Has anyone stopped their Dc's ADD medication and noticed positive differences?

[Lesley25]

The reason I ask is that for us (ds 6.5 asd add) is that something's making him anxious and upset and we've noticed without medication his speech is more "instant" almost as if the ADHD acts as a sort of motor catalyst. So, we are about to brave it with school. They are not keen but then I'm not keen to just keep going with medication just to make him "compliant" and "easier to manage". We are trying to get to the bottom of these issues and so with the pead decided to stop medikinet xl slow release for a week. Anyone else done the same?

No experience with stoppings meds.

FWIW I think if you want to eliminate he meds as the potential cause of issues you have to stop them for a period to assess.

School will just have to work with you until this is established won't they.

Yes, I agree. If the meds aren't currently helping with work time and in our case leading to a decrease in speech then it's got to be looked at I throughly.
I'm not going to see a fair comparison with me just stopping it at home as the environments completely different. So, here goes..

Well we noticed improvement in motor skills - or possibly motor planning skills with medication, which makes me think that medication can have effects not yet documented. We find that ds sometimes gets a period of very talkative behaviour at a certain time in the evening (when his medication is not active) - usually on a weekend when he has been relaxed and active. I certainly think medication makes him more aware (of other people, - he is pretty oblivious unmedicated) and certainly more anxious.
I agree that it might be worth discussing a trail without this particular medication with your Dr. We used to have summer holidays without medication each year just to double check that for our son medication is still helpful.

You see maggiso, my ds has asd also and his speech is severely affected. I too have noticed he is definitely more talkative or trying to speak without medication - when it wears off and when he's not on any. For us, I think this will probably be the clincher, I would rather his speech came on then improved behaviour. I'm not gonna lie, it's one hairy ride though and I may turn grey in the next few weeks

Good luck! ds (now 15) has asd and ADHD too. Even now life can be challenging without medication to reduce the impulsivity and super speediness, but we live in hope that one day he wil manage without. There are different medications (and even combinations) so it might be there is a better match. Hope your ds speech blossoms.

Thank you