To medicate or not???

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My son is a 9 years old dx with AS this past fall. At 5 he was dx with ADHD and we put him on medication when he started school at 6. The meds. really seem to help him in school to concentrate and stay on task. I had mentioned to his dr some issues we were have (a lot of anger and frustration towards his sister and beening withdrawn) and she thought it might be a side affect of his meds. We are trying something new and have been not giving it to him on the weekends. OMG! He is a totally different child without his meds. First he is a lot more hyper but he will play with his sister all weekend long, he stays off the computer (his current obesesion) for most of the weekend, his real personality comes out and he is more affectionate.

I guess my question is..... How many of you medicate your AS child? Do we just need to keep trying find the right med. where the pro out weight the cons? Or would he be better in the long run without it?

We have never medicated our AS child and I think that NO medication is, long run, the MUCH better route. What we are forced to do is find the sensory triggers and realy get inside my son's experience, understand how he views the world, so that we can help him navigate. That understanding will be with all of us - and him - forever, unlike a drug. In the process, I've learned that pretty much everything can be dealt with by changing our assumptions and / or changing the environment to better suit him. EVERYTHING. His stress factors and attention loss factors are pretty much ALL external. Medication wasn't designed to deal with external problems; it was designed to deal with internal ones. Applying it to an AS child then, often, is just a mask. It doesn't solve the real issue, and masks the reactions that would help you do just that.

All that said, some issues go far beyond what can be handled within daily living. For those children, medication is survival. But I think medication should be left as an absolute LAST resort, when all else has been tried and failed, rather than something automatically added at the first sign of issues at school, which is too often the case.

PS - I should also note that while some AS kids really are both ADHD and AS, often ADHD is a missdiagnosis for AS. My example would be that an AS child is quite good at staying on task if the sensory issues are solved and he is working on something that inerests him. A truly ADHD child would not be; the jumpiness inside a true ADHD mind is ALWAYS there.

I'm glad you discovered your child can be wonderful without drugs. There is no cure for AS, and no drugs are approved for treating autism spectrum disorders, so I'm always dismayed by the amount of drugs given to kids on the spectrum.

I feel I should point out that medication is not a long term solution. ADHD medication which helps your child stay focused is all stimulants (as odd as that sounds). When a person observes something, it starts a chain reaction of neurons in the brain firing. As this signal is sent through the brain the person then thinks about the signal and processes it. Conversely, when an ADHD person observes something, the electrical patterns in his brain quickly dies out because the nerves dont repeat the signal very well. This leads to problems with losing attention, simply put the signal in the brain isnt strong enough. Stimulants help neurons fire more often and keep that signal strong, and thus allow the child to pay attention.

As such most ADHD meds are stimulants of some kind. For example, Ritalin is actually just a very small does of cocaine. A similar effect can be gained by consuming caffeine (which is why energy drinks are so popular for studying as they boost your attention). However, just as you develop a tolerance for cocaine or caffeine (and thus need more and more to get the same effect), you also develop a tolerance for Ritalin and other stimulants. Simply put your body gets used to them and they no longer have any effect. Studies show that ADHD medication is only effective for about 5 years before the body becomes accustom to it and the meds no longer work. If you rotate meds and try different doses you may be able to get 10 years, but no matter what you do, your child will not be able to use the meds past high school (since you started him so early).

Thus, if you want your child to pay attention in college or work, you need to teach him how to do so without meds. Of course it will be harder for him in school if you quit the meds now, but it is better to learn these life skills now while he is still in elementary then to put it off till high school or college. To put it bluntly, your child doesnt learn very many important thing in elementary school. His history classes are just a bunch of random facts and dates to memorize with very little practical application. I mean be realistic, have you ever needed to know about Columbus and his voyages in your day to day life? It is fairly unimportant. Can you still remember what you learned in 4rd grade? I cant, mostly because I dont use anything I learned in 4th grade. The only class you actually use in adult life is mathematics. It would be useful for your son to learn the basics now. But really if he struggles with multiplying and dividing large numbers, then just get him a calculator. Einstein himself had problems with basic multiplication, so I dont think your son is doomed to failure if he doesnt learn how to multiply 248x534 without a calculator.

