Hi everyone, I'm new here. I live in Israel (so if anyone is from here I'd like to hear from you).
My question to you all is in your experience were your children "difficult" more or less from birth?
My son was a very easy baby and not that demanding in fact he physically developed very early and started walking early too. He should no signs of depression up until the third grade. In the first and second grades he was a top student, extremely popular and had normal temper levels like all kids. Also we don't have any bipolar history in our family.
Things started to go bad in the summer before first grade. I won't go into the whole story but in short he is now in fourth grade and we have had a year of hell including running away from home, running away from school, threatening his and our lives with knives, desctruction of our home (broken doors, windows, sisters' things etc.), suspended from school for violence and bad language (to teachers!) at school. He was first diagnoised as depressed and was put on Prozac and then Risperdal (which made him put on weight and didn't really solve the problem) After a year we changed all the thearpists (new psychartrist and new psychologist) plus we have started a program whereby he his accompanied all day at school with a young guy (judo teacher!) - otherwise the school can't cope with him.
I have read the bipolar kid sites and ODD but the psychartrist refuses to "label" - she says what does it matter what he has, the treatment is the same (i.e. weekly psychologist and trial and error with different medications) At the moment he has just started Straterra but I understand we have to wait to see if it has an effect.
My difficulty is the sudden change from a wonderful charistmatic, popular and mostly obeidient child to my child with all the symtoms of ODD and possibly bipolar. Can anyone relate?
My question to you all is in your experience were your children "difficult" more or less from birth?
My son was a very easy baby and not that demanding in fact he physically developed very early and started walking early too. He should no signs of depression up until the third grade. In the first and second grades he was a top student, extremely popular and had normal temper levels like all kids. Also we don't have any bipolar history in our family.
Things started to go bad in the summer before first grade. I won't go into the whole story but in short he is now in fourth grade and we have had a year of hell including running away from home, running away from school, threatening his and our lives with knives, desctruction of our home (broken doors, windows, sisters' things etc.), suspended from school for violence and bad language (to teachers!) at school. He was first diagnoised as depressed and was put on Prozac and then Risperdal (which made him put on weight and didn't really solve the problem) After a year we changed all the thearpists (new psychartrist and new psychologist) plus we have started a program whereby he his accompanied all day at school with a young guy (judo teacher!) - otherwise the school can't cope with him.
I have read the bipolar kid sites and ODD but the psychartrist refuses to "label" - she says what does it matter what he has, the treatment is the same (i.e. weekly psychologist and trial and error with different medications) At the moment he has just started Straterra but I understand we have to wait to see if it has an effect.
My difficulty is the sudden change from a wonderful charistmatic, popular and mostly obeidient child to my child with all the symtoms of ODD and possibly bipolar. Can anyone relate?