Has anyone tried ADHD medication in secondary school?

[Startingtogetverytired]

Son would like to try medication to see if it helps focus / remembering things in lessons.

We are worried as have seen first hand my husbands brother being a complete zombie whilst on Ritalin and it having no difference to his school life or academically.

Can anyone give their views who have tried medication please? Thank you

My 16yr old daughter started the medication last year and the difference in her ability to concentrate and be more organised is huge. I wish we had started years ago.

Thank you for sharing this.
This is almost my fear, that I’ve made his life so much harder now by not medicating but it didn’t seem right when he was happy -
Now he feels the gap much bigger between him and his peers and I feel terrible for him 😢

Have PM'd you.

DD, 14, started medication in June and I wished I had done it years and years ago. We haven't even finished titrating the dosage yet but has been fantastic for her from day 1.

My DD started just a month or two before GCSE exams and it has helped her massively. I was concerned about starting just before exams but the prescriber thought it would be a good idea. She was right. I think it would have made an even bigger difference if she's started it at the beginning of yr 10.

DD says it means she can focus and concentrate during the day without her brain being chaos and thinking about a million thoughts at once.

My DS wasn’t diagnosed until he was almost 15, he took medication until he got through his GCSE’s and decided a few months into his college course not to carry on as he didn’t like the side effects. It was definitely worth it, as without the medication and the extra time and use of a laptop in exams he wouldn’t have got the grades for college.

I think he would have benefited from staying on it longer, his focus was so much better and he definitely felt that himself.

We have, and stimulant medication made my teenaged daughter seriously aggressive and depressed.

Could he try some of the other options that are available? If you don't have it, worth getting 'The Parents Guide to ADHD Medication' as that outlines all the current meds and the pros/cons, side effects of each.

Youngest started a low dose of slow-release methylphenidate last year and finally understood what it felt like to focus and engage - his diagnosis is inattentive ADHD. Unfortunately it impacts his appetite so he didn’t want to be on it long term. Instead he takes it when the cognitive demands in lessons are building up eg. in the run up to exams or days where he has a lot of academic subjects. His consultant is fine with this.
ETA - what helped tremendously was school also putting in place adjustments such as enabling him to type so his notes are all online and easier to manage. He also has a specific study mentor who checks in with him regularly and her input has been just as valuable as the meds tbh.

My Ds started meds beginning of year 6… so not quite secondary .

He went from below expected to exceeding in one subject.. That subject he has just passed Gcse in ..

A couple of points I always make .. it’s a short acting med so if it doesn’t make a difference can try another or stop although dose is usually increased slowly

The other point is my Ds is happier on medication - he for years said he saw no difference but just didn’t get in as much trouble on meds.. but actually I could see he was happier , easier to stay in the moment...

Same - we stopped it on day two as I was so concerned about her.

We switched to non-stimulant meds instead which have been great.

My son started on medication in the January of year 6, I was keen that he should be on it before going to secondary. As with @OhCrumbsWhereNow his concentration improved with the initial dose before we reached the one he is on now. By the next step up his teacher was feeding back to me how much better his concentration and work was. When he went up to the dose he is on now, I didn’t tell him he was on the higher dose (we were in a hurry that morning and then I didn’t think much more about it) and on the second day at pick up he was telling his dad he thought “mum had increased my dose as I wasn’t calling out as much in class”!
He was a bit reluctant to take it initially and I bought a book called “The Parents’ Guide to ADHD Medicines” by Prof Peter Hill. It was really informative, explained why ADHD brains are different and how the medication works both physically on the brain and in terms of the child’s behaviours. I read parts of it to my son and he started saying “that’s what happens to me” and when I asked him if taking the medication changed that, he sheepishly agreed that it did and after that he has been happier taking it, even reminding me of I’ve forgotten to give it him or asking to have it on days I hadn’t planned to (he doesn’t take it at the weekend when not in school).
Don’t beat yourself up about not arranging it sooner, all medicines have side effects too, (the book I mentioned talks about these too) and so at least he hasn’t had those to contend with up til now. The main ones for my son are disturbed sleep (but he wasn’t a great sleeper before) and loss of appetite during the day - though he tends to make up for that in the evening when the medicine has worn off.
There can be a wait for medication, my son was privately diagnosed and we used the same firm to do the medication as well, which worked well, we were able to do it by phone with weight/ height/blood pressure/pulse stats obtained from the GP surgery. It has to be a psychiatrist or specialist paediatrician who prescribes the medication, but once a dose is established our GP was happy to provide repeat prescriptions. He’s now had his care transferred over to CAHMS who do his annual medication reviews.
Good luck!

@OhCrumbsWhereNow thank you for that, he is 26 now and I think finds things much easier now he has a job in IT and he is doing something that interests him all day. I may have a look anyway as he is finding learning to drive tricky, perhaps there might be something to help with that.

We’ve found that book really helpful too!

