Experience w concerta

[JennyMominRI]

As some of you know DS 11 was diagnosed(after months of tests) with ADHD. He has been put on concerta.. He spent a week at 18mgs which is a very small dosage and is now up to 36 mgs,starting today. I was hoping some people here had experience with it.

 

[winniedapooh]

It works well for a lot of people but sometimes you will have to watch out for a rebound effect...aka goes off the wall wild when the meds. go out of their system. With that being said, I have known kids who take Ritalin and are fine but others who get very shall we say moody? Just watch and see and hopefully it will work well for your son. Take care Jenny and hope you are well.

 

[JennyMominRI]

Bumping

 

[Momma Rabbit]

My DD took Concerta for a year. We started off at 18mg and went up to the max dose which I think is 56mg. It was a wonderful drug that kept her focused and on track during the school day, but by the end of the day when the drug was wearing off she .....well lets just say she wasn't easy to deal with. We even had to get a second drug Foclin (sp) in order to help her focus and stay on track to get homework done.

This school year she has been on Strattera, which seems to be working well for her. Although, for some odd reason my daughter had 5 times more homework in elementary school than she has this year in middle school The thing I liked about Concerta was she only took it on school days, Strattera she has to take it everyday.

Best of luck to you and your DD.

 

[allie&mattsmom]

Hi there. My little guy (he just turned 9 this month) has been on 36 mg. of concerta for the past couple of years off & on. Someone in a previous post mentioned the effect of coming off the med. Wow...yeah, it got really bad for us. It seemed in the evenings Matt would just melt down at the smallest little thing. It really broke our heart b/c he is usually such a happy kid with the greatest personality! We currently have him off of the med. b/c he was having, as he put it, "shocks in his chest". So after a visit to our pediatrician, we will be going to get another EKG soon before I put him back on the med. When he was 7 we had all of the tests run b/c of the "shocks" he was feeling in his chest and everything looked fine. His ped. thinks it's probably muscular but I will not take a chance. Our ped. has said that the doseage he is on is not enough to really touch him for his height & weight (he weighs about 80 pounds), but I know it helps, especially with his school work so I really do not feel the need to increase it. I really hate the way the concerta changes his personality. He's such a happy, jovial kid w/o the concerta. On the concerta, he would prefer to sit in front of the TV and veg out as opposed to be out playing with his buddies. Here's my biggest problem, we had the most thorough testing done. Started with our pediatrician who insisted he showed no signs of ADHD, but since the notes from the teachers just would not stop, he referred us to a child psychologist. After many more tests, the child psychologist could never give him a clear dx of ADHD, just that he was impulsive and that he thought with maturity, that his impulsivness would improve. Finally, he suggested we try a low dose (18 mg) of concerta to see if the notes stopped. Yep! No more notes! So then we moved up to the 36 mg. where we've been since. I'm sorry, I know I'm rambling, but it's such a sensitive subject for me when it comes to the concerta. Like I said, he's been off of the concerta since the beginning of April, and will be untill I get the EKG results. The promising news is that he has not gotten one single note home from school since being off of the drug and he is my happy little buddy once again. He will definitely be off of the med. until we get the EKG results and if things keep going well, hopefully he'll be off of it forever. I wish you the best and if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to PM me.

 

[Marseeya]

DS has been on it a couple of times. When he took it in middle school, it had a very mild calming affect, but that's about it. He did rebound and rebounded HARD.

Right now he's taking 36 mg of concerta and 10 mg of Ritalin and I'm seeing very little change in him. The doctor is working his way up to the full dose, and I'm hoping by the end of summer, if he realizes that the ADHD meds aren't working, he'll go back to the Bipolar diagnosis and treat it. I'm so tired of spinning my wheels with these doctors around here.

Anyway, sorry for going on. Good luck and let us know how your DD does with it.

 

[Snow Brite]

So from the grey to the white ones. Next are the brown. 36mg is still a pretty light dose for an 11 year old, so he might go to the brown 54mg. Focallin is a good choice as well. Or a small dose 5mg of regular Ritalin can help in the afternoon with homework.

