We certainly have had our challenges with medication in trying to control my daughter, Leah’s ADHD diagnosis. When a child has Down Syndrome as well, it further complicates the issue. We have struggled with finding a medicine that had few side effects and was still effective as well as trying to figure out the effective dosing level. It has been a challenge. I thought things had stabilized, then right before the Christmas break, we had a conversation with Leah’s teacher who conveyed concern about her pulling her hair out uncontrollably. Now, we have noticed this behavior at home and were starting to get concerned and were exploring some potential causes and solutions. Once we discussed it with her teacher and realized how severe the problem was at school, we accelerated our research. It turns out she had been pulling out large clumps of hair lately and when her teacher pushed in her chair that day, she noticed a large amount of hair covering the seat of the chair. She tried to stop the behavior using several clever methods, but the pulling was uncontrollable.
Well, we first called her behavioral therapist who prescribed the meds as well as the school district nurse to discuss. Fortunately, the nurse was the first to call back. Once we got her input from observing Leah, we concluded that this might be a nervous tick not related to the drugs. We got the return call from her behavioral therapist and discussed with her. To make a long story short, we decided to take her off the drug while she was off for Christmas vacation.
While we did this, I also started researching some other potential causes of ADHD behavior and found some interesting material on certain foods creating ADHD symptoms. I decided to try to modify her diet a little at a time to see what would happen and to prevent her from being resistent to the change. I decided to do this at the risk of modifying too many variables and not being able to really determine a source to the problem. The result has been very positive. She has greatly reduced her hair pulling and her ADHD symptoms have also been reduced while at home. She has been back to school for a week now and her teacher has confirmed that her ADHD symptoms and impulsivity issues are reduced as well. Her hair pulling at school has been reduced, though not eliminated. I think this does show little correlation between the drugs and the hair pulling. This also shows that she may be outgrowing the need for the meds or her dietary changes are having a positive impact on her behavior. We have an appointment scheduled with her behavioral therapist next week and will be discussing these findings. Until then, I plan on continuing the dietary plan we are on.
For a quick summary of the dietary changes I made, I greatly reduced the amount of bread she eats. I also greatly reduced the amount of milk she drinks. She is happy with the milk reduction as long as she can drink a very small amount of milk in the morning and still have her milk carton at lunch at school. She is a big fan of bread, so to still give her some fiber and some of her bread, I switched her to Ezekiel bread which is made with non-gluten sources. It is actually quite delicious and still has the look and consistency of her normal bread. We also have increased her fruit and vegetable intake and she provided a lot less resistance to this change than I thought. She is very willing to eat more fruit and vegetables as long as she has some input as to which fruits and vegetables she eats. So we give her options that we are happy with and she gets to choose from those. Another benefit of these dietary changes has been a very substantial reduction in her constipation. She regularly has a BM every other day now, which is much more frequently than before the dietary changes.
I know we made several changes at once and invalidated any scientific controls to our theories, but we are getting a result that we are happy with and she is currently without any ADHD meds.
I’ll keep you all posted on how this proceeds.
