PN=1
http://www.adhdnews.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=23595& PN=3
HTH