HI, I have add,ocd,bipolar,si and fight or flight anxiety. You have to remember add people are usually very hypo-sensitive....I when a person would get upset with me....it felt that they had clapped me.....we don't have the buffer that other people have so everything over the top. I would tell my family and shrink I feel I don't have any skin to protect me....all my senses are at the surface. Also, how old is your son....why I ask is could he really have bipolar...or maybe both! If, he really has bipolar the add drugs make it worse....plus if he has both...then getting the right cocktail of meds is tricky. Also, add people don't like to yell at....we usually have extra good hearing, light can bother us....and the noise....oh the noise....I wish I could make myself deaf sometimes. I'm, not sure what pulling teeth roots mean....he's really pulling he's teeth out....the good ones from the roots. This, sounds like a way of coping all the anxiety he is having......he is overloaded to much for him to process. I know doctors don't want to give kids meds to early but if my mother could have helped me when I was a kid with meds boy would I been able to cope better....plus school would have been a nicer place for me....also I wouldn't have felt all my life I was stupid....that there was a reason for this.....I also say learn all you can about the disorder....the more you know...the more you can teach your child how to cope....plus learn what makes him tick. People, with add are very smart....I like to see other people in our shoes. take care Bettu

Sorry, I forgot I'm on strattera....not sure if kids are using this but it's been helping me for nearly 5 years.

LisaAnnG,
Finding the balance and the right meds can be difficult. I'm an adult with ADD and I'm trying meds for the first time. Yes, it's quite a rollercoaster. On the long-acting meds (Ritalin LA), my mood was pretty stable except for the fact that I was not feeling emotions as strongly as normal...I was stable until I came off it for the weekend, and during the weekends when I stopped the Ritalin LA, I bawled like a baby! It can make you feel really out of sorts and emotional. I'm now taking the short-acting Ritalin (IR) and it lasts 3-4 hours (or so they say). Now I feel like a yo-yo because my mood bounces up and down in correspondence with my meds. It's a bit frustrating for me, as an adult, so I imagine it's equally or more frustrating and especially confusing for a kid because kids don't understand necessarily why this is happening, why they feel the way they do, and they might have a harder time saying, "This is just how I'm feeling and tomorrow I'll feel better" and putting their emotions into perspective with reality.

Your son's MD will probably want to try him out on a particular med for at least a few weeks to a month before considering changing. I've had to work through a few bad ones myself and give it an honest full month try despite the awful side effects. But at least my MD and I know for sure that those drugs simply don't work for me. Then we move on to others. If it's been more than a month or so, talking frankly with your doctor about considering switching doc's and your reasons why might help. If that doesn't help and you feel keeping him on the med she's prescribed is unreasonable, then you might want to switch. Kind of nice to keep the same doc for a longer period of time if you trust him/her because then you don't have to go through the same rigamarole all over again with a new doc (where they try the same meds you've already tried!).

Don't know if that helps, but good luck!

Hi,

My daughter has ADD and has been on two meds. Ritalin and Adderall. It made her a zombie. Very sad and uncaring all the time. It hurt me so much to see her go through so much and at the same time it was so emotionally unbearable for me. I didn't understand why I was so miserable when she was young. The doctors said she was a typical toddler. Nothing wromg with her. Then school started. WOW. Were our eyes opened.She was the only child figiting all over the place. We recently found out that the toxins that we are all exposed to every day can cause ADD,OCD, Autism, Asthma, allergies and a slew of other things. We were shocked. We thought that if it was in the store it was safe. What a joke. We took the toxins out of our home and started her on some very good vitamins and we were able to take her off the meds within a week. She is doing fantastic. In school she has really made an impression. She has changed so much. It makes me cry when I think about how she was before. We lost 3 years.

Loreita

You paid money to take your son to a specialist who suggested something that will make him feel better. Your son's doctor won't prescribe it. What exactly does he think his job is? If there's one thing I can't stand about our healthcare system, it's people's overconfidence in their doctor's decisions. Doctors are absolutely fallible, and at the end of the day, their opinions are just that- their opinions.
A doctor who assumes that he knows what's best for his patients because he's trained in medicine is making a huge mistake- you know how you feel, and your son knows how he feels. Your doctor only knows what you can describe and what he can interpret from tests. It's never a zero sum diagnosis.
What you need to do is express your wishes to your doctor, and let him know that it's not just a suggestion from another doctor, it's a request from his patient. If he's not willing to meet the demand of his clients, you can easily find a doctor that will.