In our experience we saw a huge difference immediately. It usually takes 2-4 weeks to see the full effect but by then you should be noticing a difference in behavior. I would call the doctor and see about different meds and possible play therapy (this helps A LOT!!). With stimulants you may see sleeping problems at first but that can be fixed by giving him Melatonin. It is safe and over the counter (all natural) that helps promote sleep. You can start off with like 1 mg and up it to like 3 mg if you need to. We use it and it works great.
Once again I would talk to your doctor and see what he thinks but it sounds like (from our experience) that the meds aren't working. The beginning is the hardest time (and scariest) because of all the experimenting to find the right medicine but it does even out. Just keep with it and you'll be fine.
Oh, and Welcome!!
The goal with medication is maximum benefit, minimal side effects at the lowest dose possible. However, several medications may have to be tried before the right dose and med for your son is found.
When the child is on the right medication and dose, the child should experience maximum benefit and results are seen immediately. There is no ramp up effect as stimulant medications are not blood level medications so the medication wont be more effective a week or two from now if its not the right dose and right medication for him. This is only true of Straterra which is a non stimulant. Straterra is a blood level medication and it could take up to six weeks before maximum benefit is seen.
My advice is to speak to your child's doctor about this as the medication may have to be changed. This is not uncommon with ADHD med's and that's why the patient goes through a trial of med's. What type of doctor is treating your son and managing the medications? Being seen by a specialist is critical in the treatment of ADHD and med management and while the child is going through a trial of med's, only a specialist is knowledgeable enough to put the child through a proper trial. I think your on the right track but patience is the key so speak to your child's doctor about making adjustments. Good luck
My son is about to be 9. He has been an "experimental" program for ADHD where they are testing the combination of guanfacine and Focalin XR. For the first 4 weeks he was just on the guanfacine. Mostly it made him tired but there were some small benefits in his behavior.
Then he was placed on 10mg Focalin XR. This seemed to help a fair amount and the doctor increased his dose to 15 mg. This was a real problem as it actually made the hyper/inatentive problems worse and he all of a sudden stopped sleeping (to the extent that he would be up half the night.) He was returned to the 10mg dose and it seemed to help a little but we recently went on vacation for 10 days and he was great for the first three but horrible for the rest of the time while on the same meds at the same time of day.
Overall, I was expecting to see more of a turnaround than we have seen and I am considering taking him out of the program so that we can look into other medications that may work better for him. I mean, I read about children taking the medications and really turning 180 deg from where they were. I guess my question is whether I should be seeing him really improve or whether it is more of a small improvement I am looking for. At this point I cant even be sure that he has actually seen an improvement from the meds or not.
I am sure I am not unique in finding all of this hard and frustrating. One problem is that my son has always had periods in which he has done better than others. He might have three or four days when he does better for instance. This makes it hard to assess his progress on medication. It is also hard to be dealing with a problem that depends so much on my own assessment of his progress.
Any advice that people may have would be great. As I said, I am thinking that the best thing may be to leave this program which would allow us to try some other medication that might be an improvement over the ones he is taking now.
Thanks
In our experience with meds we found meds to be very helpful but in conjunction with a better diet and play therapy. The combination is what we feel is the best for our son. My son has been on Foacalin XR 10mg. for about a year and prior to that 5mg. since he was 4. He is 6 1/2 years old. As you can see in our case we haven't had to make any major changes. We've had no sleeping issues, eating issues(other than the normal picky kid eating).
Side note...with the diet we are not strict. He still is a kid. We just make sure we provide a good protein/low carb diet as often as possible, as our psychiatrist really believed in a nutritional approach along with the med etc. He discovered with blood work that our son was hypoglycemic (reactive) and thus explained to us that this can be a contributer to our son's impulsive issues. I really feel this is the case as when my son eats more carbs we see more of the impulsive issues come to surface. Hope this helps some. Good luck.