If you take your child off the meds now and he does worse in school, then the only thing he has lost is a bit of rather useless information that doesnt affect his adult life. If he gets bad grades then who cares, it doesnt go on his record or college applications. However, if you keep him on the drugs and they eventually wear off in high school, he will have more problems. For starters, the things you learn in high school are actually useful information that you need to know in order to do your job. As an engineer I can tell you that the stuff I learned in high school math and physics is stuff I use on a daily basis. You dont want to be struggling to learn when you actually have something important to learn. Likewise his high school grades affect his ability to get into college and get scholarships. And his college grades affect his ability to get a job.

Given the option between struggling to learn a new way of handling things at age 9 when problems and failures arent a big problem vs the same struggle at age 17 when it can have a large affect on his future. To me it seems like a simple choice.

If you want you can try cutting back on the medication and only using it when it is very important. For example, use it for finals week, or when it comes time to take the ACTs, or other important tests. But becoming dependent on it for everyday use is setting yourself up to have the same problems in a few years. It is better to cope with the problems now then just put them off and hope they go away.

Also, as DW says, much of what is identified as ADD may actually be sensory problems. While your child may indeed have ADHD, it is possible/likely that it is made worse by his over-acute senses. Try mitigating problems like that, or working on other solutions first. It may not yield the exact same immediate results as medication, but the lessons he learns from it will last him a lifetime, medication wont.

Really good points, Tracker, although I will say that learning to read and write is THE crucial skill learned in elementary school, and it isn't really "learned," in the way it needs to be for a child to thrive throughout the rest of his education, until fluency is acheived, which often isn't until 4th grade. With both my children, 2nd through 4th grade were crucial years during which they absolutely had to acquire that fluency or the workload was going to be beyond them. Between my son's physical issues co-morbid to the AS, and my daughter's vision problems, we ended up with some tense periods on both of them that we really worried, and could see the frustration working against them, risking their withdrawal from engagement with learning. If the skills aren't acquired timely, the child doesn't engage properly with learning. It really is crucial.

But, we solved it for both kids WITHOUT any medications. It just takes time, parents really paying attention, and the right confidence building book. Or, in the case of my daughter, a pair of glasses

In addition to what has already been said, why not try some natural supplements instead of medication? I am currently doing this with my 8 yr old AS son.

ToCoQ10 is supposed to improve attention. My son has been on this for six weeks and I have noticed significant improvement.
Phosphatydil serine is getting some good reviews for acting similarly to Ritalin, in people who have low serine levels. Been trialling this for about five months - not sure that it is having significant effects, but some people swear by it (see http://www.phpbbcity.com/forum/viewforu ... =psforadhd).
Fish Oil is another obvious one. I have my son on a standard children's formula, but am going to try and track down one with a 7:1 EPA/DHA ratio as they say this is better for people experiencing anxiety.

the important part to remember about medications is that not every med works for every body. it is very much a trial and error process....

Everyone should visit a reiki master.
As a reiki user myself I would advise that all of these medicines only generate a negative energy. This stuff doesn't help at all.

Look at me before I went to a reiki master.
Taking around 6-9 pills a day and conditions only worsen so they have to throw in more to counteract the previous.

Currently I take no pills. Zilch. It's useless. I am a lot healthier and things are much better.
Taking those pills I began to became violently depressed and went through multitudes of mental breakdowns daily.

Please visit a reiki master

I am happy for anyone who finds something they believe works for them, but this what Wiki has to say about Reiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiki

I suppose if one has unlimited funds, it's a non-issue, may as well try. But most of us don't have unlimited funds.

My son needs to be on medication to learn. He cannot sit or concentrate without it. He is like a live wire, always jumping, moving, jittering etc. I was hesitant to start him on meds, but the change in him has been tremendous and I am glad we found something that works for him. Everyone is different, but I can't take away something that facilitates him learning because I am a bit uneasy about it.