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!