Treating children with ADHD?

[Bluesdad]

Our DD12 has ADHD and takes 36mg ER of Concerta and it's really helped. We did have problems with her not sleeping and eating problems too, until we started also giving her (per her Doc) Magnesium (1 at night before bed), Omega 3 capsule, and a multivitamin. We've really noticed a difference. I would ask your doc about the vitamins. The Magnesium is supposed to help calm.

 

[torinsmom]

My DS13 has ADD and started out with Concerta. He got up to 27mg and it helped for awhile, then stopped working. When they went to 36mg, he had heart palpitations and so they didn't want to continue. We just got a prescription for Adderal, so we shall see. His is just for the attention and focus.

OP, I teach preschoolers/kindergarteners in one classroom, and I am amazed that they keep all the kids down for 2 1/2 hours! We have kids who will sleep for that long, but after an hour, the kindergarteners and anyone else who is awake can get up and go back to work. The longest any child is supposed to sleep at our school is 2 hours. I would check with someone at the school about this excessive resttime. I am sure other parents feel the same. Some of our parents get upset about the 1 hour, but each teacher gets a 30 minute break, so it is necessary. It also gives the kids who need to rest time to get to sleep before we let the other kids up.

Does your child get any services at school? We have a K who is ADHD and we arranged for him to see his resource teacher during resttime, so that he doesn't have even an hour rest. He is also able to bring books and puzzles to keep him occupied during resttime.

Marsha

 

[sbpuckett]

I should backup and clarify a couple of things about DS5. We started the year at public school and on day 4 the principal called my school and had me leave my class to tell me that she didn't think he was ready for school. He had already had 2 years of pre-K and I already knew he was a handful but I never felt she gave him a chance. I told her that we felt he was more than ready but this was a very different schedule than anything he'd ever done and we wanted to give him time to adapt. The following week she began suspending him every chance she got. His behavior changed from somewhat disruptive to violent and I knew there was something wrong. We were working on getting him tested to find out what the issue was, but she wouldn't even give us time to do that. She ended up putting him on administrative homebound and his hb teacher ended up being a special education teacher at the same school. Fortunately for us she gave us a heads up about what was really going on and we were able to head the principal off. She basically was trying to get him placed in special ed (before he was even diagnosed with anything) and more importantly wanted him placed in a class for students with behavior issues. The reasoning for this we found out was that there was no class of this nature at their school and he would have to change schools (thus, she wouldn't have to make any attempt to help or deal with him, much less have his behavior show up against her school's "report card"). I immediately called the board (as I'd already done several times over the previous weeks) and requested he be dropped from kindergarten. I pulled him out of her school, refused an further testing (school-based), and any further progress on the special education proceedings. I also wrote a letter to the board and requested that all of his records be purged so that they would not follow him for the rest of his education.

The private school he is in right now is a preschool offering that teaches the Abecka (sp?) kindergarten program. This will be considered his kindergarten year and he will go to first grade next year. The special education teachers have all recommended I not have him put into sp. ed. classes. Before we pulled him from school he was tested (called PALS here) and tested in the seventies with a 24 being a passing score. His psychologist actually told me that he felt that DS6's problems was the school itself.

The only issue we have at the new school is the naptime. I will write his teacher a note and see what she says. I rarely see her because she usually leaves before I get there in the afternoon.

Finally, I made a mistake regarding his new meds. He is actually on the Metadate 20mg. I don't think it's enough because he generally takes it around 6:15 am and we get home around 3:30 to begin homework and it's already worn off. Not to mention the nap issues of course...

I really appreciate all of the help thus far. Please continue to add more as I think we can all use all of the help we can get, right?!