The only way we could handle rebound is with a forty foot pole. In other words, we noted that rebound was likely to be a problem and did our best to avoid meltdowns and to give the child plenty of space and not lean on him too heavily.
Other things to consider - have food available, healthy food of the sort you would be feeding him for dinner anyway. Let him eat sooner rather than later, push him to an early bedtime if you can. Do your utmost to keep stress and stimulation to a minimum, use routines as much as you can and avoid changes in routine as well as having different people around. No sleepovers.
We eventually switched to dexamphetamine, we now get it privately compounded into a sustained release form. For us, it is brilliant and we have no rebound problems. Both boys get bad rebound on Ritalin. difficult child 1 refused to try Concerta because he suspect he would still get rebound; he probably would, because difficult child 3 certianly does.
Other things we found - caffeine made rebound worse. Caffeine given ANY time of day. It could be in iced tea, in coffee or in cola drinks. difficult child 1 found out the hard way when the new "energy bars" were released in Australia. He read the ingredients label and saw guarana, but no mention of caffeine. He ate one and was horrible. But he insisted he hadn't had any caffeine!
So we checked them out and found that gurana itself is loaded with caffeine. Aussie food labelling now reflects this.
If you're having trouble with the slow onset when using slow-release forms, you can always give a short-acting dose as an initial boost; any rebound from it will be covered by the sustained release form the patch or te slow release pill.
Marg
ML
