I have a 10yr old son who was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 4. I was afraid at first because I did not want him to be like a zombie. We started out on adderall 5mg and over the next two years ended up 20mg and added 20mg of strattera. When we went up to 20mg on the Addreall he went nuts...he got suspended from school three times in two months. We switched to Concertta in the mornings and kept the strattera at night. As of two weeks ago he was on 72mg concertta in the morning and 40mg of strattera at night. My son had a series of allergy related problems and was prescribed 10mg of singulair. Two days after starting the singulair my son was suspened from school and had expressed that he wanted to die (to a teacher as well as writing it in a notebook). Terrrified that he might try to do something I called his doctor who told me that they should not have interacted with each other but to take him off of the singulair immediatly. Now starts the last few weeks of torment. The doctor decides that my son is on too many stimulants and we still do not have the desired amount of control over the ADHD. The first step that we took was to lower the concertta to 36mg add focalin 15mg in the mornings and stay with the strattera at night. We did that for 4 days, went back and dropped the concertta all together added another 15mg of the focalin(total of 30mg) in the morning and stayed with the 40mg of strattera. It has been 4 days now and my son has no control over his impulses. He is mad all the time, stomping, yelling, slamming doors, and crying. Right now I am waiting on a call from the doctor, who said that if the focalin did not work then we would put him back on the old regimin (72mg concertta morning and 40mg strattera at night) and add respridol at night.
I do not know what to do or how to act around my son. We are walking on eggshells trying not to set him off. We also have another son who is 3 and they are fighting all the time, they can't be in the same room without the older one getting mad. Things are pretty stressful around here right now. I was hoping to find some advise and encouragement by posting my story.
Thanks to everyone who has some encouragement or advise to share with us.
hi and welcome. My daughter also takes a stimulant and Strattera. We split the doses on everything. So she takes 20mg Methylin and 25 mg Strattera in the a.m., 10 mg Methylin ER at lunch and anotehr 25 Strattera in the evening.
What does your son weigh. Strattera is very weight dependant and too low or high a dose can impact mood.
hope this works out for you. His Strattera could go up if the aggression continues. His target is 36-63, so he's on the low end of target.
Good luck
he weighs 77 lbs, the doctor got back to us late last night, we are back to 72mg of concertta at 6am, and 40mg strattera around 5pm. This has worked for well over a year now, the problem is the aggressiveness.
I have never thought about the strattera being the problem, when we upped it from 20 to 40mg we did not see any negitive effects. The only time that we have run into a major problem is when we hit 20mg on the Adderall, and when we went to the Focalin last week.
thanks, I will bring this up to his doctor. I don't know how she will react to wanting to add more strattera because she made the comment that he is already on such high doses of both for his age