Autism, ADHD and presciption medicines.
By Skyeblue25
@Skyeblue25 (545)
November 1, 2009 5:57am CST
I have been offered several times medication for my son to calm him down. He is Autistic but also borderline ADHD. But everytime I have turned it down as I feel I cope quite well with my son without sedating him and I feel he doesn't need it. But I have a friend who's son has ADHD and he is on medication for it.
I find it a really difficult subject, because you read a lot of bad things about mediaction for kids. But I know my friend is happier her son takes his medication and she says he is happier for it. He finds school a lot easier so therefore because school is such a big part of our kids life it makes him happier all round.
Though I remember the struggle she had when he was first diognosed. It has taken the doctors ages to find the right medication for him. Some made him lose his appetite completely. Some made him like a zombie literally, others had the effect of making him more hyperactive. So it has been a long struggle to find the right one.
Personally I don't want to put my child through that, I feel it is almost using them like guinea pigs to find the right combination of drugs for their illness.
I wondered what the views where here. I would love to hear some strong for and againsts arguments. Has anyone had first hand experience?
2 people like this
1 response
@dawnald (85137)
• Shingle Springs, California
3 Nov 09
I have no experience with medicating my son. I just have a very strong prejudice against using pharmaceuticals unless there is absolutely no other option. For one thing, there are the side effects that one of the other responders mentioned. For another, there are often natural remedies that have benefits without the side effects. Sadly, a lot of alternative types of practitioners (such as Naturopathy) aren't covered by most insurances. But if you can afford to see a Naturopathic doctor who has some experience with children with Autism and ADHD, I'd recommend giving it a try. We have somebody here on myLot, Hornswaggled, who has a lot of knowledge about herbs and other natural remedies also. You might want to give her a holler. Good luck!
@Skyeblue25 (545)
•
3 Nov 09
Thankyou for your response and the information. I haven't even considered medicating my son whether naturally or with prescription medicine, but the question for the discussion came about because a friend suggested I could use a herbal rememdy to calm him down and then the doctor suggested they may consider writing him up some presciption medication.
But I have refused both completely. I don't feel he needs medicating with either. Then I started thinking am I just being ignorant, could it help and I am shutting the very idea out just because I have fairly strong views on it? I am very fearful that by medicating him I could change his personality and I don't want to risk that in anyway.
I don't know, I am pretty certain no one could change my point of view but I wanted to hear what other people thought on the subject.
1 person likes this
@dawnald (85137)
• Shingle Springs, California
3 Nov 09
I haven't considered medicating my son either. I guess I would probably reconsider if he got so hyperactive that his schoolwork suffered. I would HATE it though.
@Skyeblue25 (545)
•
3 Nov 09
I don't think my son is hyper enough to be medicated. I know a lot of children are way more hyper than Daniel.
Daniel does struggle at school but not because he is hyper, more because he struggles to understand things in the way they are worded. But his teacher is very patient with him and helps him to understand everything he needs to know it just takes a little longer.
