freckledpotter
New Member
So I'm new. I have been looking through quite a number of the topics here, and feel like I wish I had thought to look for this earlier.
I am the mom of two beautiful, wonderful children. But my oldest has been a handful his whole life. I always suspected that there was something going on with him, but I received the typical "he's fine", "he's just being a kid", "you need to put your foot down" advice that I'm sure all of you have heard. For years I thought he may need medication for something, but was never comfortable taking action. I have feared bi-polar for a long time....but have been told he is not. He is extremely violent with his little brother and seems to be angry all the time. He is also one of those kids who is great, helpful and at ease at school and in public, but loses it at home.
The first sign that something was different was when he was 2 and still couldn't speak properly. He couldn't complete a full word ('cat' would be pronounced 'ca'). At three he qualified for speech therepy through our school district. In 1st grade school testing revealed a Learning Disability (LD), more specifically a processing delay. During 2nd grade he sunk into a depression, started talking about how he hated himself and life and he wished he were dead. We were devistated. We started him in therepy and started seeing a pd/r. She diagnosis him with ODD & depression. But we still were unwilling to put him on any medication because my husband has had severe side effects from medications.
He seemed to get better through his 3rd grade year, but that next summer everything got worse. He started exhibiting severe anxiety toward food and food borne illness. So much so that he stopped eating while on a 2 week vacation and lost 10 lbs. We took him to his pediatrician who referred us to a behavorial pediatrician. After a battery of tests, he was diagnosis with ADD, Anxiety with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) tendancies, on top of his Learning Disability (LD). Having a diagnosis was like a weight had been lifted, I wasn't necessary a bad parent afterall. At the beginning of this year we finally started him on Staterra which seemed to help him the rest of the school year with his focus issues. We are still leary of medications for the anxiety. His Dr. recommended trying a supplement, DHEA, but didn't expect it to help at all. Within 2 weeks, my son was so violent and volitile that we decided to take him off of the DHEA. Those tendancies went away, make the dr. suspect that an anti-depressant actually could be the wrong medication. Now he's recommended a mood stabilizer instead. We haven't decided what to do yet, but are still hanging in there.
Anyway, that is our story. Thanks for being here. I'm so glad that I finally sat down to see if there was anyone else out there who was going through all this too. So thank you and I would appreciate any feedback.
I am the mom of two beautiful, wonderful children. But my oldest has been a handful his whole life. I always suspected that there was something going on with him, but I received the typical "he's fine", "he's just being a kid", "you need to put your foot down" advice that I'm sure all of you have heard. For years I thought he may need medication for something, but was never comfortable taking action. I have feared bi-polar for a long time....but have been told he is not. He is extremely violent with his little brother and seems to be angry all the time. He is also one of those kids who is great, helpful and at ease at school and in public, but loses it at home.
The first sign that something was different was when he was 2 and still couldn't speak properly. He couldn't complete a full word ('cat' would be pronounced 'ca'). At three he qualified for speech therepy through our school district. In 1st grade school testing revealed a Learning Disability (LD), more specifically a processing delay. During 2nd grade he sunk into a depression, started talking about how he hated himself and life and he wished he were dead. We were devistated. We started him in therepy and started seeing a pd/r. She diagnosis him with ODD & depression. But we still were unwilling to put him on any medication because my husband has had severe side effects from medications.
He seemed to get better through his 3rd grade year, but that next summer everything got worse. He started exhibiting severe anxiety toward food and food borne illness. So much so that he stopped eating while on a 2 week vacation and lost 10 lbs. We took him to his pediatrician who referred us to a behavorial pediatrician. After a battery of tests, he was diagnosis with ADD, Anxiety with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) tendancies, on top of his Learning Disability (LD). Having a diagnosis was like a weight had been lifted, I wasn't necessary a bad parent afterall. At the beginning of this year we finally started him on Staterra which seemed to help him the rest of the school year with his focus issues. We are still leary of medications for the anxiety. His Dr. recommended trying a supplement, DHEA, but didn't expect it to help at all. Within 2 weeks, my son was so violent and volitile that we decided to take him off of the DHEA. Those tendancies went away, make the dr. suspect that an anti-depressant actually could be the wrong medication. Now he's recommended a mood stabilizer instead. We haven't decided what to do yet, but are still hanging in there.
Anyway, that is our story. Thanks for being here. I'm so glad that I finally sat down to see if there was anyone else out there who was going through all this too. So thank you and I would appreciate any feedback.