Guanfacine Anyone?

[Bootsie1]

Hi All - My 14 yo daughter (weight approx 100lbs) is currently taking 4mg of Guanfacine. She titrated up to that dose and was taking it in the mornings. It has helped a great deal her RSD and even anxiety. BUT she often come home from school and nap bc she was exhausted….which disrupted/delayed her normal bedtime. Consequently, we started to give her the dose in the evenings. Now she doesn’t fall asleep after school but she still finding it difficult to fall asleep and is drowsy and low energy in the morning.

I guess our next move should be to scale back down to 3mg. Any thoughts or experience with Guanfacine would be appreciated

[Onthemove1971]

Our son takes a Guanfacine dose that is a 24 hours duration. He took it at night to help with sleep and then it wore off before bed time. I remember this issue and I do not have ADHD.. I would come home every day and sleep.

Hope this helps.

[gmspdx]

We started with the 24 hour slow release for our 5yr old and quickly switched to immediate release to gain better control of the medication. This medication seemed to help with reducing hyperactivity associated with adhd but not without unwanted sleepiness, moodiness and irritability. We took a summer break from this medication & reinitiated this school year. Our son is newly 8 in the 2nd grade and has been taking .5mg so a very low dose in the am with breakfast prior to school. We have decided to discontinue this medication because while we see a reduction in hyperactivity, we see no other benefits and many negative side effects that simply don’t warrant consuming with it. This was in conjunction with observation of days with and without it and feedback from his teachers, we are tweaking his diet, sleep schedule (we dose 1mg melatonin 20mins prior to bedtime) and exercise in addition to behavior modification reinforcement. We simply didn’t see benefits to outweigh the negative SE’s.

[HanDor]

My 15 yo son at 140 lbs takes 3mg daily but at night. We tried the 3 mg in the morning and he couldn't keep from falling asleep. He dies sometimes come home and nap but I think it's because he's not getting enough sleep.

[Reads2Learn]

Have you discussed any other options with her doctor? We did not have trouble with excessive drowsiness when my son took it at night, but instead excessive irritability. I know there were other nonstimulants available, but we ended up moving to a stimulant instead. We have seen only positive effects with the new med.

[IheartDisney]

My son is 9 and 53 lbs. He takes 2 mg. We give it to him in the morning because when he took it at bedtime, he wasn't able to fall asleep. He does fall asleep when he comes home from school between 4-6. We spoke to the psychiatrist about it but she said it wasnt the medication causing him to be sleepy it was becaus ehe wasnt getting enough calories throu the day so his body just shuts down after school. My son is a terrible eater and will eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast before school but usually he will run out of time and not eat lunch. He comes home and wanta a snack but of course that is Dr appt fryit snacks and not something that will keep him going. I have found when he can really eat full meals, he isn't taking a nap in the afternoon. I hope this helps! Oh when he does nap, we also make sure it is only for an HR. We found it was really hard to wake him up before that and after that it was too long and would affect bedtime.

[Hidden]

My 12year old is taking 4mg at night. As we titrated up to that amount he would be extra tired but eventually adjusted to the dose. All he wanted to do was sleep when we would first increased each dose, but now sleeps fine.

[Cjkchamp]

Very sedating for our son. He would fall asleep at school, at home, in the car…all the time.

[pinkwood]

Our 5yo son with ADHD had sleep issues and we changed the dosing so he takes half (1mg) of it in the morning and half (1mg) in the evening. This has eliminated the sleepiness and but still keeps the benefit of some impulse control.

[Aspen797]

It’s interesting reading about all the different dosages that children are on. Such variety. Our 12 year old 125 pound son takes 1 mg ER in am and again in pm. As Pinkwood noted, this combination helped the most in getting around sleep issues.

Guanfacine can cause increased night waking. Studies say in doses above 1mg. It’s ironic, because it can cause drowsiness, but actually interfere with total amount of sleep achieved. We found that with a very slow ramp up to 2mg, and then spreading it out in am and pm, our son does well. He is still a less sound sleeper than he used to be, but does not wake often during the night.