Mom of 8 year old son with ADHD

[Baylee11]

Hello! I am new here and my 8 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD 2 months ago. It has affected his ability to learn in school and he hyper focuses on building Legos and playing video games! He is full of anxiety and it just breaks my heart watching him struggle. I am starting him on Ritalin tomorrow morning before school and I am a wreck! I have been going back and forth with this decision for 2 months and my husband snd I agreed to give it a shot. My main concern is he has a poor appetite and is under weight as it is I can't let him lose any weight! This has by far been the hardest decision of my life as a mother! I love my son more than life! Can anyone reach out and give me some input? Thank you!!!

[KKMom]

It is so difficult to decide to go with medication. I also struggled with guilt due to my son having ADHD, ODD, anxiety and situational depression. Parents know when it is time for a change so you are taking the right leap. My son is almost 11. He was diagnosed in kindergarten and we waited all year prior to starting medication. It also took a few different trials of medications and combinations to figure out what works. My son also started exhibiting anxiety but not until about 3 grade. He then also started to have situational depression. He is not on any medication for anxiety as of yet but it does seem to help some when his ADHD medication is working.

As far as the weight loss, my son was in the 5% for weight and height prior to us starting medication. He has basically maintained his percentile for his age. We made sure at night to give him more than just a snack at bedtime. Sometimes he was so hungry, I would feed him another meal 1 hour after supper. Just the last 6-9 months, we have been taking a medication vacation on the weekend. This allows him to eat more as he is moving in to the teen years and we can manage his mental better off medications as he gets older. On the medication vacation, he eats all weekend long and this has helped his weight. Our psychiatrist also says that low appetite will only last so long in kids and then the medication will not cause decreased appetite and will eat and grow just as other non-ADHD medication kids.

All the best to your family and hope the first few days of medication went well. If it doesn't keep trying. Blessings!

[lisalyon63]

Baylee11: Hello! I am raising my 11 year old grandson. He was diagnosed with ADHD four years ago. We have gone through a few different medications at this point, but he has not tried Ritalin. He is currently taking Strattera 25mg and it seems to be doing its job. At the beginning, he was taking Vyvance, which loss of weight was one of the side effects. Since he was already underweight, I started giving him Pediasure twice a day. That seemed to do the trick. He even started gaining weight! You might try giving him at least two Pediasure a day to see if that helps. Just a suggestion.

[Nikita2]

I have a 7 yr old son with ADHD and started him on 10 mg Ritilin 4 months ago daily including weekends and an afternoon booster of 5 mg on the weekends as well. He’s tall and slender and is 51 lbs. He takes his meds after breakfast and usually skips lunch or eats very little. However after school he’s famished and eats a whole meal, then another huge snack or small meal right before bed. I can actually tell that the meds are about worn off when he asks for food. I just took him for his med check in and he was within 0.5 lbs from 4 months ago. I was also concerned about him not frowning, but so far so good!