Hi, my 11 yr old was just diagnosed with ADD and started Concerta 18mg. Just wondering if anyone else has had success with this prescription and at what mg. Also anything negative id be glad to hear too. Thanks

How is he doing on it today? If there are no problems - REJOICE!

My son was started on it a while back, maybe about your son's age. It made him very dopey. Because of side effects with his current meds though, doc is going to try him on 36 mg concerta again, and I'm also interested to see how he does now on it, now that he's older (16 1/2).

he is doing fine with it, no side effects . But im wondering if his dosage is enough. Its hard to tell what will be helped with the medication and what is just my sons normal behavior. He is on the smallest dosage. His teachers say he gets more involved in class but is still has to be reminded to get on task quite a bit. At home i dont see a difference in him from his non medicated state.

It's a slow process. You can watch and report that he still has certain symptoms and then tell that to the doc and then the doctor can raise the dosage.

Just report and observe the details. People always ask, "how will I know if it's working?" ... Well that's the wrong question, too broad, too intimidating.

Instead, just observe all the minor stuff ... the challenge here is that if you are just new to thinking about adhd, there's sometimes a tendency among adhder's and their parents to want to not "see" certain behaviors as behaviors that can be improved. That's one thing my adult adhd diagnosis has shown me: how many problems I kept "off the books" with myself.

Just observe the details, write them down, notice grades, relationships with friends, moods ... it's ok to report "a little improvement" on this, "I'm not sure" about that, "not much change" here, etc. "He's still having problems in this," etc.

That's what doctors prefer: they prefer for you to report as many details as possible and then let them add up the clues and information and recommend a change. It is also perfectly acceptable to say to the doctor, "I haven't seen much change. i'm wondering if we can go up to 27 mg a day or 36 mg a day ... and then you do the same process of observing and reporting back to the doctor ...

This may continue for a while through several drugs. That's totally normal.
Basically the goal is to keep adjusting the dosage until you see really really good results (understanding the pills don't work magic).