More Parenting Challenges

We have one child that has proven to be consistently challenging.  My husband is convinced the reason the Lord sent us the twins so closely after him is because if he'd gotten any older and we'd realized what we had on our hands, there's no way we would have had more children.

I have to say, I agree.

This kid was nineteen months when the twins were born.  He was already a bit of a handful, always climbing onto everything, loved to see how stuff felt and dumping?   You've never seen a kid dump like this kid.  Food, milk, eggs, soap, oil, pasta, flour, sugar, basically if it was in a container, it was his personal mission to make sure it ended up on the floor.  Or carpet, counters, toilet seat, it really didn't matter.  He wasn't to choosy where he dumped.

We found out not to soon before his second birthday that he was extremely behind in his speech.  I was already on the lookout for autism red flags since we have such a high rate of autism in our extended (and immediate) family.  So I was right on the speech delays.  Turns out little mook had his ears full of gunk.  He never complained, never cried, never said or did anything to indicate a problem but it was persistent, even with a few rounds of antibiotics.   So he ended up with tubes.

The ENT said that the "fluid" in his ears wasn't actually fluid, it was a sticky goo that had to be scraped out.  his tubes were put in by his second birthday and he started speech shortly after that.

0f course he had to make everything difficult.  His tubes fell out six months after they were first put in and then they fell out again before he turned four.  He had three sets of tubes total put in.

When he was in Early Intervention, there were times when he just screamed during the whole class time.  The teacher called them "Red Headed Days" and handled them by ignoring him.  She had my support, I knew that when he melt down, there was no reasoning with him and that if you interacted with him, he'd take his frustrations out on you.

He was in Head Start the following year and we were blessed with an incredible teacher that had the patience of a Saint.  His class was afternoon, from noon to four, riding the bus on the way and with me picking him up on the way home.

The twins were still bitty and the middle child often had meltdowns going out the door, leaving me with three screaming children and only two arms.  There was a kind teacher that often helped me carry children out to my car.

At that age we readily saw his impulse issues.  He had to touch everyone.  He also did this odd thing with making noises and hand movement at the same time.  He'd skim his hand up the back of your head while chirping, twenty times in a row.  BeYOND aggravating.  Needless to say, relationships with other kids were tough.  They're still tough.  Boundaries and limits are still struggles for him.

Then there's his temper.  Remember those toddler tantrums I've talked about?  As he's aged, they've morphed from tantrums into fits of rage including lashing out at others physically.  Last summer was very rough at our house.

So here we are now.  The kid has been diagnosed officially with anger problems and ADHD NOS.  The ADHD is basically the new labeling for the ADD diagnosis.  It's the same diagnosis our oldest has.  At the beginning of the school year, he started therapy specifically for his anger.  He's seeing the same therapist the oldest saw for her anxiety.  I strongly felt this therapist was worth waiting for and wait we did, over that long and tedious summer but it's proven to be worth the wait.

So where are we now?  There's still loads of problems and I've spent many a good afternoon sobbing out of sheer frustration and exhaustion in dealing with the middle child.  We've been blessed with a wonderful teacher that has worked with us through the first couple of shaky months at school to put a system in place to motivate the middle child in controlling himself at school.  We now use the "Smiley System", where the day is divided into two sections, before and after lunch with the potential to earn a smiley in each section.  Each smiley is worth a half hour of computer time and a week of smileys earn computer time for the weekend.  We've still had half a dozen incidences of harassing, touching and/or hitting other kids over the school year.

The school was a champ, giving him a few chances to get his act together and the last few times, he's had increasingly serious consequences.

I don't know what motivates him but last week, he pushed the envelope as far as he could and touched two girls where their breasts are.

The school told the in house police officer, the kid has lost recess until after school break (that's a month folks) and the boom has been lowered at our house.

It's personal space boot camp at our house.  Absolutely nothing is tolerated.  Not standing to close, not running and head butting me, not poking our little brother to make him miserable.  Now this wasn't really tolerated before, but obviously wasn't making an impact.  Any infraction and he's instantly sent to his room until he can respect personal space again.  Any problems at school and his bedtime is after dinner.

His dad lowered the boom if there are any further phone calls as well.  Some of you may or may not remember when the kid was five and he went on that klepto spree?  He stole left and right over and over again and he figured, as he kept getting caught, he simply needed to learn to lie better.   Yeah, after a month, his room was stripped of every belonging except one blanket and he had to earn his whole room back.  One more call from school and he loses everything in his room.  Everything.  

I also put in the positive goal that he can earn a geode (rock with crystals on the inside) if I don't get anymore calls from school the rest of the year.

Smart alec says "What if I throw up?"

*grumble grumble grumble*

O...KAY....   No calls for discipline reasons or schoolwork reasons.   

Like he didn't know what I meant.

So it's been a hard week.  I haven't talked about it because it's hard to talk about.  I've stated to friends how different the behavior problems are because unlike my girls learning disabilities, people understand those.  Your average person often sees discipline/behavior problems as a problem with parenting.

I can tell you first hand, sometimes it's just not.  As his mother, I can see his potential and it's incredible.  It's just getting him there. 

Today's Appointment

Actually I'm not really posting about my doctor's appointment because it's all personal and not stuff I feel comfortable talking about.  Yes, I just wrote that.  Hard to believe I'd choose not to talk about myself, but there it is, even I have limits. 

So, finally taking care of myself, I marched off to the appointment I had scheduled three weeks ago.  Of course, since this was "girl stuff", there was a brief discussion on my childbearing history.  That was expected however since I had my tubes tied with the twins C-section, there wasn't a whole lot to say. 

I had planned to not even mention the twins pregnancy.  That pregnancy was many things for me, truly the ultimate in emotional highs and lows but since I'm done having children it just wasn't relevant to this exam.  The doctor made a comment about twins, basically what a struggle it can be to have twins and I sat there a minute before disclosing that these guys were a struggle very early on.  

I kept my explanation brief.  Heaven knows I can talk for hours about the nitty gritty details but I curtailed the conversation back to the issues at hand because, lets face it, I wanted to get the exam over and done with.  

At the very end, the doctor brought up the twins again, just to say how amazing it is that they made it.  Now granted, due to his profession, the doctor will, at the very least, be familiar with the syndrome. Still, I found it oddly comforting to have someone understand, understand all the things that could have gone wrong.  Understood all the possible birth defects.  Just understood that it wasn't easy.

That brief two minute conversation was very comforting to me.  It was nice to not have to juggle how much to say, not wanting to overload an acquaintance but at the same time, being bothered by brush off statements that "Twins are usually early" and "You expect a few more complications with twins."

It was very compassionate of this doctor to make the point of recognizing struggles I hadn't even brought up. 

I'd gladly recommend him.