Our youngest daughter is now 10 years old. She was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of five in the very last quarter of Kindergarten. She was started on Adderall, then switched to Adderall XR.
It has been very effective. But she has really bad mood crashes in the evening after coming down off of the drug. We tried her on Vyvanse last year and it put her in a constant state of anger and did not work at all to treat the ADHD.
We put her back on the Adderall XR. Well the mood crashes seem to be worse this year, she is quiet, not sad not happy just melancholy, withdrawn, not active at all, fatigued. It was bad enough that we took her off the meds this past December but her grades nosedived literally, and she is just unable to concentrate well enough to stay on task. So for the third period her grades dropped to 1 c, ds and fs. This was from As and Bs in the Second period, As, Bs, and Cs in the first period.
We would like to try another med, but after the experience she had with Vyvanse we are worried about doing more damage than good.
Does anyone have any advice? We are taking her into the doctor this week to talk to him about changing her meds, but we would like to go in with some ideas of our own.
She does not have any pre-existing conditions. She is just ADHD. She is severe enough that behaviour mod is not enough to get her over that hump. It was inherited from her dad, and out of the three children that he fathered, all three have ADD/ADHD, the other two however are borderline and do not require medications. They respond well to behaviour modification and maintaining a healthy routine.
She is not as physically active as the other two, but she is mentally high functioning, and she is in constant motion mentally. Off the meds she was reading 4 books at a time, but remembering none of them. She has what we call a party in her head. She will go and go until she just crashes out into a deep sleep.
She is 4'8 and weighs 84 pounds. She was tested using two different tests, one is the Vanderbilt and other I can't remember the name of. One by a pediatrician, one by a child psychologist. No other issues were found with her, no depression, no anxiety, nothing.
Any suggestions at all? We tried lowering the dose of Adderall XR but the side effects persisted with no impact on her ADHD. She currently takes the 20mg dose.
Thank you to any of you who have some suggestions for us. We are stuck.
She didn't have much difference between the two with the mood crashes. The non extended release just stopped working after noon each day. It was really the only difference between them.
I brought this up on another forum and was told to try to taper her down with a caffeinated beverage in the afternoon as the adderall xr was starting to wear off and so far it has worked. We will see as her levels of adderall xr start building back up in her system if this continues to work.
I hate the idea of having to have her go through a med change.
When I took Adderall XR, it made all the side effects of regular Adderall, and even ones I usually did not get with regular Adderall, worse. My Mom tells me that my mood is a lot grouchier when on Adderall. But there's no "miracle pill", I suppose. Have you considered going back on "short- term" Adderall, or did you get mood crashes with those as well?That was the first medication my son was put on...Adderall XR.... 20mg. It worked great for a few months, but all of a sudden he seemed to need more, so he got a second dose at noon, but it was 10mg, and that did not help. That actually seemed to make things worse.
Pediatrician told us to take him off. He was acting really psychotic, crazy-like. Nobody had ever seen him like that before. It was really like something had taken over his mind/body, because the things he was saying and doing were not anywhere near normal for anyone, let alone a 6 yr old boy.
So she put him on Ritalin, less side effects she says. We are now playing with that to try and get him on the right dosage. I myself think maybe he has something else besides the ADHD. I do believe he has ADHD, but I don't think that is all he has. We finally are getting in to a child psychiatrist Thursday, and I can't wait to see what they think.
Sometimes I think the pediatrician and psychologist think I don't know what I am talking about and can't handle my own child. I asked the school if they had a video camera, to record his crazy behavior, just because of that. I want my son to be properly diagnosed and put on the right medication asap, so he doesn't fall behind, and can stop being labeled as the bad kid!!