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<blockquote data-quote="susiestar" data-source="post: 369294" data-attributes="member: 1233"><p>Email can only be given via private message, or PM. I am not sure if we still have active members in your area, but you can post a thread asking anyone who knows of help in your area to send you a PM about it. You must first make sure you go into your settings and activate private messages.</p><p></p><p>A neuropsychologist is a neuropsychologist. </p><p></p><p>There is a good chance your son is unable to put his feelings into words. It is very common with difficult children. The shrug when you ask him about them is not so much an unwillingness to talk to you as it is likely to be an INABILITY to talk to you. It is one of the things therapy is very helpful with.</p><p></p><p>in my opinion there are very very few of our kids who can be helped without both therapy and medications. SOME of the autistic/Aspergers kids who are very high functioning and not emotional can do it, but it is NOT the norm. Midwestmom's son is an exception, in my opinion. Of course it is a personal decision. with-o medications for adhd, depression and a total inability to sleep (which comes from my father's side of the family and has happened to at least one of us in each of 5 identifiable generations) there is NO way he could use the tools he has learned. with-o medications he is a walking disaster. For years it largely manifested as hyperness and severe rage. He was totally unable to register ANY praise directed at him. It only made an impact if he heard us praising him to someone else. We would even pretend to call someone to tell them what a great job he did. It took a LONG time, and a LOT of hard work from a whole lot of people to get to a point where he could turn things around. He now says he really appreciates all the work and discipline and medications and everything else we did with/for him. He hates the way he feels and acts when he is not medicated so he is very willing to take his medications. It took a LONG LONG time to get to that point, and the medications that are right for him now were not always right for him. WIth his brain chemistry there is very little chance he could survive with-o antidepressants. He would end up committing suicide. He says if he lowers the dose of any of the medications he is on the old feelings creep back in. </p><p></p><p>Not all of our kids feel that way, of course, and it took many medication trials and years of hard work to get to the right combo. </p><p></p><p>While neuropsychs CAN be as good as MidwestMom says, not all of them are. The ones we have encountered have done very very little testing and afterwards have been very reluctant to write reports or to commit any diagnosis to paper. I don't have the faith in them that MWM has, though many of us here prefer them to psychiatrists. Our developmental pediatrician led a team of various specialists that included psychometrists (people with special training in giving psychological tests and interpreting the data), a neuropsychologist, various psychologists with different specialties, a learning disabilities specialist, and he was certified as both a dev pediatrician and a child/adolescent psychiatrist. We were not dependent upon any one person's opinion, but rather on the opinions and expertise of a group of people. It gave us a very well reasoned diagnosis and a fairly clear starting place to begin to help him learn to cope with the world.</p><p></p><p>None of this is an exact science. To complicate matters further, as a child grows and matures the symptoms that he shows will change. It is one reason that the diagnosis can change so much as a child grows. Many of the diagnosis's have very similar symptoms so it is partly a guessing game as to what is really going on. Lots of times all that can happen is to treat the symptoms and help the child learn to cope.</p><p></p><p>medications should NEVER be the only thing that is used to help a child. medications help the child get to a point where they can control themselves and can learn to function in a healthy way. Right now your son is not able to control his emotions, or to change his focus from whatever he wants at the time. He probably CANNOT control these things, rather than being unwilling to do so. That is a HUGE difference. It really sounds as if he is miserable and at the mercy of his emotions and immaturity and impulsiveness. Unless something happens to help him get to a point where he isn't so stuck in his thinking he may NEVER be able to control himself. A LOT of the problems can be helped by medications, though they do NOT have to be permanent. Many of the areas of the brain that control judgement and maturity do not develop until they are out of their teens. This is in neurotypical people, or those with "normal" wiring in their brain. It is why so many teens act the way that they do. In their 20s the brain areas develop and they make better choices. Our kids, who do not have the "normal" brain wiring, are often about 1/3 less mature than their same age peers. So when my son was 12 years old he had the maturity level of a child about 8-9 years old. This goes with many many problems, including ADHD, Aspergers, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), bipolar, etc... Of course some kids are even further behind, but overall this tends to be about right. If you can remember that in development your son is about 7 years old, it may help you keep his behaviors in perspective. It does NOT mean that you stop expecting him to do his best, but it can help you keep your expectations in line with what he can actually do.</p><p></p><p>medications are a tough decision. Without them my son would probably not be here. Others have kids who do well off medications with intensive therapy and accommodations. I think most kids do best with a combination of different therapies, but every family must make these decisions for themselves.