Anyone have a child who does better academically off their ADD meds?

[AimeeM]

The ADD meds do sincerely help Autumn. They allow her to focus without frustration on the things she enjoys. True to form, she isn't distracted during the day and again finds joy in certain things that, before the medication, she would become frustrated by and "quit" easily.

 

 

But,

 

With flying baby monster's sleeping habits and how much time him and my middle son take up during the day, Autumn and I have been doing school in the evening. Well after her medication has "worn off". While she is far more distracted and far less focused, she is also far more ABLE.

 

We've spent two weeks reviewing fractions... something she mastered long ago, but appeared to fall out of her head at some point; at least it appeared as such during the day when we've tried to work :p

 

Tonight I write a word problem on the board from MM6. She hates word problems. She glanced at it for a second and said "it's 5 3/4".

I made her walk me through it, showing her work, and she was right.

 

She did this the other night too. The good thing is that she's proven she has mastered the skill and indeed it did NOT fall from her brain - the only bad thing is that she huffs and puffs about having to show her work and feels it is unnecessary (no matter how often I've told her that I need the work in case she "goes wrong" so that I can see *where* she went wrong).

 

In short, she seems far less focused, but far more competent, after the ADD medication has worn off. Is this normal?

[Tap]

Depends on the kid and the ADD. My kids ADD presents in two entirely different ways. Neither of my older kids have a behavior component, so my situation may not help you. (dd6 does but she has Aspergers so it is a different ball game with her).

 

DD14 has undiagnosed ADD and is not medicated. She struggles during the day, but at night, she hits a 'sweet spot' in her learning and she can process information in ways that she can't otherwise. DD14 is one of those people who process so much information at one time that her brain prioritzes it and dumps part of it. Unfortunately, sometimes she saves information like "the shadow of the desk in front of me looks like the letter 'h', but backwards and in cursive, with a dark blue shadow, and a lighter grey shadow from the mirror reflecting the light back from the open window blowing a smelly breeze from the men fertilizing the field." She may have thrown out the topic she was studying which was the part of a cell. BUT if you asked her about the shadow! She would be all over it! LOL She may have been paying attention to the lecture, but that isn't what her brain saved as important information.

 

At night (dark, fewer shadows to watch LOL), in the quiet (ie no men fertilizing the field), the external distractions are less intrusive in her brain and she will be able to keep the information she needs, with less effort. There is less information for her brain to sort, so she can save all the information.

 

 

 

 

DS18 is diagnosed and medicates when he needs to. He also processes a lot of information but he knows when to use his meds and when not too. If he is writing a paper and needs to stay on topic, the medication is great. If he is playing a video game or is in a noisy classroom, it is not great.

 

He feels that his brain is always processing so much that as long as he has limited external stimuli, the medication helps him stay on task. His brain can concentrate on what it is supposed to work on and just process/dump the rest later. Without the medication, the limited stimulation leads to boredom and he will find himself doing something else, other than writing the paper, without even realizing it.

 

If he is doing something that has a lot of stimuli like playing a video game (he plays complex games) he finds the medication makes it harder to concentrate on a single task. It is like his brain is trying to not only process all the information coming in, it is trying to 'solve' it, and he can't concentrate on a smaller, more isolated task like killing a sinlge creature. So for him, he only needs the meds to keep him from getting distracted/bored when there are fewer variables coming at him.... not more distractions like most people would think. LOL