Qelbree start

[Nostrings]

My kiddo has been struggling and it is quite sad. He has never been medicated and now he and the doctor decided it’s time.

i am 100% convinced that hormone play a huge role in ADHD/add issues. Since he is twelve going on thirteen that is a lot of hormone changes going on.

He has been struggling in school and has been getting into lots of trouble. His insomnia is bad and I take his electronics away at night and he gets up and wanders. His friendship have suffered and he has been withdrawn at school. The only solution is to see if medication will work and he has agreed to go back to swim which has helped in the past with burnout. Now we just have to see what happens during tryouts. Even if I just take him everyday to swim I think the workout will help ease his mind.

who has taken qelbree and what side effects did you notice? Did it help your child who has mild depression and adhd? he doesn’t have suicidal ideation, and I feel like a mind a ease will head down that road who I want to have him journal and vent as he does now.

did qelbree help at all?

[STEM_Dad]

None of my kids have an ADHD diagnosis (at least not yet), so we have no experience with Qelbree.

I just wanted to respond that I do think you're right about adolescence does have an effect on ADHD and comorbidities. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until my 40s, but I can remember my struggles with my Inattentive traits as early as age 6, but they seemed to become more of a problem for me at age 12-13. Around the same age, I began to have regular issues with anxiety.

While hormones are very much involved in teenage behavior, adolescents go through bodily changes and neurological changes. These changes all affect each other, so it is hard to pin ADHD-like behavior only on hormones, in my opinion.

I hope that Qelbree is helpful for him. Encourage him to be accepting of himself, and not self-critical. Encourage him to develop healthy habits, such as being physically active, maintaining good eating habits, getting adequate rest (you mentioned his insomnia, but rest is about more than just sleep). Teach him self-advocacy, too.

My younger son is now 11, and he sometimes has a hard time falling asleep. (He's the one that I think has mild Combined ADHD.)

• He takes melatonin, but if he still seems to be struggling to settle down so he can sleep, I let him read. Usually by the time he's done with one chapter in his book, his mind is settled enough and he falls asleep soon after.

• (That's what works for my son, but reading a really good book used to make me want to stay up reading longer. I find that a calming sleep music track helps me more, helps distract me from the continuous thoughts in my head.)

Some experimentation might be needed to help your son with his insomnia.

Some people find that exercise before bed helps. Others practice mindfulness/ meditation. Reading works for some people, like my son. Listening to "white noise" works for others, like me. Melatonin does help my kids and me, and I've also tried other nonprescription sleep aids over the years. I've known some people with insomnia so bad that the only thing that helped was prescription sleep medication.

[Nostrings in reply to STEM_Dad]

We don’t do melatonin, we really try to avoid any medication. That can cause a hormone issue as melatonin is a hormone naturally release. I know if I take melatonin I get really bad headache and I am grogey (?) all day long.

So yesterday we started a tracking system. He is going to write down what he has eaten and how he feels. This is mainly due to the medication he started and I want to track.

Day one on qelbree and he was sleeping by 21:00 and didn’t wake up til his alarm went off for school. He was not dragging and was really motivated for the day which isn’t typically the case.

[STEM_Dad in reply to Nostrings]

I understand that hesitation about supplementing with melatonin. My ex-wife also gets headaches from it, and we were hesitant to try the kids on it for a long time. (I think it was family friends that suggested we try it.)

The tracking system is a very smart idea. I keep a log of what I'm experiencing for the first 1-2 weeks on any new psychoactive medication or change in dosage. (I've done this with ADHD medications and an SSRI that I've been prescribed a couple different times.)

It sounds like Qelbree has had a positive effect on him, at least to start with. That's promising.

[Hopesmommy]

Omg I just wrote a book /!; it’s gone!!!

[Nostrings in reply to Hopesmommy]

Oh no! I hate when that happens. Lol the the motivation to start again leaves.

[STEM_Dad in reply to Nostrings]

Yeah, the fire sometimes goes right out when that happens.

I usually try to rewrite as much as I can remember, but sometimes I just can't get the wording right again.

My Facebook app blanks out my drafts so often, I've started doing a "Select all -> Copy" every couple of paragraphs.

[STEM_Dad in reply to Hopesmommy]

Hi, do you mean that you wrote a really long reply here, and it's gone? (I hate it when that happens. It rarely happens for me on this site, but it happens to me all the time on Facebook.)

...

If you mean that you were writing a book on your computer (like in a Word document) and it's gone, then you might want to call on someone with some Technology Support experience.

😉

~Your friendly neighborhood IT Support Specialist ~