My daughter is almost 6 years old and was diagnosed with adhd about a year ago. She is also autistic, but she has always been extremely full of energy and unable to focus on much for very long.

We started with Focalin but didn't see any real results, so they switched us to Adderall. It seemed to work alot better but the rebound effect in the afternoon made her worse than she ever was before meds. So they switched us again to Vyvanse last October.

At first, it seemed vyvanse was a miracle. I noticed that the 30 mg dose wasn't lasting very long into the afternoon so they upped it a little bit. That caused her to become very aggressive (and while I know 5 year olds can get that way sometimes, it was very very out of character for my normally happy go lucky little girl). So we took it back down to 30. Then we noticed the medicine was wearing off before 11 am so figured NOW would be the time to take it back up to 40. WRONG. This made her OVER focus on things. She would only want to watch 1 cartoon episode over and over and over. She wouldn't want to run around and play, she didn't smile, she just sat dazed. I hated it, it wasn't my little girl anymore. So back down on the dosage. Around the beginning of March she started chewing on her shirts, on the sleeves and sometimes biting herself in the process. Around this time I stopped giving her the meds on the weekends since that would be time for being a 5 year old, not focusing on school work. When the chewing continued on the weekends, I assumed the chewing was a new self stim more related to the Autism (even though she's never been much of a self-stimmer). Since then, the chewing has gotten progressively worse and the aggression has come back. We tried taking the meds back up and back down again, but with no real benefits.

Last week I gave up completely on the Vyvanse and called her doctor to change it. Along with the aggression and tics, the appetite decrease and sleep problems bothered me. So we took her dose down to minimal (maybe 20 mgs) to keep from seeing any withdrawl effects while we waited for our doctors appt yesterday. The chewing has started to lessen, but the aggression is still there. Not only that, but of course now she's hyper and unable to sit still in school or focus on any tasks they give her.

I requested the doctor to try a non-stim medication, since we'd already done 3. He aggreed and prescribed Strattera, which I'm hoping will be the start of the solution. I'm so worried about her, and I understand that it will take a few weeks before we start seeing any improvements. I'm wondering when the aggression from the stim drugs will wear off though. It's much easier to deal with her hyper if she's not throwing things and screaming at you. I feel so bad for her teachers too. But I'm crossing my fingers, hoping for the best, and researching a lot on the forums to better educate myself on what to expect.

The doctor said we could stop the Vyvanse since we had cut the dosage down low for a week, but I'm wondering if I should maybe give her half doses for another week just to help the hyper-ness until the Strattera can start to work or if I shouldn't in the hopes that once the Vyvanse gets out of her system completely the aggression will wear off.

Swallowing the capsules whole might be a problem with the Strattera. The doctor didn't reccomend it, but said if we have to we have to. Any parents out there who's doctors have allowed them to open the capsules and any extra negative side effects with this? splitting the doses over the course of the day would be no problem.

Sorry for my first very long post and all the questions. Any thoughts or opinions are welcomed, something to get my spirits back up about all of this!

My son is 8 and he was diagnosed with Tourettes, ADHD, and OCD. I chose not to do meds for a long time but then he started not sleeping at night. his dr. (a new dr. we just moved to a new state) took one look at him and handed me a prescition for Vyvanse before I had even finished filling out the ADHD paperwork, and then told me to give him benadryl at night to put him to sleep. I noticed right away that the Vyvansw made his tics act up. The dr. told me to open the capsules and take out 1/2 and see how that did. So I did that for a couple of days and it was as if he had no medication in his system. So then I started taking out 1/2 of 1/2 and that worked fine. When I told the dr. it was working and asked him to write a new prescription he said he would not write a new script and I should keep taking out what I had been since that was working for him and in a month (when the script was gone) he would write him one for a lower dose, however, there was no 25mg dose so he would have to write it for 20mg (he was prescribed 30mg initially) I switched drs. deciding this one was an idiot and now he is on strattera. first was a 10mg dose. He was short tempered and had no impulse control. The new dr. upped his dose to 18 mg. I thought upping would make it worse but it has helped. He tends to be a little short tempered at times but nothing like it was and all other symptoms are better. When he does lose his temper (usually with his 3 year old brother) he usually just yells out at him to stop what ever he was doing to agrevate him. I am planning to talk to the dr. about this later this week but over all I am happier with it than the vyvanse.
So yes my dr. did have us breaking open the capsules but I was not happy with that so I switched drs. there is no way for you to know exactly how many mgs. your daughter is getting if you are taking some out. You can estimate it sure but that's not an accurate doseage, and lets say (like in my sons case) you find a dose that works by pulling some out but vyvanse doesn't come in the dose you think you are giving her, than what? And what is it doing to our children if each day they are getting a slightly different dosage? It keeps their system off balance and that causes emotional stress for them.
Anyway, just my opinion but you can always tell your dr. your not comfortable with doing that and see what he says.