My 6 year old grandson (50 lbs) has been on Ritalin LA for almost a year now. He is taking 10mg - 3 times a day. 7:30 am, 10:30 am, and 1pm. This equals 30mg. This has worked fine for a long time but now it seems like it may be time to increase the dosage. Hard time sitting still in school ... etc.
Question ... do you think if he was given the full 30mg in the morning, that we may not need to increase? I am having a real hard time with the thought of increasing his medication.
Maybe you could 20mg in the am and a 10mg at lunch to carry him over the rest of the afternoon. We were going to try that with my daughter,
How long does the med work for him after the last dose is given? Why are the morning doses only 3 hours apart? Just trying to understand what lead to the current administration scheme (the med doses and schedule are taylored to a child's needs). This med should last 6-8 hours, but some kids can metabolize it very fast, or if the dose is too low, the med does not last the full time. Talk to the doc about the individual needs of your grandson to come up with things to try to make the meds work best for him. It may be that a 20mg dose in the morning followed by a 10mg dose at 1 will give good coverage.
Well Diane we think alike. I am more wordy about it though.
vickie39205.5634259259:o)
Ritalin LA is actually a 10 hour (supposedly). I would defintely call his doctor, I'm sure they can work something out.
My brother takes 60mg (2 of the 30mg) every morning...I think it lasts him til about 6 and he takes it at 8 in the morning. Maybe you do just need a higher dose.Thank you for all your responses ... we have a very good working relationship with his doctor and everything is discussed with him prior to any changes.
My grandson was originally put on 1 10mg in the am. That was not enough so he was given 2 10mg in the am and that worked fine last school year.
This year, he started to have attention problems in the afternoon so the doctor said to give him 2 10mg in the am and 1 10mg at lunch. That worked fine for about 4 months and then he started to have afternoon attention/talking problems again ... so the doctor said that instead of uping the dosage ... to give him 1 10mg 3 times a day. That has worked well since Christmas but just in the last few weeks he is slipping back into his old patterns. This afternoon in his classroom he could not sit still. He was not able to concentrate and was easlily distracted. I felt so sorry for him. So again, I am wondering about what is best for my grandson.
My grandson started out taking Fokalin XR and Stratara but had bad ager issues with both of them. He was very agitated all the time. Ritalin LA seems to be a good medicine for him ... I guess trying to find that perfect dosage is always changing.
My ds takes 2 20mg of ritalin SR. It must be a little different from ritalin LA. THe ritalin SR is supposed to last 8 hours.