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So worried about my 5-year old son (long) need help
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<blockquote data-quote="Lana" data-source="post: 257540" data-attributes="member: 7085"><p>Hi SRL, thanks for responding and for your recommendations.</p><p></p><p>Believe it or not, we did take our son to a "board certified behavioral and developmental pediatrician" when he was 2.5 years old (problems were already bad even at that age). We paid $600 to this doctor and he met with us for about a half hour to discuss our problems and take notes. He then spent 15 minutes with our son "trying to instigate negative behavior" (we watched through a one way mirror). He did not elicit any negative behavior from my son, and this effectively was the end of the doctor's assessment! After 15 minutes with my son, because he didn't get any negative behavior from my son, he says he sees no problems?! Unbelievable! I still don't know how he could have made this decision based on so little and taking into account the behaviors we told him about. Next, at age 3 or 4, we took him to an MFT who specialized in children and we were told she was "great with this kind of kid." After 12 sessions and thousands of dollars wasted on "play therapy", she had not one thing to tell us about our son, not one thing. It was very upsetting to me. So, it is very difficult to know where to turn. We don't want to waste any more time or money with the wrong doctor, and yet we would pay whatever necessary to find the right person to help us, if they really could. We really want to take him to someone who specializes in ODD, someone who really knows what they're doing, and I can't seem to find any specific references to specific doctors who work with this in our area. Do you happen to know of any actual Dr's to refer to in the Bay Area (perhaps not something you do here -- just wondering). I can't believe how difficult it has been to find the right person to help us!! And, very unfortunately, my son's pediatrician has been of zero help in this area. He's a great pediatrician but does not seem to take our concerns about our son's behavior very seriously and only gave us one name of a general child psychiatrist to talk to. When I asked if he could refer us to anyone who actually works with ODD, he said "they all do." That's not enough for me to follow! We've also tried calling Stanford Hospital which we live close to for help through them, but they are completely booked for months in advance and are not taking additional child appointments. They gave me the name of some other child psychiatrists to try and I called them only to be told that they too were booked and not taking any new clients. I keep reading about programs that seem to exist out there to help train parents how to work with kids like ours, but the programs never seem to be being taught where we are...the programs sound great, but I can't find out how we can sign up for it because they're not in our area. Sorry to go on and on and sound so frustrated....we ARE frustrated. (thanks for listening).</p><p></p><p>To answer your other questions:</p><p></p><p>1. I think his speech is good, he's very verbal and can be very friendly sounding with adults (will often say hi to strangers). </p><p></p><p>2. Does he have any unusual interests/obsessions: Not sure. For a while he was saying numbers a lot and I thought this was kind of odd, but that passed. For a couple of months now he talks about cars every day (same questions about cars: how fast does this one or that one go, does this car go faster than our car? how fast does our car go? what's the fasted car in the world, things like that. I think he's just interested in cars?).</p><p></p><p>3. Sleep patterns: He has allergies and he does snore a bit. Oddly enough, he sometimes holds his breath while sleeping too. We asked our doctor about sleep apnea but we were told that he does not hold his breath long enough for sleep apnea. He does go to sleep pretty well at bedtime and stays asleep through the night but he is always the first one up and gets up pretty early. He's probably averaging 10 sometimes 11 hours of sleep each night and I would like to see him sleep more.</p><p></p><p>4. When he was younger both he and his sister seemed to be a bit bothered by loud sounds (would put their hands over their ears), but this seems to have gone away. He doesn't have any other areas of fussiness.</p><p></p><p>Thanks for the reference to The Explosive Child. I remember looking at that book when he was younger (unfortunately, I have a HUGE library of books on this kind of thing) and thinking it didn't really apply to my son. He doesn't have explosive temper tantrums (if I'm remembering the book correctly), it's more like daily, consistent, negative, bothering, oppositional behavior -- not outbursts. </p><p></p><p>I would so appreciate any more tips on how to help our son!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lana, post: 257540, member: 7085"] Hi SRL, thanks for responding and for your recommendations. Believe it or not, we did take our son to a "board certified behavioral and developmental pediatrician" when he was 2.5 years old (problems were already bad even at that age). We paid $600 to this doctor and he met with us for about a half hour to discuss our problems and take notes. He then spent 15 minutes with our son "trying to instigate negative behavior" (we watched through a one way mirror). He did not elicit any negative behavior from my son, and this effectively was the end of the doctor's assessment! After 15 minutes with my son, because he didn't get any negative behavior from my son, he says he sees no problems?! Unbelievable! I still don't know how he could have made this decision based on so little and taking into account the behaviors we told him about. Next, at age 3 or 4, we took him to an MFT who specialized in children and we were told she was "great with this kind of kid." After 12 sessions and thousands of dollars wasted on "play therapy", she had not one thing to tell us about our son, not one thing. It was very upsetting to me. So, it is very difficult to know where to turn. We don't want to waste any more time or money with the wrong doctor, and yet we would pay whatever necessary to find the right person to help us, if they really could. We really want to take him to someone who specializes in ODD, someone who really knows what they're doing, and I can't seem to find any specific references to specific doctors who work with this in our area. Do you happen to know of any actual Dr's to refer to in the Bay Area (perhaps not something you do here -- just wondering). I can't believe how difficult it has been to find the right person to help us!! And, very unfortunately, my son's pediatrician has been of zero help in this area. He's a great pediatrician but does not seem to take our concerns about our son's behavior very seriously and only gave us one name of a general child psychiatrist to talk to. When I asked if he could refer us to anyone who actually works with ODD, he said "they all do." That's not enough for me to follow! We've also tried calling Stanford Hospital which we live close to for help through them, but they are completely booked for months in advance and are not taking additional child appointments. They gave me the name of some other child psychiatrists to try and I called them only to be told that they too were booked and not taking any new clients. I keep reading about programs that seem to exist out there to help train parents how to work with kids like ours, but the programs never seem to be being taught where we are...the programs sound great, but I can't find out how we can sign up for it because they're not in our area. Sorry to go on and on and sound so frustrated....we ARE frustrated. (thanks for listening). To answer your other questions: 1. I think his speech is good, he's very verbal and can be very friendly sounding with adults (will often say hi to strangers). 2. Does he have any unusual interests/obsessions: Not sure. For a while he was saying numbers a lot and I thought this was kind of odd, but that passed. For a couple of months now he talks about cars every day (same questions about cars: how fast does this one or that one go, does this car go faster than our car? how fast does our car go? what's the fasted car in the world, things like that. I think he's just interested in cars?). 3. Sleep patterns: He has allergies and he does snore a bit. Oddly enough, he sometimes holds his breath while sleeping too. We asked our doctor about sleep apnea but we were told that he does not hold his breath long enough for sleep apnea. He does go to sleep pretty well at bedtime and stays asleep through the night but he is always the first one up and gets up pretty early. He's probably averaging 10 sometimes 11 hours of sleep each night and I would like to see him sleep more. 4. When he was younger both he and his sister seemed to be a bit bothered by loud sounds (would put their hands over their ears), but this seems to have gone away. He doesn't have any other areas of fussiness. Thanks for the reference to The Explosive Child. I remember looking at that book when he was younger (unfortunately, I have a HUGE library of books on this kind of thing) and thinking it didn't really apply to my son. He doesn't have explosive temper tantrums (if I'm remembering the book correctly), it's more like daily, consistent, negative, bothering, oppositional behavior -- not outbursts. I would so appreciate any more tips on how to help our son! [/QUOTE]
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