My sweet boy is struggling once again. The poor kid, if it's not one thing it's another.
Zach has always struggled with his behavior, as most of you know and was diagnosed with ODD at the age of 2 1/2. Early on we contributed a lot of his behavior to his lack of hearing and his inability to communicate his thoughts and feelings. However over time we have realized it is much more than a hearing/communication issue. While his hearing loss might contribute to his learning disabilities, his behavior is another story. He struggles with severe aggression, anxiety, compulsiveness and lack of attention. Over the past few years he has been on medication which has dramatically improved his impulsivity and lack of attention, as well as his aggression. Pretty much since pre-school he has struggled at school with any type of change and/or authority, in addition to socialization in regards to boundaries, personal space and social cues. This year has been no exception. The first few weeks of school were horrid and caused us to question how we were handling him. After settling in to his new teacher and class his behavior has greatly improved and school is now manageable for both him and his teachers. However, he has recently started OCD type behaviors with excessive hand washing, not wanting to touch things and/or others, as well as a fear of "poison." So back to the Dr we go...
He is already on 3 medications and we would like to keep his medication to a minimum and his functioning at a maximum. The hard part is finding the middle ground. He is having some blood work done to check various levels and hopefully that will give us a better idea of how to treat him.
He is such a sweet loving boy, but lately the "monster" is coming out too often and my sweet boy is disappearing. He already has a limited diet with no dairy, melons, apples, grapes or bananas, red dye and his extra sensitive gag reflex makes it difficult to eat allot of "whole" foods. I need to look into the Feingold diet more and try that to see if we can see improvements in his overall behavior. In addition we are trying to limit over stimulation that ultimately results in out of control behavior (DS, computer, TV, playstation or Wii) Obviously, we don't want him on meds forever, but... We are kind of stuck at the moment, or at least feel that way.
Please keep us in prayer as we try to figure out what is best for our sweet boy!
3 comments:
I am so sorry you have to deal with this again. But through you I see there is hope for Breven who we caught early for his behaviors. He was very agressive and defiant and his attitude was horrible thats when he got started on respiradol which knock on wood is working great so far and his teachers know nothing. As for the OCD I can see that stemming from the whole world worrying about H1N1 they are even teaching kids to sneeze in thier elbows on sesame street!
wow. at first I thought that was a typo for ADD. I've never heard of ODD. So I read this site:
http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/children_with_oppositional_defiant_disorder
totally describes my 2 year old. We've found that changing our parenting approach works well - the same methods that worked for our first don't work for our second. ODD is very frustrating, especially for a Christian parent with high hopes of a well behaved God fearing child.
prayers to you and your family!
I also wanted to pass along that I had some OCD issues as an adult and as a teen it stemmed from anxiety the worse my anxiety over things were the OCD kicked in. Hand washing, not touching doors, routines and rituals, and things having to be in a certain order or way. It got realy bad but once I got on medication and went to therapy (I had an awesome Christian counselor he had his degree in theology before his mfcc)I found ways to relieve anxiety and the OCD issues left. I will be praying for Zach and for you because as a parent I can see it being hard to deal with.
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