Having Tough Time with ADHD Meds

[Riss]

My 6 yr old son has ADHD. We have been working on trying to get him on the right medication since May. We started out on ritalin, then moved on to metadate ER; neither meds worked - they gave us inconsistent results. He's currently on adderall (we just upped it from 5 to 7.5 mg). Now, according to his kindergarten teacher, this doesn't seem to work. I get the impression that her basis for saying it doesn't work is that he is unresponsive in class. The meds do appear to help his attention span a bit at school; however, it has also left him very anti-social. Our son is VERY shy to begin with and actually has some social anxiety problems. The medication we've tried seem to intensify this to the point that he doesn't want to talk or interact at school. We've even enrolled him in a social skills group to help him interact with other kids, but that doesn't seem to help (he seems fine in his skills group but it hasn't translated into the same results at school).

Has anyone ever gone thru a similar situation where the meds seem to inhibit your child from interacting with others? I am wondering if we don't also need to consider some social anxiety medication for him as well. But then I'm also concerned that we may start to overmedicate him.

[Trooper Keith]

Most social anxiety medications would not be recommended for children his age anyways...Adderall is basically the strongest of the stimulant class of medications, so if it's not working and not having an effect, there are few options left to try. If he is able to be more attentive, then it may be worth sticking with that...

Other medications to consider would be Strattera...since it's a non-stimulant, but I don't know that it's necessary...

Stimulants are known to increase anxiety, so if the stimulant is causing anxiety problems, you may want to consider medications to remove the anxiety...but I dunno.

Anyone else?

[Ichpuchtli]

I myself have gone through that before and now i am not taking meds I can acctully start a converstaion unlike for the last year on meds where I was really anti-socal also I have noticed that I am much happier person without meds. Also is everyone else in the class paying attention because if they are not she may just be noticibng him because even on meds it does not help whne normal people don't pay attentiom.