Harold Robert Meyer -The ADD Resource Center
www.addrc.org
Reviewed: August 31, 2026, Published: September 1, 2026
Listen to understand, not just to respond
How to use this list
A psychiatric appointment for a child is usually shorter than the drive there. Whatever is not asked in that room does not get asked, and what you were told on the way out is rarely what you can repeat accurately that evening. The purpose of a list is not to interrogate the psychiatrist. It is to keep the little time you have from being spent on whatever happens to come to mind first.
Pick and choose. This is a menu, not a script, and nobody asks all thirty-four questions at one visit. Work through the list the night before and tick only the ones that match the appointment you are actually about to have. A first evaluation, a dose change, a medication that has stopped working, and a routine check-in are four different appointments, and each of them has perhaps six or eight relevant questions on this list.
You want the most “bang for the buck.” Better a few questions answered completely than many that do not meet your needs. A half-answer you did not push back on is worse than a question you never asked, because you will act on it as though it were settled.
Bring what only you can bring. The psychiatrist sees your child for minutes at a time, in a room where almost nobody behaves the way they do at home or in a classroom. Nearly everything the clinician knows about the other 10,000 minutes of the month comes from you. There is a section below for ticking off what you plan to offer.
You are on the team. The doctor is one member of a team that includes you, your child, and every other healthcare professional treating your child. Approach every decision on that footing. Shared decision-making is not a courtesy extended to you; it is the model the guidelines themselves endorse, and family preference is treated as essential to the treatment plan rather than as a factor to be accommodated. Your child belongs on the team too, with a say that grows as they do.
Add your own. The questions that matter most are usually the ones only you would think to ask, because only you saw what happened last Tuesday. Blank space is provided at the end for them. Write them down before you go in – a specific worry tends to dissolve into a vague one under the pressure of a short appointment, and a vague worry is hard for a clinician to act on.
Write the answers down in the room, in the space under each section, while the psychiatrist is still in front of you. If you cannot repeat an answer to your co-parent tonight, you did not get an answer, and it is fair to say so and ask again.
Ordinary caveats apply: a good clinician will welcome a prepared parent, and one who does not is telling you something worth knowing. Nothing here is a substitute for the clinical judgment of the person treating your child.
What you want to offer
Tick what you plan to bring or say, and say it early in the appointment rather than on the way out. This is the half of the visit you control completely.
☐ What has changed since the last visit, in one sentence you have already decided on
☐ The single incident that worries you most, with the date and what actually happened
☐ What is working, not only what is not
☐ School reports, teacher emails, progress reports, or a rating scale someone completed
☐ Sleep: roughly what time asleep, what time awake, most nights
☐ Appetite and what was actually eaten on an ordinary day
☐ A recent height and weight, if you have one from the pediatrician
☐ Everything your child takes, including over-the-counter medicine, supplements, and caffeine
☐ What was actually taken versus what was prescribed – missed mornings, skipped weekends, doses taken late
☐ Side effects you noticed, and what time of day they show up relative to the dose
☐ Your child’s own view of the medication, in your child’s words
☐ What the other parent or caregiver sees, especially where it differs from what you see
☐ What you are hoping is different three months from now
Notes:
1. Diagnosis and evaluation
1. ☐ What is your diagnosis?
2. ☐ What conditions have you ruled out or considered?
3. ☐ What did you use to reach it – rating scales, school reports, our family history, your own observation?
4. ☐ Is anything else present alongside the ADHD that we should be treating as well?
Notes:
2. What the medication is for, and what it can do
5. ☐ What does each prescribed medication treat?
6. ☐ What side effects should we be watching for?
7. ☐ Which side effects mean call you, and which mean stop the medication and go to an emergency room?
8. ☐ Are any of these better taken at certain times of day, or with or without food?
9. ☐ Does this interact with anything else my child takes, including over-the-counter medicine, supplements, or caffeine?
Notes:
3. Dose and adjustment
10. ☐ Is this a starting dose or a target dose?
11. ☐ How and when will we adjust it, and who makes that call?
12. ☐ How soon should we see a change, and what does “working” look like on an ordinary day?
Notes:
© 2026 The ADD Resource Center · www.addrc.org
4. Measuring progress
13. ☐ How do you measure efficacy – what specifically will you be looking at?
14. ☐ Whose reports count: ours, the teachers’, my child’s own, formal rating scales?
15. ☐ How will we know whether the medication is covering homework, evenings, and weekends, and not only the school day?
Notes:
5. Medical monitoring
16. ☐ Should my child have bloodwork or heart testing because of these medications or this diagnosis?
17. ☐ Will you track height, weight, blood pressure, and pulse, and how often?
18. ☐ How do we tell a medication effect on sleep or appetite from ordinary growing-up changes?
Notes:
6. Treatment goals
19. ☐ Is your aim improvement or maintenance?
20. ☐ Do you see the medication as permanent or temporary?
21. ☐ What besides medication should we be doing, and when would you add it?
Notes:
© 2026 The ADD Resource Center · www.addrc.org
7. Stopping, pausing, and refills
22. ☐ What would make you stop or change this medication?
23. ☐ Are medication breaks over weekends or school vacations appropriate here?
24. ☐ How do refills work, how much notice do you need, and what do we do if we run out or a prescription is lost?
Notes:
8. Coordination with others
25. ☐ Have you spoken with my child’s therapist or other treating clinicians?
26. ☐ Would including one of them in an appointment be productive?
27. ☐ How do you want to handle it when the two of us as parents report different things from home?
Notes:
9. How we decide together
28. ☐ How do you want us to make these decisions together – what is my part, what is my child’s part, and what is yours?
29. ☐ When there is more than one reasonable option, will you tell me so, rather than presenting the one you prefer?
30. ☐ As my child gets older, how does their own say in this grow?
Notes:
10. Communication and support
31. ☐ Are you willing to speak to the school if needed?
32. ☐ Will you write what the school needs for a 504 plan or an IEP?
33. ☐ How do you prefer to be contacted between appointments, and how quickly should we expect an answer?
34. ☐ Is there an after-hours number to call?
Notes:
© 2026 The ADD Resource Center · www.addrc.org
Before you leave the room
A. ☐ What is the one thing you want us to watch for before the next visit?
B. ☐ When is the next appointment, and what will we decide at it?
C. ☐ Is there anything you expected me to ask that I did not?
D. ☐ Read back what you wrote down. If a question was answered in a way you could not repeat to your co-parent tonight, ask it again now.
Questions of your own
Written the night before, not invented in the room. If you are unsure whether something belongs here, it belongs here.
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Answers:
Look it up yourself
You are entitled to check anything you were told, and a psychiatrist who is confident will not mind that you did.
- MedlinePlus Drug Information – plain-language entries for every prescription medication, from the National Library of Medicine
- DailyMed – the actual FDA-approved label, including whether an extended-release capsule may be opened
- Center for Parent Information and Resources – what a 504 plan and an IEP are, and what a school is obliged to do
You may reproduce this list for personal, classroom, or clinical use with the copyright line intact. For any other use, write to [email protected].
© 2026 The ADD Resource Center · 127 West 83rd St., Unit 133, New York, NY 10024-0840 USA · www.addrc.org