As for the rebound effect, ask your doctor about prescribing Remeron 15mg at dinner time. It is a drug used to treat depression but has the side effect of making you sleepy and increasing appetite. Woohooo! Not so good for depressed people, but for children on Concerta that have a hard time sleeping and cannot keep weight on its a WONDERFUL thing. It also helps them to calm down and relax before bedtime. Our psychiatrist is one of the doctors that has been really prescribing this for the side effects and has seen great results.

I have learned the hard way, that many people tend to have an opinion about the parenting decisions I have made with my children in regards to treating their ADD/ADHD, so I will probably not be checking back on this thread. If you have any questions or just need an experienced ear, please send me a PM.

 

[Marseeya]

So from the grey to the white ones. Next are the brown. 36mg is still a pretty light dose for an 11 year old, so he might go to the brown 54mg. Focallin is a good choice as well. Or a small dose 5mg of regular Ritalin can help in the afternoon with homework.

As for the rebound effect, ask your doctor about prescribing Remeron 15mg at dinner time. It is a drug used to treat depression but has the side effect of making you sleepy and increasing appetite. Woohooo! Not so good for depressed people, but for children on Concerta that have a hard time sleeping and cannot keep weight on its a WONDERFUL thing. It also helps them to calm down and relax before bedtime. Our psychiatrist is one of the doctors that has been really prescribing this for the side effects and has seen great results.

I have learned the hard way, that many people tend to have an opinion about the parenting decisions I have made with my children in regards to treating their ADD/ADHD, so I will probably not be checking back on this thread. If you have any questions or just need an experienced ear, please send me a PM.

Chicken!

Did I make you look???

 

[Pugdog007]

Yeah lots. Green Day is always awesome. Blink 182's worth seeing too... but of course they broke up. Can't go wrong with Bon Jovi.

Oh sorry I thought this thread was about concerts. I'll leave now.

 

[allie&mattsmom]

Jenny- I wanted to add that I don't mean to scare you or anything with Matt's experience on Concerta. As I'm sure you know, all drugs can have a different effect on different people. I have a good friend whose son is on Stratera and has the best experience w/it. On the other hand, our ped. put Matt on Stratera after our complaint regarding the rebound effects of the concerta in the evenings. He prescribed Stratera along w/ the low dose of concerta to balance out the rebound effect of the concerta and it was horrific. Matt was sooo depressed and he finally confronted my DH and me and told us that he felt so sad and how he couldn't smile even if he tried. It was the night before Thanksgiving and I'll never forget we were shopping at Sam's Club when he told us how he was feeling. At that moment, I called our Pediatricians answering service and within 5 minutes his doctor had called me back on my cell phone and stressed that we immediately take him off of all meds and watch him like a hawk due to the suicidal tendincies that certain antidepressants can have in kids. It scared the you know what out of us. So basically what I'm saying is what works wonders for one child may not be the answer for another. My one friend does not feel her child could function without his Stratera, but for my DS, it definitley was not his friend.

Take care.

 

[ducklite]

My son was on Concerta for a few months. It was a nightmare. He ended up suicidal and in a lockdown unit. They weaned him off of that and two other drugs that the doctor who I had always had bad vibes about had stuck him on--turns out that most MD's would never prescribe two of these together for an adolescent--particularly in the dosages he had DS on. We never went back to that Pshrink.

He was psychotic and scizophrenic to the point that he barely new his name, was having hallucinations about a little man sitting on his nose telling him to self-harm, and didn't recognize us. They attributed that to the Concerta.

They had to give him a medication to prevent him from having seizures from withdrawls while they weaned him. He had tremors and wouldn't eat. He lost almost ten pounds in a week--he's slender to begin with, and you could see every rib.

Almost three weeks later on different meds, he left the hospital as a happy, productive kid. And we had found a new pshrink that we were very satisfied with.

Will Concerta do this to everyone? Obviously not. But after I did some reading on it and really began to educate myself on the drugs being prescribed for kids these days, I really question the safety of that particular drug. It seems to have a much higher rate of causing depression and other side effects than it's peers. I would never recommend it's use. There are so many other meds that treat the same Dx with a lot less side effects.

