Choosing a School and ADHD Medication: Ask-Us-Anything Minisode #12

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Shanna

Hi, welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. On this week's Ask Us Anything mini-sode, we answer listener questions about school choice and ADHD. Let's get to it. Hello everyone, welcome to a brand new Ask Us Anything mini-sode of the Big Fat Positive podcast, where Laura and I answer some listener questions. Laura, how are you doing today? I'm ready to answer some questions, Shanna. Me too. Shall we dive right in? Let's do it. All right. OK, our first question is from Ashley. Ashley sent in a voice message through our Speakpipe, speakpipe.com.bfp podcast if you want to do the same. And Laura, why don't you play that for us?

Speaker 1

Okay. Hi, Shanna and Laura. My name is Ashley. I'm calling in from Texas and first have to say that I'm a huge fan of you guys. I listened whenever I found out I was pregnant with my daughter and then again when I found out I was pregnant with my son and to be totally honest a few more times after. But my question today is about picking schools. I I'm super overwhelmed. We've got charter schools. We've got magnet schools. We obviously have public school, private school. I just, I feel like I don't even know where to begin. Fortunately, my daughter is four, so we'll be going to school next year or officially enrolled next year. But I know for a lot of these places, you want to get on wait lists as early as possible. So anyway, any tips or advice that you guys have narrowing down your options would be fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and thanks again for all you guys do.

We love y'all.

Shanna

Ooh, picking schools. That is such a juicy topic and perfect timing because the beginning of the school year is coming up for a lot of us. Laura, I know we all know that you've had some journeys, travel, emotions, drama. You've had a lot with school in your family. I don't know, based on your experience, do you have any insights for Ashley?

Laura

I feel like I do. I feel like one thing I earned through the whole tumultuous elementary school shuffle of 2025 was that I picked up some knowledge. And I feel like I'm wiser because of it. So if anyone has forgotten, last year, the week before Thanksgiving, Corey and I abruptly pulled Augie and Sebastian out of their charter school that they had been in. Augie had been in it, TK, Kinder, and then the beginning of first grade. And Sebastian had just started TK. And for lots of reasons, we decided we needed to get them out of their ASAP. And we found a spot for Augie at a really great magnet public school in our area. And we sent Sebastian back to his preschool to finish out the year. And obviously, now we're coming up on the next year, and they are going to be in Kinder and second grade at the school that Augie ended up enrolling in, the magnet public school. So that's the recap.

And yeah, so picking schools stressed me the fuck out. Yeah, I remember. I talked about this so many times on the show. Yeah, I had so much trouble trying to figure out what the best place is. And obviously, things changed for us. And I think my first insight is that you may not know what the quote unquote best option is until you actually try it out. And. There actually is a lot of school shuffling, especially in September. Gia told me this. She's like, back when I was first picking your school for Augie, and I was stressed out about wait lists and blah, blah, blah. And she was like, everyone moves around the first week of school. People get there, realize it's not for them, or they get off of a wait list on another school that they wanted more. And everyone shuffles around. So it's not like you have to make a lifelong decision. So you can sort of take that weight off your shoulders.

You are making the best decision you can at the moment. But if it ends up not panning out, it's OK. There are other options. For me, I think the main piece of advice for actually picking is you gotta reach out to other parents in your area. Like you've got to just ask everyone you could possibly ask for their opinion and everyone's gonna have a different opinion, right? But you're gonna start to get a consensus from people. And it's not that everyone's gonna agree, obviously, because everyone sends kids to different schools, but you're gonna be like, oh, okay, someone's host kid. is a little bit more like my kid and personality or temperament or whatever. And they like these kind of schools, right? And like so-and-so's kid loves this other school, but their kid is way more focused or way whatever, like different than my kid. So you can start to weigh that.

So, I mean, honestly, my number one advice is you just got to talk to other parents who've like been there, done that, find out what they liked about schools, find out what they didn't like about schools and just go from there.

Shanna

Yeah, the first thing I thought of too was to get the intel on the area. I did a lot of that just through like neighborhood Facebook groups and gathering info. Other people even will ask questions, you know, and I was like going through comments from years past and kind of trying to get all of that info. And of course, this all depends on where you live. In LA, there are so many school choices. You've got your neighborhood schools, charters, magnets, private schools. There's so many options that can feel very overwhelming. But where I grew up in Phoenix, there were no options, or at least none that we explore is just like, oops, Shanna's going to go down the street to her neighborhood school. And that was actually our family's plan was to just send our girls to the neighborhood elementary school.

But then I started just seeing so many people talking on the internet about what else was available in the neighborhood. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll just apply. So based on my experience, I would say apply to a lot of them. You've got a lot of lead time until your kid needs to go to school, Ashley. So this is great. Figure out those deadlines. Usually they're around November, December, maybe January. I applied to a whole bunch of different types of schools. We got accepted into some, not others. And we ended up with one that I applied to, a charter school at the very last minute. And luckily for us, it's worked out and it's been great.

