September 5, 2025

Should I Medicate My ADHD Child?

By: Dr. Renae Norton

If you are asking yourself this question, chances are you’ve already been encouraged to do so. Certainly the school seems to want you to put your child on medication. That way they don’t have to deal with the ADHD behaviors in the classroom. Doctors also seem enthusiastic about medicating the ADHD child. And you just want to solve the problems that are making life so difficult for your child. Depending upon how severe the attention deficit is, you may even be feeling pressured into trying medication given that you have tried everything else. 

But here’s the problem, the medications actually don’t work very well, they have some serious side effects and there are other solutions that are better for your child in the long run and in many cases even in the short term.

I am a neuropsychologist by training. I started the Montgomery Center for Attention Deficit and Related Disorders about 25 years ago so I know of what I speak;-) This is what I see happening today with ADHD children: 

  • An MD starts the child on a stimulant medication to control the core ADHD symptoms of hyperactivity, inability to focus, failure to complete homework and an inability to study for, or be effective, while taking a test. 
  • Once on the medication, the child’s ADHD study habits improve, but the medication may cause them to experience irritability and as a result, they have temper tantrums or meltdowns. At this point, the MD adds a non-stimulant medication to address these behavioral problems.
  • But that second medication worsens the ADHD symptoms. In response the clinician increases the dose of the stimulant – which does improve the ADHD symptoms again but can worsen the tantrums and irritability even more. Talk about a vicious cycle! And who do you think gets blamed? Not the doctor, not the teachers, not the parents, all too often it is the child. 

What works?

It is important to understand why this is happening in order to solve the problem. When you give your child a stimulant medication it impacts the central nervous system by releasing dopamine. Many people confuse dopamine with feeling good. In fact, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is more about “incentive” than “enjoyment”. It doesn’t actually make you feel good or happy, as people often assume, it simply incentivizes you to engage in certain behaviors. 

The reason for this is that it plays a critical role in the brain’s “reward center”, affecting many body functions, including memory, movement, motivation, mood, attention and more. So dopamine is necessary, even critical for important every day functioning. It literally motivates us to breathe in and out. That said, too much dopamine has been linked to anxiety, excessive energy, insomnia, and even hallucinations. In severe cases, the individual with excessively high dopamine levels may display psychotic-like thoughts and behaviors. 

Let’s look at medication from your child’s perspective for a moment. While they are on their ADHD medication, the dopamine is flowing. By the way, it’s very difficult to regulate the appropriate amount of dopamine with stimulant medications. It is really hit or miss at best, as each of us respond differently to stimulant medications. All too often it causes the child to be revved up almost to a fever pitch. But nobody seems to mind that because the child does get his or her homework done so all is well, right?

Another problem, as mentioned above,  is that many children with ADHD also suffer from other disorders. In fact 60% of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) will have at least one comorbid condition. The most common comorbid conditions are anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, oppositional defiant disorder or ODD, and autism spectrum disorder. 

And while the symptoms of the comorbid conditions may overlap, they each require their own treatment. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. In other words, the stimulant medications that are used to treat the symptoms of ADHD usually worsen the symptoms of the other disorders. But those disorders effectively go untreated but even when they are treated, the medications commonly used to treat them often worsen the ADHD symptoms. These other medications include:

  • Zoloft
  • Prozac
  • Celexa

Another part of the problem that is overlooked, is what happens after the medication wears off. For starters there is a significant drop in energy. It makes sense if you think about it because the dopamine revs you up to a fever pitch so when it’s gone, the difference is fairly dramatic. At this point, many children simply have nothing left. They are in a stupor in many cases and they just check out in one way or another for the rest of the day. In addition to this psychological lethargy, or because of it, they are not learning to regulate attention and to work in ways that are sustainable. They develop an all or nothing frame of reference to most of life’s challenges and balance. Finally, not only are they not learning the skills that they need to manage workflow, they experience very little joy in their work product. This may explain why, according to the National Institute of Health, Anhedonia, which is a “loss of joy”, is more common in ADHD children. I have consistently found over the years that when we get the child off of the stimulant medication, their anhedonia resolves and they can enjoy school and life again.

And then there are the side effects of the ADHD medications. I am sure you will be shocked… or perhaps you won’t be …to find out how significant these side effects can be. Stay tuned for those as well as for the remedies to these problems, in the article to follow this one.