Anne

 

[dbogen]

Wow, I guess I'm lucky. My DS 10 has been on concerta for a little over a year. We don't see any of the rebound effects some of you are talking about. We just bumped up our dosage in January. We do medicate every day (thats what our Dr recommends) and boy can you tell on Saturdaly mornings when we forget to give it to him. Oh he is diagnosed ADHD/ODD

Deanna

 

[Christine]

Both my kids have used Concerta (36 mg) with little side effects. They would get the "rebound" at about 4:00 p.m. but only during the first few weeks of starting the meds. After that, we didn't really notice much. The only thing my DD noticed was that the Concerta sometimes upset her stomach. I think it was that "neat" delivery system/capsule they have.

We ended up switching both kids to Metadate which is the same drug as Concerta, just a different delivery mechanism. It actually seems to work for them both a lot better and we have even less side effects.

 

[Sherrypooh]

My youngest (14) is on concerta 56mg. I do not find the "rebound" or other issues. He is over 6 ft tall and close to 200 lbs so weight loss is aso not an issue with us. We have tried many things (he was on ritalin at age 4) and this seems to work for school. Hope this helps.

sherry

 

[KarenC]

My 18 year old son has been on Concerta for nearly 3 years. He also takes 36 MG. He's graduating from HS and heading off to college in the fall to study architecture. Without Concerta I don't believe he'd be in a position to go away to school. Neither does he.

 

[missypie]

DS 15 has successfully taken Concerta for years. I must be a bad mom- I don't know how many mg a day but it's a lot because he's a big guy.

 

[Mkaz]

Hi Jenny. My DD was diagnosed with inattentive ADD when she was nine. The ped started her on Ritalin. Then he switched her to Ritalin LA. A year later he switched her to Concerta. While they all helped, they had side effects. Mood swings, weight gain, headaches, dizziness, and severe insomnia. The Ritalin and Ritalin LA had less side effects than the Concerta. It was terrible. I kept telling the ped that she was not sleeping. He told me that once we got the correct dosage she should be fine. Well, months went by and no change. My poor daughter was really slipping. She was so tired and miserable. Finally my husband and I said enough is enough. We took her off her meds completely. I know that you are not supposed to do that, but we felt that it was doing her more harm than good. It took weeks for her to start sleeping again. When she finally did, the change was dramatic. The headaches stopped, mood swings changed, and the dizziness was gone. Her weight is still an issue, but not nearly as bad. We feel like we have our daughter back now. Her grades have slipped, but we are working on that. My husband and I both feel that medication was not the answer for her.

I am not saying that Concerta won't work for your son. As with any medication, it may be right for some and not for others. I wish you all the best, and pray that it works for your son.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Well, this boat is crowded, isn't it?

We got a diagnosis of moderate range inattentive ADD for DS (4th grade) earlier this year. No surprise there - we knew that was probably the case.

We tried Strattera for 5 weeks, 1 week at half dose and 4 weeks at full dose with NO change at all. Not good, not bad, NOTHING. Dr. had warned me that Strattera only works in 50% of kids who take it.

Now we have him on Concerta (18 mg), but we aren't seeing much of anything. DS says he feels the same as always, he doesn't think it is easier to pay attention at school. I think the dose is too low, but we are so worried about him not eating that we are trying to stay as low as possible. We are also seeing an amazing amount of grouchy/surly behavior in the evening. I need to call the Dr. and find out what we should try next. It would be nice to figure out what works before school is out, because I don't want him on meds over the summer.

 

[JennyMominRI]

Thanks for all of the advice, persoanl experience etc. DS is doing well,of course he's only been on the meds 10 days with 3 days at 36 MGS..I'm not seeinf any rebound effects but I'll keep watching. I do see a slight decrease in appetite . It's hard for me to see how it's effecting his sleeping patterns as he has always had trouble with sleeping. He says he feels he can concentrate more. Whether or not that's all in his head or meds related has yet to be seen.
At school he does Daily Oral language and he is never able to focus on it or pay the attention to detail . Hemisses all the small grammatical, punctuationn type mistakes on it.. He usually ony get maybe 3 out of 5 each day and this has been frustrating him all year..This week he got 4 out of 5 every day except yesterday when he got 5 out of 5.. I'm hoping this is the meds at work.

 

[Deb in IA]

I've prescribed it quite a bit, and only a handful of patients have had problems.

Mostly, parents and kids like it a lot. Much more even effect; no ups and downs like short acting Ritalin. Kids like not having to take a noon dose at school, and parents like the continued effect into the evening hours to cover homework.

Best wishes for your son!