Mornings | ADHD Information

My child is a pain in the mornings too. I love the idea of outside grounding. I will try that. That may just be the thing to get thorugh to him.Have you considered the daytrana patch. They have the same type chemical makeup. It goes on 1 to 2 hours before wake up. It only requires you to wake up early to put on the patch it last between 10 to 12 hours after it takes affect. Good luck.Have you considered the daytrana patch. They have the same type chemical makeup. It goes on 1 to 2 hours before wake up. It only requires you to wake up early to put on the patch it last between 10 to 12 hours after it takes affect. Good luck.for mornings i use an alarm across the room. he knows that he gets a consequence if he gets back in bed after turning off the alarm. i call him for breakfast. he does not come. i tell him that he will lose 15 min off friday night bedtime if he is not at the table in 5 minutes, dressed. if he gets that consequence, i tell him he has 5 more minutes and then he loses his friday night dessert. i taped a list of things to the back of his bedroom door that he has to get done to be ready for school. when he gets to the table for breakfast, i set the timer, and tell him the timer shows how much time he has left to eat and finish everything on the list. if he does not finish before the timer goes off, he cannot walk to school with his friends; he has to drive with me. reminders in the morning to finish things on the list are a "service" that i provide. for each reminder that i must give to him, he must pay me .00, which i collect immediately. Mouthing off is an automatic timeout. this cuts into the time he has to get ready to go. arguing with his sister gets the 1-2-3 magic count. i have the children dress and eat at different times. while boy dresses, girl eats, etc. i keep them separated basically. Jessica N39562.7762615741I've tried the outside grounding but it has no effect.  He does not think about what will happen later he only thinks about what is happening at the time.  I spoke with his teacher on Friday and she said he had a really rough week at school also.  I"m thinking it may not be just the medicine.  He seems to be having mood swings.  I don't know if this is a result from the meds or not.  This morning was great.  It seems to be the mornings are either great or horrible.  There is no inbetween. My 8 year old son was diagnosed with ADD in October.  He is currently on Focalin and it seems to be working fine but our mornings have become horrible.  The past 2 weeks I have thought I was going to lose my mind. He is very mouthy, does not listen and tries to start trouble with his 7 year old sister.   It is very hard to discipline him because we are trying to get out the door to school.  I can tell him when he gets home from school he is going to lose going outside or has to spend some time in his room but he doesn't seem to care.  Then when he gets home from school he is his normal sweet self and then I feel bad that I"m not letting him outside to play and run off the extra energy.  I also feel bad for my daughter because she is very well behaved and I can not give her any extra attention because I'm using all my energy on my son.

Does anyone have any suggestions or know if this is just something they go through at this age?  I"ve tried the marble system in the past and it does not work for him because he requires instant gratification. 

Just my opinion, but I found with my kids if I tell them they are going to lose something after school. i have to follow through with it. otherwise its just an open ended threat, and they learn that you wont follow through with it. my husband and i were both really bad about that. then i realized my son had caught on, so it was time to nip that and it made a world of difference.

i found one thing my children hate more then anything is when i tell them that they will be grounded outside. which means, they will have to go sit on the deck and watch the others play. :) it works better then sending them to their room or taking things away. nobody wants to be grounded and sitting on the deck with nothing to do but what your brother/sister play. but it works.

 

My husband and I have been following through with it even though I feel bad and it still has not made a difference.

I've even taken away guitar lesson which he loves and he does not care. 
Diane V-  Did you have any problems getting her to eat breakfast?  Once his meds kick in he doesn't really eat much so I try to get a good breakfast down him before they take effect.  

unfortunately yes it did affect her breakfast, but we did what we had to do. Another option is to have hime take a short acting med as soon as he wakes up (5 mg) and eat right away. That med would kick in witin 20 minutes and they only last four hours. So you could give the XR med on the way out the door and by the time it starts to take effect the short acting is on it's way out of their system. We did this on certain meds too.

These were all the reasons we ended switching to Strattera.

I wake my son up to give him his meds and let he go back to sleep. He wakes up by himself about 30-40 minutes later. It makes the mornings so much better. He still eats breakfast.

We are doing Vyvanse, which doesn't seem to suppress his appetite as much as Adderal XR did.

mornings are always SO hard and they know it.

I used to wake my daughter up an hour early, give her meds, let her go back to sleep. She woke up again meds in her system and it was SO much easier.

I don't know if this will help you, but we made charts. One is in our ds bedroom and has a list (With clip art) ...For instance 1. Make Your Bed (Clip art of that action) 2. Get dressed and so on...The last one says "Eat Breakfast (clip art)" so ds does that then heads to the kitchen, where on the fridge is a list .. 1. Eat   2. Put dishes in sink  3. brush your teeth...then in the bathroom and so on until his shoes are on and his bookbag by the door.  He gets timed as well, it leaves him with about ten minutes of 'free time'.  He can play or watch t.v. or nap...whatever! as long as he's ready.

Turns out, it's a little much for our ds (he's only 6) but I'm holding on to them and we'll be re-inforcing when some maturity can settle in a bit more.  I've gone back to dressing him and being on top of things for him at this point. It makes for smoother mornings and I'm willing to do almost Anything for that! I'm sure you know how I feel, ha ha! But the charts, I think, cut out a lot of the chaos of mornings.  If you gave your daughter one, she could benefit as well because you could give her some real praises and maybe some rewards for doing her list.  You know she'll do it and then you get to give her some of that 'extra attention' she is probably seeking.    Anyway, if you decide to try it-let me know how it works.

Good luck!