@SuperSue77 we have to exact same as you with the sleep and appetite.

She's always starving (and hyper and exhausted) for about 2 hours after the meds wear off in the evening.

She's always had issues with sleep, but 1mg melatonin gummies seem to be the solution.

Yup. DD started on methylphenidate in Feb of y10. Didn't make a difference. Switched to Elvanse and it was like a magic pill. Wish we'd done it earlier.

my husbands brother being a complete zombie whilst on Ritalin and it having no difference to his school life or academically.

Was this recently or 20+ years ago? It tends to mean the dosage is wrong apparently, but there were fewer options back then, (no extended release, for example, so you end up on a rollercoaster of coverage and rebound all day - rebound certainly makes me zombie-like.) and ADHD medication was only just starting to be used in the UK so not many doctors were experienced with dosing it, and it is very different to other medications, apparently. Most medications are dosed by weight or by severity of symptoms. But ADHD medications are not - an adult can be on a lower dose than a child for example. The main issue is that the therapeutic window is very narrow, so it is very easy to get a too-high or too-low dose. And since there's no clear guideline to follow, what is usually advised is simply to start on the lowest possible dose and move slowly up until you find the dose that actually does something. Then doctors seem to vary IME whether they will say OK great, stick with that, or whether they say let's keep going and see if we can find something even better.

Either way, keep communicating with the doctors - zombie like symptoms, lack of effectiveness are both important signs that something isn't right, they'll be able to try different things. That can be adjusting the timing, adjusting the dose, changing to a different drug, or sometimes just giving it a bit of time to see if it settles down. And ultimately, if nothing works you lose nothing as he can stop taking it.

Yes we started son just before his GCSE exams and he pushed his grades up massively only getting 9s and 8s - and this was in the recent exams where others were saying they did not do as well as expected.
I think your b'n'law is not on the right dose.

Dd (now in U6) was eventually diagnosed just as her GCSEs started. Covid buggered up getting the right medication and the right dose for a while and it took a few trys to get something that worked. However, even the stuff she didn't like taking because of the side effects (appetite, dry mouth etc) had an astonishing impact on her academically and personally. She was predicted 3-4s in GCSE. based on prior performance. Eventually got one 8, 3 sevens, 3 sixes, a five and a 4. Her A level predictions are 2 As and a B.

She's now in Elvanse 40mg and managing the side effects well. She's happy and thriving and has had the same stable friend group now since starting the meds (less emotional disregulation) . After 3 days of taking her first pills she cried because it was all so much easier and "was this what it's like for other kids?" Her self esteem which was in the toilet improved and she's doing really well.

I will add it takes a bit of planning. She has a big breakfast in the morning as she has little appetite in the day once they kick in. I send her with a bento box of snacky things and dips which she can manage to eat. She stays at school working in the common room until about 6.30 so she can get the full effect of her meds while they're still working (it's about 10-12 hours slow release). She's hungry at about 7.30 so we eat later as a family all together. She struggles working in the evening as meds have worn off, hence doing as much as possible at school

Weekends when she wants to study I have to wake her at 9 -10 no matter how late she's been out as she can't take the tablet any later otherwise she won't sleep.... she manages to go back to sleep until it really kicks in though!

Sorry to ask but isn't ADHD meds also used as 'cheat' drugs amongst undergraduates because of the amazing concentration they afford?
Not saying that's the case here but would think that it would help OP's DC if it helps those who don't even have ADHD. Have heard issues with appetite suppression amongst friends' kids...

@happyhippiehippo if you don't have ADHD and take it, yes, it makes you concentrate like crazy. If you do have it, it basically makes you normal. Uni students also usually take far larger doses than is normally prescribed. It's also normally Adderrall which isn't legal in Europe as it's amphetamine and addictive.

@happyhippiehippo But to add, as with all controlled substances, they have a different effect on everyone. For some kids with ADHD, stimulants make them really aggressive and or depressed. This has been mentioned by PP. It is a lot of trial and error getting the right prescription. It takes a long time too as each time you start a new med, you start titration on a small dose and go up every 3 or so weeks by a small amount. It took us 6 months to find the right dose and we were lucky that the second meds we tried worked.

Reading @parkingsadness post about her daughter’s fantastic GCSE results reminded me that my son who used to tear up his maths papers and throw them on the floor prior to medication, got 100% in all 3 of his maths SAT tests, and also “greater depth” for the reading and SPAG - I don’t know whether he would have achieved this without. He didn’t get extra time for some reason, but he did have a timer that was paused if he needed to get up and walk around, he has ASD too and still gets dysregulated in tests, but much less than he did.

I had a look into this, and there have been studies that showed that if non-ADHD kids take them it appears to make you feel like you are incredibly focused but in tests they actually performed worse than they would have done without them. It's not really very different from buying street drugs like speed.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow I wonder if that's because those kids didn't go through titration though. DD once took a higher dose than she was meant to and she definitely wouldn't have performed well in a test.