Yesterday I took Nathan to the doctor. It was not his physical but it was an appointment to discuss his meds and get him to where he needs to be for the first day of school.
I have always struggled with the option of medication. I only wanted to use it as a last resort. Last school year, after failing several classes first quarter, I worked with his doctor to get him on 26mg of Concerta. That worked ok, no side effects and his concentration seemed to improve. On our first appointment back to the doctor to discuss how it has been working, Nathan mentioned that it appeared to be wearing off too early and he wasn’t able to get through his homework. So his medication was changed to 36 mg of Concerta but extended release. I have to admit that I did notice a good change in Nathan. He was not as argumentative at home and most importantly, he maintained his colorful personality…lol. Nathan is a comedian and a jokester and I didn’t want that to change because I have seen kids get medicated to the point that they are no longer themselves.
Second quarter report card was great. He got all B’s and C’s…which is great. He brought up every single grade. We had also taken away his laptop after the first quarter report card since we thought the amount of time he was spending on it might have been a factor in his grades as well. So I was happy with how that quarter ended. So happy that we gave Nathan his laptop back at the beginning of the third quarter as a reward.
Unfortunately, when the prescription ran out a couple of weeks into third quarter, we needed to go in for another evaluation to get a refill prescription and I had just started working and could not take the additional time to do that since I had already taken so many days already. Days ran into weeks and weeks into months and I was just so used to Nathan being back to “his normal” that I didn’t think it was a big deal. Well third quarter report card came and he had dropped in all his subjects again and failed many of them. I wasn’t really convinced that it was all the medication that had made him do so well because we had also taken away his laptop. Then he went off of the medication and he got his laptop back so I wasn’t sure what to think. Since I was still skeptical with the medication, I decided to keep him off the medication but take away his laptop again.
I got the confirmation that I needed. Even without the laptop and any distractions, Nathan failed his 8th grade year. I know that it is not entirely not my fault but I should have kept him on the medication. I feel as though I am hurting him by making him struggle. I had always thought of medication as a crutch and not as an aide.
I did a lot of thinking over the summer and I stared at his report card, I knew that I had made the wrong decisions. I made the appointment to take him back to discuss medication once again. So as I said at the very beginning of this post, yesterday we went to the doctor. We all made the decision to put him back on 36mg of Concerta and see how that reacts with him. He gained 14 lbs and grew 4 inches in the last 10 months so the same medication might need some tweeking. I am willing to take him as many times as necessary to get Nathan the help that he needs to be the best Nathan he can be this year.
This is going to be an amazing 2012-2013 school year !
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