Exactly - it was such a massive game changer for me. But for others here, meds didn’t help, or they haven’t found the right ones from themselves yet.

But not trying? It’s like 15 minutes of your life, where is the harm …

• Get them officially diagnosed: start looking for an appointment now!
• Decide about treatment based on science. In most cases, I believe, medication has the better outcome over non-medication; occupational therapy possibly too at that age, psychotherapy later. But they can tell you what works for that specific case.
• Educate yourself and show compassion. Ask yourself “could this be purely neurological?” before getting angry or forcing something.

During the holidays, I observed my son medicated and unmedicated. I noticed how unmedicated, he gets into all sorts of annoyances to himself even when just playing a board game with me. It’s overall not as good of an experience for himself: He is distracted and makes worse decisions, gets my mood down by tripping over water or toppling stacks of cards etc. There are many little things that add up to worse experiences. Might have a hard time getting into whatever is trending in his class, be it sports teams or trading cards.

That is good advice. While ADHD can indirectly interfere with building a habit, it’s a different part of the brain, so habits can be built and maintained, and then they become effortless, as if the person had no ADHD. Good for everybody, but with ADHD, it’s harder to push through it with “discipline”.

Main strategies right now:

• engineered staple foods always available in stock (Jimmy Joy, Soylent, Huel, “This is food”, …). So always the option to have a somewhat healthy meal with 0 effort.
• big freezer & hot air fryer. Good compromise of taste & health: salmon with vegetables in cream sauce. Less healthy: Fries (still best-health fries), fish sticks, vegan burger
• healthy-enough snacks. Currently binging on high protein, low sugar cookies. Obviously not that healthy, but otherwise I’d binge the really bad stuff when I lose control
• healthy snack plate with carrots, apple slices etc.: Just set it up at the desk and see what happens. Thinking about actually eating it is too much mental effort, and it happens automatically anyway.

Well where are you? Or is worldwide travel an option?

Another counterpoint is that some ADHD people, including myself, are not great on vacuuming and dusting. And that’s on hard mode with open shelves. Need to pretty often clear them, dust the shelf, clean what was on it, put back.

I managed to wire myself with a trigger to answer my inner dialogue of “I can’t …” with “Well what CAN you do?”

In case of the escalating snacking, I realised that I can’t just switch them out with something healthy. But I CAN make a plate of raw carrots, apple slices, cucumbers etc. and set it up at my desk. Surprisingly, that was already one big leap forward. Even my sloth mind - especially my sloth mind - would rather chew on a carrot right now than get a chocolate bar from the kitchen. Beat it with its own weapons.

Absolutely, people are very different. In my particular case, I used to get anxiety, and it got worse with caffeine. Got benzos for years as an when-needed fallback. ADHD had not been diagnosed yet. Turned out that much of it was a magnesium deficit, and magnesium replaced benzos completely. I also tried modafinil before I was officially diagnosed, and it worked pretty great. But that is just my very specific case.

The only general takeaway is to keep searching for what’s up and what works for you, and that is probably very different in your case.

She should try my chicken-method, then: Take half a minimum dose, e. g. 5g lisdexamfetamine, if it works go to something like 10 or 15.

Does she get bad side effects from coffee? If yes, stims really might not be for her.

It helps me with the exact same things, and the hard crash used to be similar for me. But the doc found that Vyvanse caused it only indirectly: I was working hard (even on things like cleaning), didn’t feel the need for pauses and rest, didn’t eat and drink enough. After doing these things by schedule rather than how I felt, it was completely fixed.

Your situation sounds like a different quality, probably with different causes.

Engineered staple foods. Huel, “This is Food”, Soylent etc.

Also pretty nice is a hot air fryer and a freezer. Grilled salmon right from the freezer, frozen vegetables with sauce included. Kind of a luxury dish, same effort as fries.

Surprisingly, every-single-time I believe that I will for the rest of my life do the thing on time, incrementally and with no effort. Especially after a long cleaning effort. Sure, of course I will now always do a little bit every day, and the way the place looks now will be how I will always live …

With treatment, this is finally a reality. And just now I realise how ridiculous the idea was to do it like that before. My brain plans as if it were healthy, it’s really weird.

Caffeine Free Coca Cola is a thing, as I have read, although I never saw it in a store.

Same life-changing effect with Vyvanse for me. Did you stop all caffeine, even black tea? In combination, that can really get your heart racing.

Good question, and my mistake might have been that I asked straightforward: Do you feel better with meds? Do you like school better? Is it easier to get on a task such as cleaning your room?

He always says: No difference.

Maybe I should ask like: “How interesting was school today?” and then see how it correlates with meds.

I had a similar experience when I was much older. I had ONE good math teacher in 14 years, had him 5-6 and then again 11-12. Strange is that it took me a while to realise how good he is. I just wondered: Why is math so boring all through the grades 7-10, although it is so awesome otherwise?

So, maybe he does feel and grow better, but doesn’t realise it. But there is no proof. Only proof is that he is sedated, which makes the teachers happy, but that was not the goal.

I too suspect that the doc will have him try a lower dose again. Odd with lower doses was that even just 6 hours later, therapist and I saw 0 effect, and that is unlikely with slow-release; should be at least some left. Due to that, the doc decided to give the teacher’s observation (who said low is fine) less weight and increase anyway.

The problem really is that this is not an exact science when applied to individuals. Day A, teacher says he’s doing great, well maybe it’s because it was a classmate’s birthday and he brought cupcakes, and in German they were just reading an interesting story. I say 15 mg sedates him like an elephant tranquilizer gun, but maybe he was just very tired that day.

My fear is that this might drag on for months and years, and on the way, we’ll give up what would have been the solution just because it was applied on a few bad days.

And really infuriating is that in all this that they couldn’t even give him consistently the same exact meds! EUR / USD 1100 / month insurance premium and he can’t have his 20 cents pill!

I hope they find something better for you! Lisdexamfetamine fixes my motivation, to get started on a task, and my focus completely, but I’m super confused as always. And since I do 10x as many things with my fixed motivation, I make 10x as many mistakes. Joe Biden on speed, basically.

While I do hope for something that fixes the other things, my quality of life has improved tenfold. But for my child, it seems to just make life for the teachers easier by sedating him, and that’s not worth it. What are they getting paid for?

Don’t worry about Mg, all he ever eats is fries 😂

Research shows overall better outcome with medication, if indicated. Fewer mental problems in adulthood etc.

That doesn’t invalidate your experience - certainly it makes things worse for some, better for (more) others. It just says that the average is an improvement.

So hard to get useful feedback from a child. I can just observe what I see and ask the teachers. The teachers were happy with 5mg but said that 15mg had no effect. Doesn’t even make sense, so it was probably another factor playing in, such as a topic at school that he liked or not enough water / food during intake. The teachers even warned us to increase the dose unnecessarily, but with all information considered, the doc did it anyway, which made sense at the time.

I’ll try a lower dose myself again so I can give more feedback to the doc, and we’ll see if he needs something else. Pure sedation to make the teachers happy is not the goal here.

That is interesting! I’d expect that it is possible that neither helps with ADHD, but should still feel like a strong coffee at least.

Do you feel coffee when you had a coffee break of several weeks?