Laura

And also, one thing that you definitely should talk to, been there, done that, parents, about is the process of applying because I'm lucky that I live in Glendale and I don't have to deal with the LAUSD application system, but LAUSD has this like absolutely mind-boggling system. They used to call it E-Choices. I don't even know what it's called anymore, but there are like actual people who are paid consultants to help you figure out this whole system. And that was definitely something that blindsided a lot of my friends who had kids around the same age, you know? And I think this coming year, October is the deadline for their E-choices. It's wild. So there's a lot of options. I think just try to gather as much intel as possible. And also just know that the lovely thing about America is we do have neighborhood schools always to fall back on, right?

So thank goodness we have the public education system where if you, even if you completely miss every deadline and you don't apply anywhere, you still have a spot at a school that's probably pretty darn good. So hopefully that takes some pressure off of you, Ashley. But I get it. I felt the same pressure. And I know it's just a hard time.

Shanna

Good luck, Ashley. Thank you so much for sending in your question. Okay, Lord, do we have another question? We do, but first we're going to take a little break.

Laura

We are back and we have one more question in this Ask Us Anything mini-sode. And this question comes from one of our Patreon besties. If you join our Patreon, not only are you getting this episode a week before everyone else, but if you're on the besties tier, we give priority to your questions. So let's see what Megan sent in. Megan said, I would love to hear an update on your journeys with ADHD, especially around medication for the kids. I'm in the thick of this right now with my eight-year-old trying to find the right medication and the right dose and questioning my decision to move forward with meds at all. Would love to hear what your experiences have been thus far. Okay, so Shanna, do you want to give us an update about the ADHD journey, especially around medication for your kids? Oh, sure.

Shanna

First of all, with medication, I of course highly recommend working with your pediatrician or psychiatrist, a child psychiatrist. to figure all this out and go to those providers for first-line information. I'm happy to share my own personal update and stuff, you know, because we want to know that we're not alone in all of this. So, first of all, Elle, you know, was diagnosed when she was eight and we worked with her provider to figure out medication and we went through several different types of medication. We started with non-stimulants that we gave her at night. It was called Guampasin, and it just didn't work well for her. It made her very tired. It made her kind of low energy, low mood, and so we then switched to something else. We tried a stimulant, and that one wasn't quite right. We had to work with the dose up and down.

And I want to say it was probably about eight months of patient trial and error to find a medication for her that was right for her. Because that's the thing with every kid. You just don't know. It depends on their symptoms, what exactly it is that they are struggling with, and their body size, their body type, everything goes into play with it. My advice is to Give medication a trial because you can stop ADHD medication relatively quickly. From what I understand, I'm not a doctor. Okay, talk to your own doctor about it. But if one medication isn't working and they don't take it the next day, it's kind of out of their system. You know what I mean? So it's not as huge of a commitment to try different things and figure out what works for your child. What do you think, Laura?

Laura

Yeah, we've had to do a bit of trial and error with Augie as well. We started with a short acting like immediate release, methylphenidate, which is the generic for Ritalin. And that was working great, but it wore off by lunchtime. And so then we got prescribed the extended release, Ritalin, and that was a disaster. He was like zombified. It was so interesting. It's the same medication just in a different delivery system, right? And it was so different for him. He just wasn't motivated to do anything. He was just really tired. He just, it just wasn't working with the system, which is, I think interesting just because it shows that every kid is different, right? You know, like my psychiatrist made it seem like, okay, the default course of action is like, if they tolerate the immediate release, then you put them on like extended release because it just worked for longer.

And that was not the case with Augie. And so then we tried Adderall, which is like a slightly different type of stimulant. And that was also bad. He was like very moody, like huge mood swings. It was really hard on all of us. And so we actually stopped that, I think like three or four days in. You know, we called his doctor and we're like, this is not working. And she was like, just stop, just stop. So we actually went all the way back to the original immediate release methylphenidate. And now we just have him take it twice a day.

Shanna

Oh, OK.

Laura

The nurse has to give it to him at school, at lunchtime, when he goes to school. But it seems to be working well. And then the downside of that, though, is that he has less of an appetite. So now we're dealing with that. It's just like I get the whole struggling with medication thing, because it does feel like, you know, you're trying to solve one problem and you introduce another problem and like, why am I even doing this at all? But for us, Augie is just much more functional when he does take the medicine and you can see it kick in. It's so interesting. Like you can see the moment it kicks in and yes, it helps him with his focus and yes, it helps him get things done, you know, his homework or whatever. But the thing that it really helps with is his emotional regulation.

