How ADHD Medications Really Work: What Parents Need to Know
How stimulants and non-stimulants work, when kids start them, what a medication trial looks like, how to handle crashes, and why meds are only the start.
Just got a diagnosis
You finally have a name for it, and with it a pile of pamphlets, a medication question, and a hundred people online telling you something different. Some of it is relief. Some of it is grief, or fear about what this means for your kid. And maybe, while reading about your kid, you started recognizing yourself.
A diagnosis tells you what's going on. It doesn't tell you what to do at 7 a.m. on a school day. Medication can open the door, but your kid still has to learn the skills, and you have to learn how their brain works so you can stop fighting it. Watch out for anyone selling a cure, a cleanse, or a supplement stack. We start with what's true and what works.
Start with these
Free resource
Get the free Values and Strengths Workbook
The workbook I start coaching with. You figure out what actually matters to you and what you're actually good at, so you can build your life around both instead of around who you think you should be. For adults with ADHD, autism, or AuDHD, diagnosed or wondering.
For more, check out these Resources!
Book
Taking Charge of ADHD
Russell A. Barkley
The science backbone. If you want to know why willpower isn't the problem, start here.
Russell Barkley's parent guide covers the whole territory: what ADHD is, how it works in a developing brain, how to manage behavior at home, how to deal with schools, and how to think about medication. It's long and thorough on purpose. For parents who want the full picture from a researcher instead of an influencer, and who are willing to read a real book to get it. The audiobook is an earlier edition.
Podcast
ADHD Aha! (Understood.org)
Laura Key
Each episode is one person describing the moment they realized they, or their kid, had ADHD. Laura Key hosts, has ADHD herself, and lets guests tell it their way. It's stories, not instruction. If you're late-diagnosed, newly diagnosed, or still sitting with the question, hearing other people's version of your own moment does something a symptom list doesn't.
YouTube channel
ADDitude Magazine
ADDitude
The biggest library out there. Look at who wrote each piece, and trace the big claims back to the source.
ADDitude posts replays of its expert webinars here, to about 106,000 subscribers. Clinicians and researchers on how ADHD works, medication, and parenting, one topic per video. Quality varies by guest. For adults, parents, and professionals who would rather watch an hour with the slides on screen than listen to the audio.