what now? | ADHD Information

well,i'm ready to hang myself,my son who is almost 6 was on ritalin 10,then i asked the dr to put him on a longer lasting med because the short ones were having the evenings horrible. so he started on concerta 18,which did'nt do anything so then he was upped to 36, well for the first time in his life, life was great we stopped arguring in the evenings and life was good. after 3 weeks i can see that again he has started to act up again,the other day we went furn. shopping and he was running up and down, and messing with all the recliners and etc.(just an example) so what now? there isn't a high dose is,does someone have a suggestion?he is very lightweight 37 lbs.

My daughter had the exact problem when she first started taking Concerta 3 yrs ago at the age of 7, except that she'd go 6 weeks before her behavior became a problem again. After upping her dosage to the most it could be upped due to her weight, her doc then tried her on Adderall. The same thing happened, after 6 weeks her problems would start back up. Her body kept adjusting to the medicine. So, her doc came up with the idea of having her take one med on the weekdays and the other med on the weekends. Now, she'll go about 6- 8 months before the meds stop working. When that happens, we switch the meds - ex: if she had been taking Adderall on the wkdays and Concerta on the wkends, then she would do Concerta on the wkdays and Adderall on the wkends. This has been working like a charm for 2 yrs now. Ask your doc about this protocol but try the Adderall first because sometimes Adderall works better for a child than Concerta and vice versa.

Hang in there. We understand what you're going through!