Update

[Shari]

Wee difficult child saw the neuro on Monday. They are weaning him off the Depakote. I know his psychiatric isn't going to like this, with the bipolar diagnosis, but part of the reason they put him on the depakote way back when was because it was also a mood stabilizer and I have never seen any mood stabilizing qualities from it. So I want to do this experiment - I'd like to see how he does off of it.
***
He's doing better since stopping the straterra. Impulse control is not his strong point, but he's back to his current level instead of the level he was at as a 3 year old.
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He has seemed to learn that he can rage at school, tho, and is still having about 1 rage a day at school. Usually its brought on by a minor incident that they try to put him in timeout for, and then he escalates it to a hitting/kicking/spitting/biting/screaming match. They're looking to me for help, and I jsut don't know what to tell them.
***
We met in-home on neutral territory last night. difficult child still despised her. At the end of the session, she tried to get him to acknowledge her by giving her a high five or a hand shake or a hug before she left. He refused and she pushed it to the point of him hitting her. At least he's showing her the real stuff and not some honeymoon act.

 

[Christy]

My difficult child never had any mood stabalizing success on Depakote either. Also problems with stratera. Will you be trying a different mood stabalizer?

Good luck!
Christy

 

[gcvmom]

Hope that he does okay off the Depakote. Is the Risperdal helping?

 

[Shari]

The Risperdal does help. Its the one I would really like to get rid of tho, but he is just so darn mean without it. We did recently add M-tabs PRN to the mix, so I am hoping to actually lower or remove the morning dose of Risperdal, and just use it in the afternoons (when he tends to lose it more) and the M-tabs prn. It works for him, but its a scarey drug.

We'll see how the Depakote wean goes. We see the psychiatric on Friday, and I'm sure she's not really going to approve, having just added the BiPolar (BP) diagnosis, but the "mood stabilizing qualities" of Depakote were part of the reason he was put on it, and that's just never been a benefit we've seen with it. SO we'll see.

 

[BusynMember]

If your son does better off medications, you may want to consider that maybe they diagnosed him wrong. This happened to my son. He's an angel off drugs. His Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)-not otherwise specified was causing the trouble--not his one trillion other diagnoses. He has been medication-free for a long time now and doing great. Clearly he didn't really have bipolar/ODD/ADHD/ABCDEFG etc. Good luck with this.

 

[ML]

I just wanted to add my encouragement. I hope he does great without the medications. Hugs, ML

 

[Sara PA]

A bipolar diagnosis added while a child is having a psychiatric adverse reaction to an antidepressant isn't a valid diagnosis. Antidepressant induced mania was in the DSM-III, taken out for IV and will be back in V as antidepressant induced bipolar. And if he didn't have the bipolar label before taking Depakote, odd that he got based on his behavior, not his positive response to the drug, after being on it. If, indeed he has bipolar, Depakote obviously isn't the mood stabilizer for him.

 

[TerryJ2]

Best of luck, Shari.

 

[witzend]

I'm glad I'm not in your shoes, girl. All I can say is, if he smacked her one, does that mean he "acknowledged her"?

 

[sabrah]

out of curiosity what part did they order the risperdal for? my son is on that (as I mentioned in another post, chosen mostly due to the fact that it comes in a liquid). My son seems to have impulse controll issues mostly related to rages/anger. reading you r schooltime incident looked familiar, though my son does well during the class part it all unstructured intervals that are a danger zone for him, recess, lunch, walking in hallway, between classes,...

 

[Shari]

My son was given Risperdal for his aggression. He was given that prior to any diagnosis'es.