Getting overstimulatied during recesss | ADHD Information
From just reading the post, I can tell his meds need to be increased! When ever he takes his medication and they do not help him have a successful day, you need to look at both the dosage AND the medication itself.
When we first started the concerta, our son's dose would be changed overnight. He moved up fast.
You may also want to look into guanfacine.
My son is ADHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHD. He leveled off at 72mgs of concerta in the course of 6 months, he moved up quickly. But when ever his doctor added the guanfacine, it really changed his day for the BEST!
He is very impulsive and easily overstimulated. The guanfacine, like the concerta, really helps him in these areas.
Best wishes, as it seems like just yesterday I as his mother was going through the same stuff!
Please post any questions or concerns that we can help with. We have all been in your shoes with the meds!
BETHANN39172.8673958333I'd recommend play therapy done by a licensed counselor. Sometimes I think we rush into meds (and I mean increasing meds) when really we should be looking at the whole picture. My son is on a low dose of meds, on a high protein/low carb daily diet,and attends play therapy. I have found this to be very productive for him.
The teachers even have mentioned the difference they have seen in my son over the past year. Night and day difference. I contribute play therapy to most of his improvement. 
By the way my son use to be highly stimulated and impulsive. He also use to have run-ins with other children and now he is amongst them being a kid just like the rest. Some of his run-ins stemmed from not knowing how to express himself.
He still has his moments but they are much easier to handle and much more under control and I once again contribute this to his learning how to express himself through the help of his play therapist/counselor.
4myson39172.9148958333[QUOTE=4myson]
I'd recommend play therapy done by a licensed counselor.
Hello all...
I agree with therapy. Our Jacob (7 year old - 1st grader) gets "play therapy" and that has helped with his recess problems.
I think you need to give this time to pass. The weather is getting better (we live in Ohio) and the kids are all excited and anxious about getting to play outside. They seem to be adjusting to a new schedule and that can be frustrating. I also think allergies have something to do with this too. (I'm having trouble with my own reaction to pollen.) Also, since we have learned that diet effects the brain, is your son eating lunch before recess? What is he eating, or not eating that might cause over-stimulation?
As far as increasing the dosage of his med, how is his behavior after recess? Does he calm himself down after returning to class or does his behavior get worse? If he gets worse after recess, then you may need to consider his meds.
Our Jacob gets over-stimulated on the playground too, because it's VERY, VERY important to him. Often he gets bent out of shape because recess didn't go his way. Either he didn't get to do the things he planned, another child didn't play with him, or he was either physically or emotionally hurt during a game. He was suspended last fall because of a recess conflict where a girl cut in front of him and he hit her.
As a father, I think we need to stand back and let our kids figure out how to socialize. When they have trouble, we can help them figure out what went wrong. But there are times we need to intervene, espcially when we know that our child is being bullied, or when the school needs adult supervison on the playground. At times we've suggested to the school principal that Jacob might do better if he stays inside and performs a task such as cleaning the lunchroom or helping a teacher with something in the resource center. We've also thought about going to school during recess to monitor Jacob's behavior. But so far, we have not needed to do that, yet. It seems as though whenever Jacob gets into a bad situation, he learns from it and for the next few weeks he's ok.
We also have been rewarding him for good playground behavior. For bad playground behavior, he loses a karate night. This has really worked well for us, as long as we enforce our threats.I had a long chat with my child's teacher yesterday. While he's doing great on his new meds dose in the classroom, recess continues to be an issue (problems started when his body went haywire at the start of pollen season. He's on a ton of allergy meds already, so we can't do anymore to control his pollen response, and it's not a reaction to the allergy meds because he's on them all year round for indoor allergies). The teacher went outside on Wednesday, and she could see that my child was totally out of sorts. Based on his body language and his eyes, she could tell that the ADHD definitely was a problem. Not surprisingly, he did a batch of hyperactive and impulsive things that bothered the other kids. Yesterday (Friday), he screamed so loudly near someone's ear that the poor girl cried for a very long time. The teacher said that she's seen several times that, when one child gets a little excited, my child now seems to have a switch flip and really get going, and it's basically impossible to reign him back in. So, we need to figure out how to avoid flipping that switch. Does anyone have any ideas how to prevent overstimulation at recess? My child tends to gravitate toward the more active boys, so calm activities on the playground seem unlikely to happen. He tends to play soccer, dodgeball, etc.