Our child was recently put on the lowest dosage of guanfacine. This is only the 2nd day so far. I'm reaching out to this community to get any feedback on the medication..ie..experiences. he slept fine the first night we gave it to him, second night he said he hardly slept at all. Will his body somewhat regulate to the medication where he gets on a normal schedule?
Thank you
J
Hi there! My daughter trialed guanfacine when she was 7. We did find there was an adjustment period. Both when she first started it and when we increased the dosage. (We’ve since gone back down on the dose and she continues to take it almost a year later.)
I don’t recall the details on sleep but she definitely needed extra hydration and got a bit sleepy during the day due to the effects on blood pressure. She was over the effects unless than a week, I think.
Will you have a follow up appointment in a couple weeks? Also worth it to have a physical appointment so they can monitor blood pressure. (You may know this already but guanf. was developed as a medication for blood pressure and so it can cause a dip in kiddos that usually is very small.)
When is your kiddo taking the medication? At night or in the morning?
Thank you for the response, we do have a follow up appt in 2 weeks, and I have purchased an at home blood pressure checker😉. I appreciate your kindness!
Just want to encourage you and your son to not feel defeated by the side effect. It often takes fine-tuning. Guanfacine was the single most helpful medication for our son’s emotional dysregulation when he was younger. He also had issues with sleep initially. His doctor had us cut the pills in half (or was it quarters? It’s been a long time now) and very, very slowly titrate upward over months. There are immediate release and extended release formulations too. You can also change when you give it. We moved to giving it in the morning.
Also wanted to note that after guanfacine the seconds thing that helped the most for emotional regulation was a methylated b-complex. Neurodivergent kids can sometimes have a genetic makeup that makes it harder to process some nutrients. We we’re firmly in the—don’t talk to me about supplements and special diets-camp until we found it made a huge difference.
Keep talking to your doctor about little adjustments. Hang in there!
similarly my son takes a stimulant and guanfacine and has for about a year. At first we noticed he was more sleepy and slightly dizzy but those both went away quickly. I didn’t really notice the effect of the guanfacine like I did immediately with the stimulant until we decided to try to slowly get him off the guanfacine. When we went down in dosage we noticed a big effect on emotional regulation and impulsivity so we went back up and realized it was helping more than we thought.
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