Medication and or video games

[Cjlyn]

My son is 10 years old and is on 10mg of Focalin. At first I thought it was the answer but I am questioning now wether to keep my son on it or not. Although his school says he is doing well at home is a nightmare. Absolute defiance, rage and meltdowns at night. This isn’t him and I am at a complete loss. I find that the medication is doing this to him. He also has become extremely addicted to his video games. It’s a war to get him off. Has anyone out there dealt with sever anger on medication and any suggestions on how I go about limiting the video games ? Desperate mom here!!

[Crunchby]

Had same issues with LR Ritalin...when mine would come off it. We switched to Vyvanse which has it's own set of side effects, but we are not experiencing the uncontrollable rage anymore. We did add a low dose long acting Seroquel...but switching to Vyvanse def made a difference.

[anirush]

Yes we have had some medications cause anger to get worse. One grandson did well on Focalin the other one we had to switch to a non-stimulant Strattera. But when they're coming off of it they do tend to get unstable

ADHD kids do everything to the extreme. Although they are not the only ones that are addicted to videogames. My grandson's grandsons are more addicted to YouTube videos

[Grnmtnmama]

We are new to medication, but my 8 year old did have some increased aggression and irritability at first, but it has improved. We found that by making him earn his video game time, and limiting it using a parental control app (we like Kidslox - it does cost about $4/month though) that shuts access off automatically, we have had far less aggression about video games. Our son has a checklist broken down into morning, after school and evening responsibilities, and as long as he gets everything done without us having to harass him about it, he earns his 45 minutes for the day. When the time is up, it's up, and he quietly moves on to something else without an argument.

Before when we had to try and take the iPad away mid-game he would absolutely lose it. No longer the case thankfully. Good luck!