What can a child take at lunch time to help get them through the rest of the day?
DD (age 7) is currently taking 15 mg at 7am...and then is a mess after 12:30.
Any suggestions?
My 9 yr old son takes 10 mg focalin XR at 7 a.m. He is a skinny kid, very active. It gets him through the school day, he is out at 2:50. If he has stuff going on after school, he takes a 5 mg focalin at the office (chess club, after care). He would be a mess without this dose. Impulsive, mouth noices, lack of self control, weepy. Every kid metabolizes a dose differently. My son can make it until the end of school. If your child would benefit from a booster dose, try it. Most schools already have a program in place to accomodate this situation. No stigma, since it is administered in the nurse's office. We are on the verge of starting to give him a booster dose every day, just to get him through homework. Check with your doctor to determine what they consider a max daily dose for your child. My son also takes 1.5 clonidine at night, which helps to supress his tics and knocks him out. Our philosophy is that school is my son's job and any tools we can give him to help him do his job better, we're on it. I hate hate hate having to medicate, but it has made such a huge difference in so many areas.the focalin seems to not be lasting long enough. Sometimes increasing the dose gets a longer active period or a second dose before the first one wears off. By "mess" do you mean rebound or emotional. Focalin can cause increased emotional lability. Some times a lower dose for the second dose can be helpful for increasing effective time and easing the period when the med is wearing off.
Talk to the doc about the options that seem best in this situation.
My son takes 10mg of Focalin XR at 6:45am (is there a way you could delay her AM dose any to get it to last longer throughout the school day) and then my son takes a booster dose of 5mg of Focalin (short-acting) at 2:30pm to get him through the afternoon therapy sessions he has. It's working WONDERS!!!We added 10 mg Foclin short acting at 11:45..right before lunch. So it should be in her system by the time she gets back into the classroom. I am waiting to hear if the teacher saw the differnce or not today!
I am also freaked out she won't sleep tonight. We did the Ritalin LA with a 5 mg chaser at noon last year and she didn't sleep that night. Which just really makes all things worse the next day. I didn't even give it to the nurse yet because of this...I just went in and gave her the dose at lunch time. *being sneaky*
Maybe she'll get through soccer practice tonight too...fingers crossed it works out! I'll keep you posted!
She's doing great with the noon medication! Yeah...I don't want to get TOO excited because I know it can all change in the blink of an eye. But it feels really good to have her dosed right. She feels so much better!
Thanks all for your advice! You all make this so much better for me!