And it's actually really fascinating to see, like on days, you know, weekends or over the summer, when we would forget his second dose, you know, cause we're out and about or whatever, we forget to give it to him, which isn't dangerous, right? Like our doctor told us that it was not dangerous to miss a dose. Like you could take weekends off if you wanted to. It's just so clear when we miss the dose. Like Corey will be like, did you remember to give him his meds? I'm like, no, did you? And we're like, oh crap. And he'll just be like, so much more volatile. Every transition becomes a struggle. It's just really interesting. We think that this is the best situation right now, but we may have to change it depending on how his appetite pans out and whether he's losing weight. It's a whole complicated thing. Yeah, it is a challenge.

I do find myself wanting to ask him a lot of times, like, how do you feel on the medication starting to get his opinion? And I have asked him. I said, like, do you notice a difference and stuff? Thankfully, he says, yeah, like, I like it. He hasn't had any problem with it. But I do try to stop myself from doing that too much because one of the pieces of advice I've gotten from, like, my cloud and the ADHD parenting podcast is that adults should be in charge of their children's medication like we don't ask our children's opinion about any other type of medication right and so we shouldn't be basing our decisions off of what their opinions of it are I don't know if that makes sense yeah yeah and a lot of times they're not quite savvy enough to be tuned into it we tried one with a cece and

Shanna

I gave it to her and later in the day I did ask her that question. I was like, did you notice anything on that medication? She goes, I noticed nothing at all. And I was like, okay, but like I did, you know what I mean? So yeah, as an adult, you can definitely monitor and kind of see for yourself. how it's affecting your kids. I've heard parents and I totally get this. They're concerned that they give their child a medication and then the parent won't know if it's affecting the child negatively. Like, oh no, what if I'm giving this to my child and they're suffering inside and I don't know. Obviously, I can't speak for everyone but I've been through trial and error with L and CECE, which I can talk about CECE'ing a little bit. And I just keep a close eye like I literally make notes. I have like in my notes app like the day how much they took if I noticed anything.

So I have an idea and when things were not working with a medication with my kids. To me it was pretty obvious like there are things like low mood. low energy or too high of a mood, like too irritable, too angry. There's so much that I think that if you really kind of like tune in to what your child is, how they're behaving and what they're displaying, it's good evidence. And you can collect that evidence and bring it back to your provider and use it to, you know, go forward either with something different or an adjustment of dose.

Laura

Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, it was so clear to us with both the long-acting methylphenidate and the Adderall with Augie, it just did not work. You know what I mean? Like you said, it was very clear to us that it was affecting his mood and demeanor and all that stuff in a negative way. So it was very easy for us to see that that was not a good fit for us. So I agree, but I would also say try to find a doctor that you can communicate with easily. Like our pediatric psychiatrist, I can message her at any time. She doesn't get back to me like 24 seven, but you know, like there's a messaging portal. And that's been very helpful because if I had to like call into an office and wait for a message to get to her and all that stuff, it would have been a lot harder to tweak this medication stuff.

Shanna

Right, absolutely. Yeah, ours is available in that way too, and it's really nice. So what's going on with Cece? The update with Cece is that we are still in that phase of figuring things out. She started off with vivants, like 10 milligrams, and I wasn't seeing much of a difference. And so we bumped it up, I think to 20, and then I was seeing negative side effects. You know, she was getting very irritable and angry and so we scaled it back and you know it's like over the summer i talked to her doctor and said i don't know i'm not really seeing much difference on 10 and you know too much on 20 like what if we just kind of take a break from medication right now i don't know her brand of adhd i call my i tell my girls that each have a different brand of adhd because it shows up differently in each of them.

hers is a lot more emotional dysregulation as you and the listeners know and so it feels a little bit trickier to address with medication and stuff like that and not as important I think for like Camp and vacation and stuff so it's just like let's give it a break and plus not to mention it was a whole thing for me to even get her to take a pill right weeks I had to give her prizes every single day to build a positive association which we did by the way I'm very proud to say she got. the hang of it and became very comfortable taking the pill. And then I was like, let's take a break. So, you know, but you know, school's starting soon. And I want to give her a couple of weeks in second grade without medication to kind of see how things go and how she handles it. And then with that evidence, I can go back to her provider and be like, OK, here's what we're seeing.

What might we be able to try now to help with whatever she's struggling with? So we're still in flux with her, but I haven't taken it completely off the table.

Laura

That's an interesting approach. Like, give her new teacher a baseline to sort of judge from and see how she's doing, right? And then see exactly what she needs. I like that. You know, I actually have another ADHD update that... Ooh, what's that? Yeah, which is, I am now formally diagnosed with ADHD. I get to join the club. Oh, hey, welcome to the club. Yeah.

