My daughter was just diagnosed with ADD | ADHD Information

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Hi everyone my name is Noreen and my almost 8 year old daughter was diagnosed with ADD last week.  She is being considered for meds.  The problem is that she has a heart problem and they want to make sure they give her the right medication.  Can anyone tell me how they handle their children with this?  I mean my daughter is a great little girl but Oh gosh she is sooo defiant.  I just dont know how to punish her with her having this. She also misbehaves at school  I have a meeting with her teacher on Thursday. 

 

Any advice you can give me would be wonderful!!

Noreen 

 

If things are not in crisis, you have some time to work with the behavior modification methods to see how far that takes you. I would get this in place for home and school. Then you can add medication to take you the rest of the way if needed. I am glad we had a behavior plan in place first, as it helped us see progress. Then when we added meds we could see further progress. Otherwise we would be second guessing which change was effective and could we stop any of it (this is a tough position to be in).

If she is at risk of severe problems at school (the defiance may be an indication of anxiety), then you might get the whole program going quickly and sort it out later.

The heart issue will require extra medical monitoring, and strattera can take several weeks to see full results once the target dose is achieved.

You can look at the whole picture and find the best way for you and your daughter.

Hi and welcome. Try to educate yourself as much as you can about ADHD. Go to your library and get some books on it. "Taking Charge of ADHD" by Barkley is a classic. Very helpful. Good Luck!Hi Noreen. My ds is 6 1/2 with ADHD/anxiety. He currently takes 15 mg
Daytrana. If you are allowed to use medications with your dd, it should
really help you. Hang in there. You can try different diet and behavior
modifications and see if that helps as well. Try "Love and Logic" or
"Transforming The Difficult Child (the nurtured heart approach)". They both
are behavior approaches that make sense to me whether your child is ADD/
ADHD, ODD, or not any of those. They use Love and Logic with the kids at
ds's school and it is great. I think you would find it helps you as well. Don't
worry, you will figure this out. You are not alone.I would recommend that you read some of the books listed above and do some more research on behavioral strategies before you jump right into medication.  Trust me, I am not saying that medication shouldn't be considered, as my son is currently on meds.  With the heart condition and fact that she was just diagnosed, however, I would recommend trying some accomodations and modifications prior to trying medication.  Just my opinion and I know others may disagree.