That's a useful list, Sara. I hope it applies to us as well - amounts and recipes do vary from country to country.
Caffeine used to be a disaster for our younger three. Especially the boys - we had tried diet on difficult child 1 very early on, found that caffeine and oranges were a trigger. On ritalin, the problem went away with oranges, and with small amounts of caffeine, but more than one cup of cola would have difficult child 1 acting as if his medication had not been taken - it was nasty. It was discovered at a school birthday party one day; the birthday child had brought in soft drink (including cola) and difficult child 1, thinking (as we did) that cola was OK if he'd taken his medications, had several cups. Next day (Saturday) it was still affecting him; we went to a restaurant for lunch and had a shocking time with difficult child 1 all over the place, unable to sit still, getting loud and aggressive - we asked him if he'd eaten a lot of oranges or drunk cola, eh said, "It doesn't affect me when I'm on my medications."
"Did you take them?"
difficult child 1 was too far affected to remember if he'd taken his medications, but husband remembered giving them to him. So we tried to talk it through - "When did you have cola?"
He couldn't remember, but easy child then said, "Wasn't it Amelia's birthday party in your class yesterday?"
difficult child 1 said, "Yeah, that's right. I sat with Mr Zzzz and we ate crisps, and biscuits and I drank lots of soft drink, and - uh-oh..."
"How much cola?"
Now he was remembering, he said, "About four cups. But cola shouldn't affect me..."
From that point on, we kept an eye on his intake. So did he. And increasingly, he became more sensitive to cola. He could have half a cup of cola, or half a cup of Mountain Dew and NO energy bars.
When the "contains guarana!" energy bars came on the market in Australia, difficult child 1 bought some because he liked the idea of an energy bar which had something other than caffeine. He was horrible after eating just one. He couldn't work out why everyone was being so hard on him, until I asked him if he'd had an energy bar. "Yes I did! But NOT one with caffeine, I know better than that! It was one of those new ones..."
We went looking for it at the supermarket. difficult child 1, still aggressive, pointed and said, "See? It's got guarana, not caffeine."
I checked the small print. This bar did not say it had caffeine but I didn't trust it. I went home and checked - guarana DOES contain caffeine. difficult child 1 was furious at being swindled by the manufacturer, as he saw it. And even as I was ringing the manufacturer and consumer affairs to complain, the labels were being reprinted. The next week the energy bars bore a label in fine print saying, "contains caffeine".
Clearly this was not enough - the last time I glanced at those bars I saw the letters writ much larger, "WARNING - CONTAINS CAFFEINE".
Now that difficult child 1 is older and also on a sustained release formulation, he can have more caffeine. I can see the effects especially as medications are wearing off for the day, but he can now control his aggression sufficiently, so I say nothing. No point - he's an adult, he hasn't had any violent episodes for years. But I won't let difficult child 3 touch caffeine.
We have a number of activists in our village (the place attracts people like me). At the last school Speech Day I was one of the guests at the lunch afterwards, because of my volunteer work with them. These lunches are informal buffets, we sit on tiny chars or eat, standing, in one of the classrooms. I was sitting with difficult child 3's therapist and a couple of her friends - activists all. Also there was difficult child 3's best friend's mother (best friend also has ADHD/autism). One woman spoke up and asked me, "What do you think about people who drug their kids into submission, just because someone says they have ADHD?"
Talk about a loaded question! I replied, "I think you'll find I'm one of those mums. And they're not in any way 'in submission', the medication helps them focus better."
I explained about what we'd been told - that these kids have a brain where the negative feedback switch to the inhibition centre is simply not working properly, the medication helps that switch to function. I thought she'd get enough of a vibe from me to drop the subject, but she persisted.
"Surely giving them stimulants is not a good idea? There are so many natural products which work even better."
I explained my view - natural products have their place but ANYTHING which has a therapeutic benefit also has to be used with knowledge and caution, because what is one person's therapy is another person's side effect. And if the product is so gentle it has no side effects - then chances are, it has no therapeutic benefit either. You can't have it both ways. I then told her about the problem we have with caffeine with the boys. She then totally shocked me by saying, "I have ADD, I treat mine with caffeine and it makes such a huge difference to me."
I offered to let her babysit my boys after a caffeine bender. I said, "It's different for different people. I'm glad it can help you, but my kids were prescribed a specific medication for a specific medical condition. We tried it and saw immediate benefits - in fact, with difficult child 3, it made it easier for him to learn to talk - within a week of beginning the medication he went from single words to five word sentences. Medication specifically for ADHD is not perfect, but it's more carefully refined and researched for this application, than is caffeine. Nothing is perfect but I'd rather use a more specific tool than a blunt instrument."
At this point I was getting up to leave. She had been passionate about what she was saying but we weren't likely to come to blows; I wanted to leave while I could still be polite. She IS a nice person, just a misguided zealot in my opinion.
And as I was walking away, I remembered/realised a few things:
1) She and her husband market various 'natural remedies' via direct marketing (borderline illegal in this country). Their daughter has a lot of problems due to brain injury as a toddler, they are desperate parents convinced they have found a viable treatment (which, to afford, they must also sell to others).
2) She is a BIG influence in difficult child 3's best friend's mother, who vacillates from medicating her son with ritalin (prescribed by the pediatrician) to not medicating him because "so-and-so said it's wrong to drug your kids - take this supplement instead, it's only $100 a bottle this week." Friend's mum has now run out of ritalin and is too scared of what the pediatrician will say, so her son is going unmedicated (and not coping as well) all because one very pushy friend has such a hold over a 'customer'.
3) her husband also worked for our local pharmacist and one day a few years ago when I was collecting the stimulant prescriptions, he took me aside, gave me a pamphlet for THEIR products and told me to get my boys off the medications and only his supplement. Unethical AND illegal.
If caffeine works for someone, that's great. But it's not for everybody. It IS a stimulant, but so are a lot of things. My kids' treatments are overseen by a specialist (I know you guys in the US don't use pediatricians in this way, but it IS how it works down here - stupid, I know). This guy is an expert. Alternatively, I could titrate my kids for caffeine myself, but how can you assess the caffeine content of what you give them? Changing brands of coffee bean can make a big difference.
I'll stick to the prescription, thanks.
Marg