First sleepover for difficult child 1 in more than a year...

[gcvmom]

since his former best friend moved back to Australia last summer.

He was invited to another buddy's house tonight. I called him an hour ago to remind him to take his medications. He sounded like he was having fun, and said there was another boy from school over there who he's also friends with (never heard him mention him before).

I so very much hope that he starts to come out of his shell this year. During the school year, he would never call people. Never talk about very many other kids at school. Never got invited to ANYTHING. I felt so bad for him.

Today he got all his gear packed up and rode his bike to the boy's house. Called us when he got there. We're trying to give him more rope, so to speak. He turns 15 in September, and although he can be VERY immature because of the ADHD, it's time he start getting a taste of being more self-reliant. It's been a good summer for him so far.

I don't know how much bearing the recent changes we made to his SSRI medications for anxiety have on it. The psychiatrist had us lower his Lexapro from 20mg to 10mg because he thought it might be disinhibiting difficult child 1 too much and that's why I was having so many fights with him. But when we went to 10mg, he started picking at his upper arms A LOT. So psychiatrist switched him to 20mg Celexa and the picking diminished, but then he was irritable for a while, and he had more trouble with his anxiety during his recent blood draw. Now he seems to be settling down with regard to the irritability and the skin picking. So maybe this will be okay. Now it's got me wondering if he should try coming off the Celexa altogether. But a voice inside is telling me that his family history is stacked against him, and we should probably not rock the boat. I guess time will tell. We see the psychiatrist on the 21st.

 

[crazymama30]

I hope the sleep over went well! Let us know.

 

[tiredmommy]

I'm glad difficult child 1 is doing better and participating more. I probably wouldn't mess the medications either since he's doing well but hasn't finished puberty yet.

 

[LittleDudesMom]

That's such a great thing! So many of our difficult children don't get invitations to sleepovers or birthday parties - their social skills and immaturity level so often gets in the way of real friendships.

It's so great to hear difficult child was excited and sounded happy when you phoned.

Let us know how it went last night.

Sharon

 

[ML]

I'm so glad to hear he is settling into a good place. It is always a balancing act with those medications. I hope the sleepover was a success

 

[gcvmom]

Sounds like things went very well for him. He called me this morning around 8:30am when he woke up. Said the other two boys were still sleeping but that the rest of the family was up. I reminded him to take his morning medications (didn't tell him to put his patch on... hoped he would remember to do that on his own, which I found out later he did! ) and to call when he was ready to come home.

Then around 1:00pm I called but he didn't answer. So I called their house phone, but still no answer. I assumed they'd gone swimming in their pool, which it turns out was correct when I just now finally reached him an hour and a half later. He's not ready to come home -- they're all sitting around trying to figure out what to do since the boy's mom put a moratorium on the video games (I would have, too -- they were up until midnight playing them ).

I hope this will lead to more social opportunities for him this year. We're getting into the home stretch of his really formative years now that highschool is just a few weeks away (YIKES).

 

[Wiped Out]

Gvcmom,
So glad he had such a good time!! I hope too that he comes more out of his shell this year. It's hard when our difficult children don't do much socially with friends-I keep hoping my difficult child will start to have a friend or two.

 

[TerryJ2]

That's great progress!
Neat that he called you, too.
I hate sleepovers. My difficult child is a monster with-o sleep.
Neat that the mom put a stop to the video games. Yay! I know several parents who put the games in the kids' bedrooms and never check on them. No sleepovers at those houses!
Keep up the good work.

 

[gcvmom]

Thanks everyone! The only negative is that he stayed longer than he probably should have and didn't call when I asked him to at 4:30 today so his dad could go pick him up. But at least he wasn't the only kid left there... they were all having lots of fun together it sounds like

Okay, one more negative (I'm just in a whiny mood tonight) is that he got sunburned pretty good from swimming all day, and now we've got the moaning to deal with tonight. It's always something...