Advice on medication for 7 year old

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My son's behaviors at 7 were effectively dealt with by controlling his environment. We located and honored his sensory needs, located and mitigated the stress factors in his life, etc. It is a rough road because an AS child can be stressed by so many things we don't understand or even see, but it can be a very effective road. If you can go this route instead of medicating, it will really pay off. But, that does depend on how many co-morbids are involved and how severe the issues are. That I cannot say for anyone else, and I know some families have found medication to be life-changing. It is a really tough choice to figure out at this moment in time which is the road for you. Trust your instincts is all I can really say.

For us, however, information was life-changing, but it wasn't overnight. It was years and years in the making. At 15 my son has never been medicated, is about to get his Eagle, acts in all the school plays, and is a straight A honor student. 8 years ago I could never have predicted any of that, or even seen it coming. I had hope, but not much to base it on, because day to day was such a struggle. Explaining the road from A to B would require me to write a book - or nearly 9000 posts . Can I say that this forum has been a life saver? So much great information! Do read Tracker's book at ASDStuff.com

DW's post makes an important point. Medication is by no means the only route. There are often so many issues that are really environmental and sensory that cannot be addressed with medication. Even the anxiety for some children can be reduced to manageable levels by addressing the specific environmental issues one at a time. When I say address, I don't mean just avoid. It often includes avoiding to some extent, controlling the level of the environmental issue, teaching coping skills, practicing coping skills, age/development, introducing/limiting to only one challenge at a time, providing sensory breaks, providing schedules, making visual schedules, teaching expectations through social stories, improving communication by teaching nonverbal skills, facial expression understanding, emotional vocabulary, pragmatic language skills,...
and these are just the first to come to mind.

I agree with both of you.

In some cases.

I do believe there are some...subtypes, perhaps?...of issues that cannot be addressed by environmental changes or teaching or sensory breaks or schedules or whatever, because the issue is simply a physiological one. I believe that to be true of my son when we put him on medication.

It's kind of like saying sometimes Type 2 diabetes can be controlled by diet and exercise, but sometimes it simply can't.

I only point this out because my own delay in getting my son the help he needed (meds) was because I was convinced that we could find some "other" way of dealing with his issues. But for as much as I hated having him on meds, I think for him it was the only viable alternative.

I just don't want to leave anyone believing that if you try hard enough to find non-pharmacological means of dealing with issues that you always will be able to. Sometimes you can't.

The hard part is figuring out where your kid sits.

Yup! We waited until DS was 10. Sometimes, I wonder if he would have had to go through so much if we had started earlier. I also wonder if he has been emotionally scarred by it all. I could "what if.." myself to death. So, I choose not to and make the best decisions I can, and adjust when necessary, and try not to beat myself up when the thing I try backfires.

I don't know if I will ever completely rid myself of the guilt. I think it is because I view my pig-headedness to be the root of the problem, so it would have been completely preventable if I would have not been so "stuck." If I would have come to the conclusion to not medicate based on a rational review of all the evidence, that would have been one thing, and I could live with it better, even if I ended up being wrong. But for me, it was just simple rigid adherence to my belief that kids are medicated way too much. I couldn't see the other side, which is "but some kids still need medication."

I think it is so hard to see which side is right. It is very much an instinct decision, and it is very very important to hear all the stories. Guilt can happen for any decision you realize is wrong, and there are scary stories from parents who medicated and realized they shouldn't have. It has to be the most difficult decision we all make.

I have unrelenting guilt over something my son has long forgotten and recovered from .. just, me trying to be a firm parent when I didn't know how much he didn't understand, and how far I had pushed him. Sigh.

I was pretty stubborn about medication but I felt my reasoning was clear: I wanted to see where my son's issues were coming from, and see it cleanly, without a mask to make things easier. And he was on board with me about it; we used to talk about it when things got bad.

Some factors that I think made medication contra-indicated in our unique case:
-No evidence of depression
-No evidence of anxiety
-The only thing that was making him miserable at intervals was his own reactions to things around him. And homework
-He was and still is a basically happy person, despite the terrifying rage-like meltdowns
-He was testing well at school, even if not to his full capacity, but still well above average
-The writing co-morbid was the issue and difficulty; in a lot of ways, I always felt that his stress was natural given the challenge he faced there
-Even at my most frustrated, I felt there had to be something more to try
-We had excellent support from the school and a really helpful team to run things by
-My son is very high functioning to start with
-I was medicated, lol

The meds scare me, too. We are doing our best to stay away from them, because of family medical issues, and because my son's behavior is well within the OK range when his environment is well controlled. I do not want to medicate, when his big problems are localized at school. I cannot say never because the future is unknown, but right now we are trying to get him to work on executive function issues without the meds, and we will see how it goes.