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="susiestar, post: 369294, member: 1233"] Email can only be given via private message, or PM. I am not sure if we still have active members in your area, but you can post a thread asking anyone who knows of help in your area to send you a PM about it. You must first make sure you go into your settings and activate private messages. A neuropsychologist is a neuropsychologist. There is a good chance your son is unable to put his feelings into words. It is very common with difficult children. The shrug when you ask him about them is not so much an unwillingness to talk to you as it is likely to be an INABILITY to talk to you. It is one of the things therapy is very helpful with. in my opinion there are very very few of our kids who can be helped without both therapy and medications. SOME of the autistic/Aspergers kids who are very high functioning and not emotional can do it, but it is NOT the norm. Midwestmom's son is an exception, in my opinion. Of course it is a personal decision. with-o medications for adhd, depression and a total inability to sleep (which comes from my father's side of the family and has happened to at least one of us in each of 5 identifiable generations) there is NO way he could use the tools he has learned. with-o medications he is a walking disaster. For years it largely manifested as hyperness and severe rage. He was totally unable to register ANY praise directed at him. It only made an impact if he heard us praising him to someone else. We would even pretend to call someone to tell them what a great job he did. It took a LONG time, and a LOT of hard work from a whole lot of people to get to a point where he could turn things around. He now says he really appreciates all the work and discipline and medications and everything else we did with/for him. He hates the way he feels and acts when he is not medicated so he is very willing to take his medications. It took a LONG LONG time to get to that point, and the medications that are right for him now were not always right for him. WIth his brain chemistry there is very little chance he could survive with-o antidepressants. He would end up committing suicide. He says if he lowers the dose of any of the medications he is on the old feelings creep back in. Not all of our kids feel that way, of course, and it took many medication trials and years of hard work to get to the right combo. While neuropsychs CAN be as good as MidwestMom says, not all of them are. The ones we have encountered have done very very little testing and afterwards have been very reluctant to write reports or to commit any diagnosis to paper. I don't have the faith in them that MWM has, though many of us here prefer them to psychiatrists. Our developmental pediatrician led a team of various specialists that included psychometrists (people with special training in giving psychological tests and interpreting the data), a neuropsychologist, various psychologists with different specialties, a learning disabilities specialist, and he was certified as both a dev pediatrician and a child/adolescent psychiatrist. We were not dependent upon any one person's opinion, but rather on the opinions and expertise of a group of people. It gave us a very well reasoned diagnosis and a fairly clear starting place to begin to help him learn to cope with the world. None of this is an exact science. To complicate matters further, as a child grows and matures the symptoms that he shows will change. It is one reason that the diagnosis can change so much as a child grows. Many of the diagnosis's have very similar symptoms so it is partly a guessing game as to what is really going on. Lots of times all that can happen is to treat the symptoms and help the child learn to cope. medications should NEVER be the only thing that is used to help a child. medications help the child get to a point where they can control themselves and can learn to function in a healthy way. Right now your son is not able to control his emotions, or to change his focus from whatever he wants at the time. He probably CANNOT control these things, rather than being unwilling to do so. That is a HUGE difference. It really sounds as if he is miserable and at the mercy of his emotions and immaturity and impulsiveness. Unless something happens to help him get to a point where he isn't so stuck in his thinking he may NEVER be able to control himself. A LOT of the problems can be helped by medications, though they do NOT have to be permanent. Many of the areas of the brain that control judgement and maturity do not develop until they are out of their teens. This is in neurotypical people, or those with "normal" wiring in their brain. It is why so many teens act the way that they do. In their 20s the brain areas develop and they make better choices. Our kids, who do not have the "normal" brain wiring, are often about 1/3 less mature than their same age peers. So when my son was 12 years old he had the maturity level of a child about 8-9 years old. This goes with many many problems, including ADHD, Aspergers, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), bipolar, etc... Of course some kids are even further behind, but overall this tends to be about right. If you can remember that in development your son is about 7 years old, it may help you keep his behaviors in perspective. It does NOT mean that you stop expecting him to do his best, but it can help you keep your expectations in line with what he can actually do. medications are a tough decision. Without them my son would probably not be here. Others have kids who do well off medications with intensive therapy and accommodations. I think most kids do best with a combination of different therapies, but every family must make these decisions for themselves. [/QUOTE]
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