Strattera experts? Advice needed

[barnehagen]

Hello everybody!
I'm so glad, i found this forum.

I've got two children, both are on strattera!
For my daughter it works fine...could be better, but it's really ok.

But I've problems with my ds! He is six years old and four weeks ago, we started strattera.
Both of my kids can't take stims, as they induce tics! Without stims (and we tried several)
they have no tics!
So they are definitely caused from the stims I guess...

Back to ds: he is very hyper and stims worked good for him, except for the tics...
With strattera we experienced progress in his behavior after the second week! That is early, I think.
He took it at 6 pm and he had absolutely no side effects!
We had very nice mornings! But at the afternoon it seemed to wear off! So we switched the time to morning. But now he's again very hyper in the morning and kindergarden had complaint too! About four hours after taking it, his behavior becomes better and stays like this until bedtime.

I'm now wondering what to do? Switch back to evening? That would be better for mornings stress level and for kindergarden. But the afternoons where he plays with his friends from the neighborhood would become difficult!

Or is there a chance, that after a few more weeks strattera will work sooner in the morning, right after taking it?

Is somebody here who experienced the same ?

I don't know what to do next....

Thanks, Martina

[Mayleng]

This very long thread has a lot of info on strattera. millermom.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1051

[healthy11]

barnehangen, I'd just like to say to Millermom's forum. I don't personally have experience with Strattera, but I hope that others who do will be able to give you more advice, if you don't find the answer in the previous discussion thread that Mayleng mentioned.

[barnehagen]

Thanks for your answers!
I've already found the thread "everything you wanted...." And I've read the whole thing!

I often found the problem that strattera wears off too soon, or doesn't work at all. But it seems like nobody has the problem that strattera starts working too late...

A friend of mine mentioned today, that perhaps the strattera makes my son sleepy and therefore he gets so hyper in the morning? We have this too, when he is completely unmedicated.
Would that be an explanation for this? And what can I do about it? Give him a cup of coffee? No!!! That was a joke! But it was the first thing I thought of, omg!

perhaps he gets used to the strattera within a few weeks and the sleepiness disappears.

Oh, sorry for the mistakes I surely make in my text. I learned English at school, but that was loooong ago

[jw]

Hi,

My son took strattera for a year, but this was quite a few years ago. You might try splitting the dose so he takes one pill in the morning and one at night. Or, you might want to look at changing the dose a little bit. Strattera has an ideal dose that is calculated by body weight, unlike other ADHD drugs, so if your ds has gained weight that could throw the dose off. When my son was on Strattera, it was a little bit of a challenge to get him to the right dose - too high or too low and we did not get the best results.

Good luck! jw

[eoffg]

With strattera, they recommend a daily dose of patience, as it takes about 4 weeks, and up to 6 weeks to fully kick in.
Where lasting for 24 hours is part of the kick in process.
So you might rather stick to the 6 PM, and use this as a stable benchmark, to identify whether over the next few weeks it is getting closer and closer to 6 PM as it wears off.
Though it occurs to me that trying different times during this 'kick in process', could disrupt this process?
So it could be well worth waiting a few more weeks, before making any conclusions.