Ritalin and speech development

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Hi....

I was wondering if Ritalin could help with speech development. We have been giving Ritalin to our 7 yr old daughter with hfa. She can WRITE sentences but speech still lacks. Since we started Ritalin, her attention span increased but we did not notice any improvement in speech or behaviour problems.

I would just like to know if I am expecting too much out of Ritalin.

Ritalin is, after all, just a stimulant - while I have no medical background and we don't use medications, I've never heard of it being used to help with speech (in fact, one of the listed rare side effects is slurred speech.)

What does your speech therapist say?

(I would consider it a real positive that she can write sentences - being able to construct language is critically important. It does open all kinds of doors for communication even without speech.)

What sort of speech problems is she having? Articulation or vocabulary or what? My daughter's articulation issues got better around age 8. She is still selectively mute at times even at age 9 1/2.

I'm going to say no, based on my experience. I have NVLD, so in kindergarten I had a 12th grade reading level, but couldn't tie my shoes. I never had any meds as a kid except vitamins.

Anyway, for me, trying Ritalin as an adult, turned off my hyper-verbal thought process. But that sorta had the side effect of like, making me dumb. My reaction times driving and whatnot got WORSE because the verbal thought process was turned off. My theory is (I don't have specific data to support this) that it turns off the left brain hemisphere. Or it might just work to turn off/turn down the "overactive" hemisphere. As far as speech in particular, though, I do think you're expecting a bit much.

Giving Ritalin to a child seems asinine to me, though. 10mg as an adult made my pulse go from 70 to like 95-100. 10mg. I was prescribed 20, but 20 made my blood pressure like 150/90, and pulse 100+. And I got no positive effect from it really, except it made me more assertive/impulsive (which is in most ways a bad effect.)

I mean, you can give it a try and see what happens, but keep the dosage low if you do it. Don't let your kid have like 50mg a day or something. I don't have kids, but I'd not let mine touch that stuff, though.

My son was on adderall for awhile (not ritalin, but stimulant just the same). He never had speech delay, but what I can tell you is that the effects of adderall were very positive, but very selective. The way his neurologist explained it to him is that his frontal lobe is "sleepy" and that the adderall helped it to wake up so that he could use it better. At any rate, his hyperactivity was eliminated and he was much better with inhibition such that his intrusive/impulsive behaviors were greatly diminished. He was able to learn a great number of things--especially regarding social rules--he was previously unable to learn due to lack of attention, but many of his core deficits (disorganization, pragmatic language problems, sensory integration issues, etc), remained untouched.

I would guess that if your daughter's speech issues stemmed from lack of focus or attention, she may be able to learn more. However, it doesn't sound like that is the issue for her since she can write sentences. While I am no doctor or expert, I would not expect ritalin to be able to help her with speech, although it may help her with other things which might make it still worthwhile.

Best of luck to you and your daughter.

InThisTogether, you said much of what I was meaning to say, but much better. Thank you.

Thanks for all the responses.

Well my daughter problem with speech is articulation. She can form sentences with relative ease when she writes but went it comes to spoken language it is a different story. She understands a lot, I think almost everything. When someone speaks to her, she does answer back with one or two words...rarely with sentences.

I was hoping ritalin would help her attention span and would therefore increase her spoken language

I am not saying that attention span is never the problem with finishing sentences etc, but if she has enough attention to write sentences I would not think this is the issue. My son has expressive and receptive language but has difficulty getting it from his brain to his mouth, sometimes, if that makes sense. It is a processing issue. The brain functions are different then they are for written language. My son is the opposite of your daughter and has even more trouble with written communication (exacerbated by fine motor skill issues) than with verbal speech.

I don't know the situation with your child, but she may have processing issues. My son went from doing the one-two word thing to scripting. Then after scripting quite a bit, you could see he was integrating more original speech. It takes time, sometimes.

I would ask advice from the ST professional at school, but in the meantime just make sure she is exposed to hearing a lot of speech. If she likes movies and TV, let her watch/listen to those as well, especially if they involve special interests. Most of my son's most fluid speech is about his special interests, which he brain dumps pretty frequently. Hang in there. It is a process.

My son started with scripting (as a result, we never realized there was a pragmatic language delay until these started to fail him.) I created a list of media here: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postx149954-15-0.html

Several parents, including myself, have added posts about particular shows and other media that they found helpful - it's a good idea if she has a "database" of appropriate scripts to pull from.

Think about it this way: Ritalin and the other stimulants affect the part of the brain that focuses attention and other executive functions. Language processing and production is in a different part of the brain, that ritalin does not touch. What you describe is a language issue, not articulation, which is the ability to pronounce sounds like "th" or "r".

When my son started Aderall, his conversations went from jumping all over the place (we used to say it was like talking to a cd player on random skip) to coherent back and forth conversation. Note he already had the ability to speak in full sentences and paragraphs, the medicine just helped him to stay on one topic longer. The medicine did nothing to improve his articulation of "l", "r", and "th", although he was more able to stay on track during a speech therapy session.

I think I have misled you when I said that my 7 yr old daughter has difficulty to articulate language. - sorry about that.

When she speaks, she speaks find. One can understand her without problems. Her problem is to form sentences. As I said before, she can write sentences - all grammatically correct, but when it comes to speaking in sentences, there is were she has problems.

I think (just guessing) that she can write sentences because as you write, you have more time to think. But with speaking you do not have that luxury.

I think Ritalin could help somewhat if some of the language issues are from a lack of attention and focus. If she has ADHD it could cause her to pay better attention to the conversation in order to formulate a response, and maybe even engage in longer conversation. My 6 yr old has a dx of PDD-NOS and ADHD and takes a very small dose of a stimulant medication, but it has not improved his language issues except in that one respect. He still has issues forming sentences or putting his thoughts into words at times, especially when they are abstract thoughts, or he doesn't know what to say. That is, he still has issues with pragmatics of language....instead of saying he doesn't know to a question like NT kids might, he will try to come up with an answer and sometimes what he says as a result does not make sense. So we have to teach him alternatives like saying, I don't know or let me think about that for awhile if he just needs time to process.

I agree with Zette. My son has this, too.