Advice from Parents of Kids with ADD

I wish I could give advice on how to teach pill swallowing, but my 8yr old won't swallow either! We sprinkle her meds on bites of ice cream. She thinks its cool that she gets ice ceam after breakfast. I'd suggest trying that. Good luck!

That stuff tastes awful mixed in with stuff. I wouldn't take it either if I had to.

My kids all learned pop the pill as far back in your mouth as possible, big drink, swallow. They all picked it up pretty quick.

Once he learns how to take pills the drama will end.
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I just want to add I only had one kid have to start meds before he could swallow a pill. The struggles were unbelievable. Swear I could not hide it in anything. He didn't care if it made him feel better he hated the taste! The minute! he could swallow a pill the struggles stopped. For the past ten years the only question is what do you want to take your meds with.

So it is not a matter of him not understanding he needs the meds it is in his mind the positives do not outweigh taking that pill.

1. We've been fortunate that our son can swallow pills, but I've heard from other parents of ADHD kids a lot of success stories teaching with M&Ms. Kids swallow one, then get to eat one. M&Ms aren't scary.

2. Enlist the doctor's help. Next time you're there, mention that your son thinks he's ready to go off medication and get the doctor to chime in. Kids will often listen to adults other than their parents.

3. Worst case, you might investigate Daytrana, the Ritalin patch. It's administered to the system differently than oral forms, so it may not be perfect, but you could see what the doctor thinks.

My son has severe ADHD-combined type and I'm so happy to hear medication has been as successful as it has been for him.

Best wishes!

ETA: Quillivant is a new liquid form of Ritalin that just came out in January. That may be another option to consider.

My son was diagnosed with ADHD back in January and again in February. He has a prescription for Concerta, which cannot be crushed, and he can't swallow it. Nothing we have tried of the 18,000 suggestions on Google helped. Finally we gave up on it and his Neurologist gave us a prescription for Daytrana which is an extended release patch that he wears on his hip. We started it on Sunday and have had the best 4 days we've had in YEARS. With insurance it costs us $80/mo if we fill it at a retail pharmacy location like Walgreens, but only $40/mo if we go through the employee pharmacy at my husband's hospital.

Seriously, I don't think my son would be allowed back at his school (which is phenomenal and has been extraordinarily patient with him all year) next year if we didn't start him on Rx, so I know how important it is for kids with ADHD to get the proper medicaiton.

I hope you can get him to learn to swallow it, but if not, perhaps ask your doctor about Daytrana.

all together it took 9 days to teach my son to learn to take the pill. we tried it for a straight week, every single day, before we gave up. we tried putting it in food. we tried special drinks. we tried EVERYTHING. i mean EVERYTHING. a week's worth of googling creative ideas. it. did. not. work.

my son's problem (he is 6 1/2) is that he had convinced himself he COULD NOT. and he's pretty stubborn. he's also very smart - so no "trickery" was going to work. (tried that too).

SO we explored other options. there is a patch that is $200 per month. nope. did it once and couldn't keep doing that. there are homeopathic/all natural remedies that work for some children - ours came in a drop formula and that worked well, until i found out from his teachers it made NO difference whatsoever at school. so after a few months we revisited the pill. (his can not be crushed or dissolved, it MUST be swallowed whole).

this time i talked it up a lot and talked about how much bigger he is now than when he tried before. i was very positive. you know what happened? he "took" it - or he thought he did. it ended up down his straw. i didn't tell him. he was sooooo excited. he had seen what going to school without it did and he really wanted it to work.

the next day we tried again, and i told him how he already KNEW he could do it - and danged if he didn't do it for real that time. he has now taken the pill four days in a row and is doing great. still waiting to hear from his teachers - BUT as i have said on here and to anyone who will listen - i am SO excited, that he can take a pill now - because now i know there is a whole world of options for us to explore, even if this one doesn't work.

hang in there mama. i don't know if this helps but at least know that you are NOT alone!!

Congrats on good parenting! I have 5 kids ages 26-8, 4 boys and 1 girl. All 4 boys have some form of disorder. ADHD & ODD, ADD, ADHD & OCD, and ADHD & ODD. All have had thorough diagnosis and have been or are still on medication. It made a world of difference!

2 of 4 had a problem will swallowing pills. Their pills is an all day time release so we're not allowed to crush them or they lose their time release affect. The one child I have now I put the pill on his tongue and then he or I push it with a finger to the back of his throat so he can swallow and then take a drink. He used to gag a bit but now not so much. Sometimes you just have to man handle them to get them down. My son is 8.

K. B
mom to 5 including triplets

*** I wanted to add that with my now 17 year old we used tick tacks to get him used to swallowing.

My MIL is a nurse and she swears by putting the pill in a scoop of jam for kids. My son was able to swallow his meds from day one, much to our surprise.
Sit him down when things are calm and explain why he needs to keep taking his meds. After that, don't engage when he starts arguing. If possible, don't say anything at all. Don't allow him to move on to anything else until he has taken them. Give him a hug or a small reward when he takes them without drama.