Well, it would have been a shock to me if you told me that 10 years ago, right? I would have been like, me? No. Now I get my work done. You know what I mean? I just would have been like, no. But obviously, I've learned more about it, and I've learned how much of a genetic factor there is. And we've talked about it. And I've just kind of assumed for the last couple of years that I have it. But then I was like, I don't really need anything for it. I'm doing OK. And then, I don't know, I wasn't doing OK. Or I was like, I need to see if I can get some help with this. So I finally made an appointment with a psychiatrist myself and got diagnosed. And now I am taking Wellbutrin to see if that helps with my ADHD. OK. Jury's still out. I do think it's helping a bit. My psychiatrist doesn't want to do a stimulant with me for various reasons. So Wellbutrin is like an alternative, I guess.

Yeah, we are trying that. I'll be able to report back when I've been on it longer, but yeah. The cutest thing, though, is I told Augie that I got diagnosed with ADHD and his eyes lit up. He was like, you have it too? I was like, I do. Turns out I've had it all along. And he's like, you're like me. I'm like, yep, I'm like you. So that was really sweet to see. So that was real validation for actually going and getting a diagnosis on my end.

Shanna

Oh, 100%. Yeah. If you don't mind my asking, what do you feel like you were struggling with or your symptoms or challenges that kind of made you be like, OK, I think maybe I could use some help with this?

Laura

You know, I think I've always been scattered in a lot of ways, but I've been able to cope. Like I've had all these coping mechanisms for just having my attention pulled in multiple directions. You know, I would just rely on my to-do lists and I would, you know, I made myself self-employed because I was able to control my own schedule more and like all this stuff, right? My psychiatrist sort of said that she was like, you know, you designed your life around coping for ADHD. Interesting. But you can't design your children and you're like, you know, once you have kids, your life is not designable anymore in the same way. And once I had kids, it started to really become untenable. Just things started falling through the cracks.

But the thing that really finally pushed me to do it was I started noticing I was really like that I was actually like forgetting to do things and missing things that had consequences like. Like I would forget to pay a bill and then they're like, this is going to collections. I'm like, ah, you know, like that, that's a consequence. And then, you know, I'm talking, this was like a $10 bill too. It was so annoying. But you know, like stuff I was like putting off, putting off. And the big one was I ended up getting a ticket for taking a left turn where I wasn't supposed to take a left turn. And I was just like, I had no idea. And I'm usually so fastidious about checking all the signs and doing all this stuff. And I just wasn't at that point. And I was like, that's kind of scary. You know what I mean? That I'm so distracted. I was just thinking about everything else in the world.

And then a cop pulled me over and I was like, are you, and when he pulled me over, I was like, what? I like literally had no idea. I was like, what did I do? And he's like, there's no left turn there. I was like, there is. I'm like, I was like flabbergasted. He's like, yeah, you should have taken a right. I'm like, well, now I know. I don't know. I was just like, I'm, it's hard to even remember exactly, but I was just like, things are getting harder and harder. And I'm not able to cope as well. That and my therapist at some point, like a couple of years ago, she was like, have you ever considered that maybe you have ADHD. I'm like, you know, it's starting to seem that way. And I think you even asked me, like we were at the Chapel Roan concert. Do you remember this? No. And you were like, we were waiting in line for food. And you like kind of gently, I was complaining about something.

And you kind of gently were like, have you ever considered that maybe ADHD could be your problem. And I was like, funny, you should say that. My therapist thinks the same. And I was like, I'm just kind of functioning now as though I have it. Like I'm just kind of moving forward, assuming I do. But now I can say I don't have to assume I do.

Shanna

Good. Well, I'm glad you got that information and that diagnosis, and I hope the Wellbutrin helps, and I hope you continue to update us about that.

Laura

I will, I will. Well, Megan, that was a long answer to your question, but I hope that helps you get some clarity for yourself, and good luck with your journey with your eight-year-old.

Shanna

Yes, thank you so much. All right, Laura, I think that's it for this Ask Us Anything mini-sode. I think you're right. Listeners, remember, if you want to get these bonus episodes ad-free a week early and have question priority, you can become a Patreon member and get all those perks. Head to patreon.com slash BFP podcast to join today.

Laura

And if you want to send us a voice memo like Ashley did today, you can go to speakpipe.com slash BFP podcast. They make the process super easy. You just can pull it up on your phone or your computer. You don't have to have any special equipment. You just hit record and it sends it to us and it's so easy.

Shanna

That's right. And of course we love hearing your voices. It just makes the show so much more rounded out and full of life. So we love sharing those messages that you send over on speed pipe. Thanks for listening everybody. Have a big, fat, positive week. Bye. Bye.

Choosing a School and ADHD Medication: Ask-Us-Anything Minisode #12

September 24, 2026

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Episode Transcript

Choosing a School and ADHD Medication: Ask-Us-Anything Minisode #12

September 24, 2026

Listen Now:

This episode's sponsors:

Whisker Litter-Robot

Once Upon a Dance

Tags

Episode Transcript