Irritability is becoming unbearable!!

I am still recovering from an extremely difficult day with my daughter. She is 8, diagnosed adhd at 4 (pretty extreme). She is currently on Focalin XR which works great. The problem is, when it wears off, she becomes VERY irritable. Today we had a pool play date with neighbors which turned into a nightmare. As her meds wore off, she began to fight with the other kids (over a pool toy which she wanted and wouldn't share with anyone else). She then proceeded to go into my neighbor's basement playroom (not supposed to be in house)and would NOT leave. Threw tt when I escorted her back outside. Finally had to leave with her (by leaving I mean I carried her up the street while she repeatedly tried to hit me and scream at me). By the time I got her home, I was so upset that I felt physically ill. Had to go get my other 2 kids who were still in the pool! Just wondering how everyone else deals with the irritability. I don't want to change her meds because we finally found one that works well (after a year of trial and error and a total waste of a school year). Any ideas or helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

My son was on this for a while and ya it worked great for a while but he had a hard time coming off of it too. They switched him to short acting and they did good for a while but now it was causing depression so they took him off of that. Believe me its hard! They might be able to give her something else to ease the down time I had temper tantrums until age 10 AT LEAST. I don't know what my mother did to help but I can tell you from personal experience that in the throws of a temper tantrum, I found it impossible to calm myself down. I often forgot after a couple of minutes what I was throwing a fit about in the first place. I got so caught up in the tantrum that I couldn't focus on anything else. I will tell you that sending me to my room was not effective. The tantrum just continued there - I'd throw things around in my room and scream and slam the door repeatedly. Scolding and corporal punishment didn't work either. I think you did the best thing by removing your daughter from the situation so she could calm down in private. It's important to not get caught up in a shouting match or power struggle. I think it's vitally important to talk to the child after the tantrum about what could have been better to help them prevent the tantrum in the first place. I can tell you that I didn't like having them but I was completely out of control. Couldn't help having them. I think it's also important to have that conversation but to keep it short. Attention span for the conversation is likely to be limited. Don't lecture but have a real conversation. I never felt good afterwards and it would have been great if my parents would have handled things differently but that was the 70s.

Good luck.

Your child may be experiencing rebound based on the information you shared. The medication should go in quietly and go out quietly. Since you found the right med for your child, it may just have to be tweaked. Also, once the medication wears off if the child is in a stimulating environment, the ADHD symptoms come back fiercely as the child is over stimulated and overwhelmed and in this type of situation, behavior medication standing alone is ineffective for the most part because they cant stop what they cant control. They are not making a choice to act out. Speak to the doc asap about perhaps tweaking the med's.

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