Hello!
I'm a stay at home mom to two boys. My difficult child? is my 8 year old son. He has had issues since birth and after countless doctors, therapist, psychiatrist, developmental pediatrician and pediatric neurologist, the diagnoses that is sticking at the moment is Asperger's and ADHD. In the past he has had major sensory issues, extreme irritability and fits of horrible agression. He would get so upset over tiny things that other kids would have never even noticed and he would go through these fits of rage (daily) where he would hit, kick, scream, throw, pull my hair.. you name it. He would bang his head on walls, floors, tell teachers he wanted to kill himself. He is currently doing pretty good. He has been taking prozac for about 18 months now and that has helped stable him enough so that we could get him into therapy. Before the medications, he was physically attacking the therapist and we were getting nowhere. He hasn't had any change in medication dosage for over a year now and we have still continued to see improvement as time has gone by. Before the prozac, we tried risperidone, abilify and vyvanse. None of those helped and he had horrible side effects. He is currently homeschooled. We pulled him from school about three months into Kindergarten because he was having so many problems in the classroom. Our thinking at the time was that we would pull him for Kinder, have him thoroughly evaluated, get a diagnosis and get him some help before starting him in First grade the following Fall. I was definitely clueless about just how LONG that whole process would take! lol We're still homeschooling because it just seems to be a better fit for him. Things certainly aren't perfect and I still feel like our life is not "normal" but we're hanging in there. He has even started showing empathy in the past year and that to me has been MAJOR!
My only issue right now is the medication is causing him to gain weight and his growth in height is slowing waaaay down. Not sure if that's a side effect or not but it's still concerning to me. He has always been tall for his age so he is still above average in height but he is definitely falling off of his "curve". He hasn't grown at all in the past 7 months. I plan on talking about all of this to his psychiatric at our visit next month but I can't stop worrying about all of it. I worry about the thought of having to take him off the medication and him relapsing, I worry about withdrawal problems and I worry about the medication hurting his physical health if he continues on it. In a perfect world, he could go off the medication with no issues and be just fine... but I'm not so sure that would happen. It doesn't help that when my anxiety gets the best of me, I start googling things like crazy and then I just find all sorts of horror stories that make me panic even more. aaaaahhhh!
More about us... I've been married for 11 years to a wonderful man. He's in the military so that is adding to my stress too. We are currently at a non-deployable unit but we will be moving next summer and a one year deployment will likely soon follow. We live far away from family due to military assignment. husband has become my rock through all this and has really stepped up over the years and become soooo supportive. Which is good because he is about all I have as far as support goes!
We have a 5 year old son as well who I guess would be my easy child? He has been the most easy going child since birth which has been a true blessing!
Anyway, I'm glad I have found this place. There's so much more I could add to our "story" with our difficult child but I'm gonna try to keep things fairly short. I have felt sooo alone over the past few years and at times, when things have been really, really bad, it is horrible to feel like no one understands what you're going through.
I'm a stay at home mom to two boys. My difficult child? is my 8 year old son. He has had issues since birth and after countless doctors, therapist, psychiatrist, developmental pediatrician and pediatric neurologist, the diagnoses that is sticking at the moment is Asperger's and ADHD. In the past he has had major sensory issues, extreme irritability and fits of horrible agression. He would get so upset over tiny things that other kids would have never even noticed and he would go through these fits of rage (daily) where he would hit, kick, scream, throw, pull my hair.. you name it. He would bang his head on walls, floors, tell teachers he wanted to kill himself. He is currently doing pretty good. He has been taking prozac for about 18 months now and that has helped stable him enough so that we could get him into therapy. Before the medications, he was physically attacking the therapist and we were getting nowhere. He hasn't had any change in medication dosage for over a year now and we have still continued to see improvement as time has gone by. Before the prozac, we tried risperidone, abilify and vyvanse. None of those helped and he had horrible side effects. He is currently homeschooled. We pulled him from school about three months into Kindergarten because he was having so many problems in the classroom. Our thinking at the time was that we would pull him for Kinder, have him thoroughly evaluated, get a diagnosis and get him some help before starting him in First grade the following Fall. I was definitely clueless about just how LONG that whole process would take! lol We're still homeschooling because it just seems to be a better fit for him. Things certainly aren't perfect and I still feel like our life is not "normal" but we're hanging in there. He has even started showing empathy in the past year and that to me has been MAJOR!
My only issue right now is the medication is causing him to gain weight and his growth in height is slowing waaaay down. Not sure if that's a side effect or not but it's still concerning to me. He has always been tall for his age so he is still above average in height but he is definitely falling off of his "curve". He hasn't grown at all in the past 7 months. I plan on talking about all of this to his psychiatric at our visit next month but I can't stop worrying about all of it. I worry about the thought of having to take him off the medication and him relapsing, I worry about withdrawal problems and I worry about the medication hurting his physical health if he continues on it. In a perfect world, he could go off the medication with no issues and be just fine... but I'm not so sure that would happen. It doesn't help that when my anxiety gets the best of me, I start googling things like crazy and then I just find all sorts of horror stories that make me panic even more. aaaaahhhh!
More about us... I've been married for 11 years to a wonderful man. He's in the military so that is adding to my stress too. We are currently at a non-deployable unit but we will be moving next summer and a one year deployment will likely soon follow. We live far away from family due to military assignment. husband has become my rock through all this and has really stepped up over the years and become soooo supportive. Which is good because he is about all I have as far as support goes!
We have a 5 year old son as well who I guess would be my easy child? He has been the most easy going child since birth which has been a true blessing!
Anyway, I'm glad I have found this place. There's so much more I could add to our "story" with our difficult child but I'm gonna try to keep things fairly short. I have felt sooo alone over the past few years and at times, when things have been really, really bad, it is horrible to feel like no one understands what you're going through.