My son was 4 when he started medicines. I would put the pill in a little water in like a shot glass, shhh I know! And drop the pill and tell him to drink it fast. After about a week he didnt need to have it in the glass and would just pop the pill and drink water.

When my son was on meds, I also in conjunction had him see a psychologist so this way he understood why he was taking them. I wanted him to understand that drugs are only taken under the care of a physician. I did not ant him thinking every time something goes wrong, you pop a pill.
If he had a true understanding of why he is taking the meds, it might help. I do not mean coming from Mom, I mean psychologist. My son went to a mental health group, so the psychiatrist prescribed the meds in conjunction with psychologist visits. It was a long time ago. I think he saw him once a month just to keep the lines of communication open.

I don't think your trouble is going to go away if he learns to swallow pills. HE doesn't think he needs them. THAT'S the issue.

I like the idea of having his Dr explain that he CAN'T control the breaks.

I also think you could do another analogy - but I can't think of a good one. Maybe put the wrong light bulb in and have him turn on the light. Then say it's the wrong light bulb, but I want you to try and see if you can turn it on. Try really hard. Really hard. Keep encouraging him. Then say - but see, it's not about if you THINK you can...... this isn't that kind of deal. This isn't something you can control.

what you CAN control is taking the meds.

It must seem scary for him to not be in control of himself.

Can you "up" the level of control he has in another area? So that he can gain a sense of control in one area might not make loss of control in another area quite so hard for him.

As a note..... my daughter learned with a milk shake - it's thicker than water and the pill goes right down and they can't even tell.

To teach my kids how to swallow pills, I bought a pack of Tic Tacs. We swallowed them with water, and sometimes did 2 at a time. This helped us because some pills you aren't supposed to crush. Good luck!

My son's medication is in capsules, so when he started taking it, we put it in chocolate pudding. He didn't get comfortable with swallowing pills until he was 10.

Do the crushed pills have a bad taste? Do you think your son would like chocolate pudding over yogurt/applesauce? Kids don't normally get that at breakfast, so the treat might be the trick.

As for his opinion on the medication, I approach it as an "this is just how it is, kid" way. If you're calm and factual to the point of seeming bored, it might help him to be as well.

My son needs anti-seizure medicine, so when he was younger I had a payment system for him. If he took his medicine without being reminded, he got a dime. If he took it after I reminded him, he got a nickel. And if, for some reason he didn't take it, he owed me a quarter! Since he needs the pills twice a day, I kept the amounts small, and at most, I was out $1.40 a week. I paid him every night at bedtime, so we didn't have to keep track and he loved watching his jar fill up with coins.
Now he is 14, and is asking how come we stopped doing that! He wants me to start it again. :)

We started Ritalin with our 5 year old a few weeks ago, and it has been helping a lot. He is 5 and has always had a strong gag reflex so I assumed he wouldn't be able to swallow pills. We gave it to him in yogurt at first (applesauce makes him gag) and he took it reluctantly, and chewed the pill anyway. Then my husband started giving it to him in a tiny spoon of ice cream :) That worked! We also use a tiny bit of Nutella. The funny thing is, he still likes to chew up the pill, but probably the sweet taste masks the bitter flavor.

Double check on whether it's okay to crush that pill to begin with. As others have noted, it's not always a good idea if there's a time release feature. On the other hand, whole pills do not dissolve well and most give 15-30% absorption (this statistic is for all pills, including prescription and vitamins. Also check with your doctor or pharmacist to see if the medication is available in any other form (chewable, liquid).

This sounds dumb - but I have always given our dogs their pills with a glob of peanut butter. For the dogs, I stick it behind their teeth and it sticks to the roof of their mouths - they lick it and it all goes down together. I'm not suggesting you force a teaspoonful of peanut butter into your son's mouth, but I wonder, if he likes PB (especially the crunchy type) if you could get him to do it that way? Kids don't usually chew that stuff up all that well so maybe a whole pill would go down?

The other aspect is that he may just be engaging in defiance or independence, and not want to do what you say, or he may resist being "different" and having to take meds at all. So that's an entirely different issue and I think it might be helpful to have his doctor and/or his principal tell him that he needs to do it, perhaps in order to earn a privilege such as recess at school? Since the principal is already on good terms with him, perhaps that would be a good strategy. Perhaps, together, you can construct a sticker chart with special privileges if he complies - but that presumes that your child will engage in an act now for the promise of a payoff later. Not all kids will do that or focus on delayed gratification.

When my son didn't feel like getting ready for school because whatever play he was engaged in was too interesting, I stopped fighting him and just said, "Okay, if you don't think school is important to get to on time, just finish what you are doing and, whenever you are ready, I'll drive you in. By the way, you know that, if you go in late for any reason, you have to stop in the office to check in. So when we do that, you can sit down with Mrs. X the principal and explain to HER why school isn't important." That did it. He was happy to be oppositional with me, but no way was he going to head-to-head with the principal. So maybe your son wouldn't want to explain to the principal why he put up a fight about a simple pill when the principal is so proud of him for taking them as prescribed.