child violent | ADHD Information

my 6 year old son has been diagnosed with adhd is on ritalin type medication, have done 123 magic behaviour program and most of the time behaviuor is managed.

however he is very violent mostly towrds me, althpugh getting more often towrds other children. as he is getting older he is hurting me more

any advice please

 

 hi r111/

my daughter is on concerta she takes now 32mg, she is also volient towards me as well, and takes lots of her frustration out on me and her sister, my daughter justss gets so frustrated with herself. have you seen any concerllors, or talk to the school, sally has a reward chart or things taken off her if she is harmfull, what sort of things does your child do, sally self harms by biting herself and punching and kicking me and her sister, the best way is to go back to your doctor and explain,

 

is this worse since meds?My question would be the same as Diane's.  If the behavior is worse since meds, then the meds aren't the right ones for you.

My daughter has been violent in the past.  This is the reason we sought help initially.  We had no idea she had ADHD before then.  With right medication at the right dose and behavioral interventions, I have a totally different kid.

A few things that have helped.
Don't yell or engage them during a tantrum.  My daughter feeds off our emotions and things will escalate faster than you would imagine.   It also stimulating to them.   It turns into a very vicious circle.
Reward everything positive that you can.  For my daughter, we simply tracked every time she complied with a request - no matter how big or small.  It was her "OK" chart.   We did this for about 8 weeks when she decided she didn't need it any more.  It was very positive and she felt good about herself.  It was simple and easy for use to follow through on.   She also never would loss tallies that she earned.   Focusing on one behavior at  time made it much easier.   Pick the battle that matters most.Some behaviors - like hitting - should be categorized as "never" behaviors.  The consequences for these needs to be VERY expensive.  At one point, my daughter had pretty much all of her stuff taken out of her room and then had to spend an entire weekend it for a particularly bad incident.   (I'm not saying this is what you need to do your child, but this is what it took for her to get that we were totally serious.)   Since the weekend in her room,  she really tries much harder to control herself.  The number of violent and their severity went down.  She did spend a few more shorted stays in her room after that, but generally has been really good.  (A dosage increase of her Concerta also helped)My daughter didn't have a good feeling vocabulary.   Everything came out as anger.  She needed to learn what it meant to be disappointed and frustrated without that turning into anger and rage.  There is a great poster out there that shows the many faces of anger.   She could see that a disappointed face looks sad and not one that is going to smash and throw things.
Get professional help.  Working with a therapist was the best thing for our family.  It helped tremendously.   I have read more books on behavior and ADHD and attended parenting classes and this was the best thing we did.  Having someone help coach you with your specific situation is great.Good luck through this difficult time.

You have been given good advice from the other posters. My youngest used to get into violent rages. It turned out due to her frustration/anxiety/depression with school failure, no friends and escalating conflict at home (homework wars with her dad every night).

We did many things:

For the rages, we kept our cool during the rages, told her (when not in a rage) that her room was a safe place for her to go to get control and then she could come to us and work out the issue, praise her for any small improvement (even if it was short lived), separated ourselves from her (but not too far, to keep her safe) until she was ready to talk and as soon as she was calm, we would tackle the issue. She wants so hard to have some control over her life and she has trouble with transitions so we gave her alot of control of when things were done and how to transition from one activity to another.

We got her an IEP to help with school issues which had a special ed teacher that was caring and helpful.

We tried different meds. When the meds were not quite enough, the frustration and anxiety would reappear with time. When she was beinig teased, we worked with the teachers and school and added risperdal for the aggression.

She now has a wonderful teacher, many friends, when there is homework, it tis done quickly, things are happy and calm at home and we even dropped the risperdal (but I have a script if she needs it again).

A psychiatrist can help with  the med management and a psychologist may be able to offer play therapy and parent guidance (we did this for a few months).

Good luck on this difficult journey. It will get better.

My son was at one time very handsy and hurtful towards me with kicking etc.  I found play therapy with a licensed therapist to be the best thing for us.  I have learned ways to handle him and he has learned ways to handle his anger.  We have found that if he has an "angry" journal this can be helpful.  One where he can rip up pages etc.... for however many pages angry he is. This seems to help him calm down and help him to manage his own anger.  It  helps, believe it or not.  Another trick for us was to provide him with an inflatable punching bag.  He can go in and hit it during one of his moments or we bring it to him.  Again, I truely feel play therapy is  imperative for our children if they have impulsive issues. 

We also watch diet to some degree.  We found just changing the types of food and providing more protein in his diet has helped our son tremendoulsy.  We found out in testing and assessing our son for ad/hd that he had reactive hypoglycemia.  We had no idea until the psychiatrist suggested we have a glucose tolerance test done while we were intially seeing him to determine if our son had ad/hd issues.  He told us that reactive hypoglycemia can trigger the impulsive issues such as anger outbursts. 

We have continued play therapy for over two years.  We go less often ...once a month but I feel that is a preventative measure for my son.  He loves going.  He is now 6. 

We also keep our son active in sports as we have found this is a way for him to release his energy.  We chose soccer as it was fast and interactive with others. 

We still have our moments but honestly it gets better with patience and time.  With a few bumps along the way. 

We use Focalin XR 10 mg. and have had no complications from it since we began two years ago.  We did make an increase this school year.

4myson39488.7136342593All I can add is get a good behavior plan now and stick to it for you need to nip it now before your child grows up.

My 5 year old son also has hitting/kicking problems with adults.  We initially tried Adderall last year and had terrible results.  He was okay with the regular Adderall but with the XR he really reacted badly.  This year we tried Metadate XR with similar results.  The attentiveness was great, but he was so moody (crying at little things) and got so aggressive we had to hold him down to control him.  These are not normal behaviors for him.  He is aggressive when he doesn't get his way, but not like that.  We decided once again that stimulants are not going to work for him.  I'm curious if stimulants also do not work for your child.  Is he on an extended release type?  It may be too much for him.  I think the regular would work for my son, but he has terrible time after it wears off.