New and wanted to introduce myself.

KitKath

New Member
Hi everyone! Just wanted to say hello and introduce myself. My name is Kathleen, I'm 4o, a stay at home mom, married for 18 years to my husband, 46, an engineer, my (easy child)daughter is 15 and my (difficult child) son is 12. He was diagnosed ADHD in kindergarten and Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)-not otherwise specified, bipolar last year. We've had quite the ride over the last 12 years. He's been out of school since the first week of December because he has been disruptive, not working and being inappropriate since Thanksgiving. Turns out he was having an "episode" and his psychiatrist felt it was best to keep him home until we could get him stable. After 2.5 weeks, we're almost there, which is a BIG relief for me as I'm almost all spent! He's been taken off his stimulant as it was "ramping" him up more. As a result, he's on Zyprexa and Topomax. Due to financial reasoning, we had to stop counseling, but we get "counseling" from the psychiatrist, as well as medications.

I'm so glad I found this site as I've felt all alone and no one seems to understand my situation. After reading some of the posts, I think I've found what I've been looking for...people who will understand and support each other.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
Welcome on board!

It can be really tricky especially when you're trying to get medications organised.

A suggestion - try and get your husband to post here or lurk here as well. In our case, husband would lurk and read all my posts. And even though we talked together a lot and we thought we already had the best possible communication between us, we found that having him lurk improved our communnication even further. Because when we talk, we don't always get all the info across all at once. But when I post, what gets written down is highly concentrated.
Also if I wrote something he disagreed with, we would talk it through and sometimes there had been misunderstandings we hadn't identified.

So now we're on the same page to an even greater degree than we thought possible.

Marg
 

timer lady

Queen of Hearts
Hi & welcome.

Holidays can be the worst with difficult children. What kind of episode was psychiatrist talking about that would keep difficult child out of school for 2.5 weeks?

medication stabilization - that's always been a cr@p shoot in our household.

Glad you came out to introduce yourself - stay awhile & get to know us better. This site is a very soft place to land & a great place to share knowledge & vent when you need to. Again welcome.
 

Wiped Out

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Welcome Kathleen!!

Glad you found our corner of the world. You will find much support here. Interesting they had you keep him out of school for two and a half weeks. Does he have an iep? Be sure through all of this you take care of you-easy to say, not so easy to do.
 

LittleDudesMom

Well-Known Member
KitKath,

Welcome to the site!! Glad you found your way here. We all recognize that this time of the year can be very challenging for our difficult children!

Glad your son is stablizing.

Sharon
 

maril

New Member
After reading some of the posts, I think I've found what I've been looking for...people who will understand and support each other.

Yes, indeed.

Welcome! I like your avatar and screen name. :D

I hope the medication regimen goes well and that he can settle back nicely into school in the New Year.

I noticed in your signature you say he "knows he's different." My son feels the same; it's tough for them, I know. I like it that the professionals that have worked with my son have done their best to encourage him and to reassure him so that he won't feel so different, and I try to do the same. I can see a difference in my son in recent months as far as confidence and self-esteem goes; so important.

Good luck in the coming weeks!
 

recovering doormat

Lapsed CDer
Wellcome! You've come to the right place, for wisdom and comfort. Feel free to vent your worst, we'll still love you.

I saw from your signature that your husband is a standup guy. You are very lucky. I'd say about 50% of my kids' behavioral and emotional problems were created by a toxic marriage. In my humble opinion, I think if you can nail down the correct medications to help his bipolar, that will take care of a lot of stuff. My two older kids, both difficult children, have been on just about every cocktail of medications for severed depression and anxiety, which seemed to make things worse. Looking back, I can see they really werre used as lab rats by well-intentioned psychiatrists, but so much of medicating is trial and error and the one who suffers from mistakes is the child. I hope you can find stabilization on what he's taking.

People on this site are very knowledgable about IEP's and 504 plans, so with your son's diagnosis and school history, it is critical that you mother-hen his education plan with the school, and prepare to do battle if they don't follow through.

Again, welcome!
 
Top