I definitely think there are kids that don't need meds, that maybe can be helped by changing their environment or responding to them in different ways.

We didn't see huge changes with meds -- just small ones for the first five years. But the bottom fell out in 8th grade, and it seemed like not only could my son not pay attention to ANYTHING in school, but we literally had to sit next to him from 3:00 pm to midnight some nights -- most nights -- in order to get homework done. I asked him numerous times if he wanted to be homeschooled, and he said no, that he would miss his friends. Apparently, I have a social aspie. So my only alternative was to try the meds. We had a full year of confusion, after trying med after med, dosage after dosage. I honestly was just about ready to give up when something clicked, and it was like a light turned on. We went from having to help with homework full-time, to not having to help at all (well, rarely). I almost didn't know what to do with my free time!

Now, don't get me wrong -- there are days when I wish we didn't have to do meds. I probably annoy the doctor a lot when I ask questions like "can he ever do what he needs to do in life without the meds?" I kind of like my son off the meds -- now, when he's off the meds, he's slightly hyperactive, which I think makes him more fun. But it's shocking to see how he cannot make decisions, cannot answer quickly, cannot do a lot of things when he's off the meds.

I always wonder if, off the meds, if he would learn to adapt. I think he probably would. But, in the meantime, he wouldn't be able to get good grades in school, wouldn't be able to concentrate on standardized tests, and might not be able to achieve the things that he can do intellectually. Thinking is his strong suit -- he doesn't have athletic or social skills like other young men -- but thinking slowly is not valued in our society. The stimulants make it so that my son's thinking is close to what other kid's speed is.

What's your child's diet like?

My Kasey is on a large cocktail of medications to control grand mal seizures. They wear her out and cause her to become emotional and cry a lot. If she was able to function at all, I would opt not to have her drugged up. There are other ways you can manage your child's behavior, CBT therapy,behavior plans, etc. I don't believe in medication for ADHD, I think it can be controled with behavior modification techniques. I, on the other hand, have no choice to medicate my daughter because without medication she would be very miserable. In my opinion, use the meds as a last resort and let your child live a normal childhood. The best of luck to you and yours.

I agree that meds should be a last resort and no one should consider them an easy solution. I just want to point out that ADHD is not a behavioral problem. It is a neurological condition that may have behavioral effects. I agree that some kids with ADHD may not require medications, but it is not true that it can be "controlled" with behavior modification. Behavior modification might teach compensatory strategies, but they cannot change neurology. To say that you had no other choice but to medicate your daughter, but imply that parents of kids with ADHD had a choice not to, but did so anyway, really is not fair.

I am not trying to pick a fight or cause hard feelings, but coming to the decision to medicate your child is hard enough as it is. No one ever needs to feel criticized or judged for it. Many people might read this thread and never even contribute to it. I want to go on record to dispute the idea that ADHD can be "controlled" with behavior mod. Not always. Sometimes medications can be life changing in a very positive way. Sometimes it allows a child to live as close to a "normal" childhood as is possible when considering one has a neurological condition that affects every aspect of their life. It is up to each parent to thoroughly research all alternatives and then decide what they feel is best for their child.

Psych meds should not be taken by children, especially at age 7. The problem is most likely external, and not her fault. We live in a world that is very hard on children. Schools are terrible places, and there is a real disconnect between what kids experience, and what adults, teachers, and psychiatrists think is reality.

Look at her diet. Is it balanced? Does she get enough protein and iron? Is she drinking pop, and eating candy? Those contribute to bad behaviour.

Sensory issues are a huge problem with me too. Not because I have overactive senses, people stink, they're loud, obnoxious, and aesthetically very unpleasing. Your child is dealing with all of this. Life for a child has never been worse, and medication will only only exacerbate the problem.

Environmental pollution, and pollution in the food and water are really messing children up these days.

Try naturalnews.com for some tips. They've helped me a lot.

Just a heads up. Naturalnews dot com is NOT a reliable place to get health information. The amount of mis-information and bad science on there is such that I don't even know were to begin.

I'm a chiropractor. I believe in alternatives. Natural news is not a good source of information about alternative methods.

This is a necro thread. OP is probably long gone.

Appropriate for halloween, don't you think?