M
maeree
Guest
Hi all! I was excited to see this website and glad I'm not the only one at my wits end. I'm so frustrated, stressed, annoyed, aggravated, sad, mad, you name it. I'll begin with a little history:
My difficult child is now 4 and has always been independent and willful. From very early on he was content to play by himself for 30 minutes at a time (< 1 yr). Up till he was 2 1/2 yrs old, he was the easy child in public. I put him in daycare instead of a babysitter so he could have the social interaction from 10 months old till he was almost 4. Before that he was with babysitters that maybe had 3 more kids at a time. Since starting daycare, he's displayed the usual bad habits like hitting, biting, kicking, etc that other kids at daycare are seen doing. The ladies at daycare used to joke around and say he was the alpha male of his class. He was always the taller, more aggressive and more assertive boy and tended to lead the pack. He got better about not being as aggressive towards others in daycare and I rarely heard from the daycare ladies about his behavior. It could be they were used to it. At home he would occasionally have an outburst if he didn't get his way or he was told 'no' too many times. I tried diverting his attention from what I knew would cause an outburst and tell him things like "instead of going outside because it's raining, let's build a house with your Legos". My husband on the other hand, tells him no all the time and it's a trigger point for difficult child to start acting defiant sometimes escalating to a screaming match. I feel like my husband antagonizes difficult child and is constantly pushing his buttons. From this point, he is typical 90% of the time.
In August I enrolled him in a private school. It's an all day pre-k program and I had heard good things about the pre-k teacher. From day one she would call me to come talk to difficult child or send home nastygrams (as I call them) detailing what he did wrong that day from hitting a kid at recess to not participating in class. We had PT conf. and she was wanting to know what we do at home to discipline him. We mentioned time outs, taking away privileges, etc. I also contacted a child psychologist and he started going there once a week with me. The psychiatric mainly talked to me the whole time and gave me suggestions to deal with his behavior such as time outs (restraining him if need be till he will sit in time out on his own), setting up a token reward system (for home and school), and asking the teacher to rate his behavior from 1-3 for each main activity at school on a daily basis. The teacher tried it over a series of three weeks, only sending home the tokens he earned and rating scale three separate times. Last week she sent home all the tokens I had given her to give him for good behavior with no note or explanation why. The next morning she called me and said from now on my husband or I would have to come up to the school to talk to difficult child anytime he misbehaves. She also said she sent home the tokens because she can't do it anymore since it's not fair to the other kids. Needless to say with her lack of cooperation, that was my difficult child's last day at that school.
He's now in another private school that said they wanted him there and had experience with ODD/ADHD and the aide in the class has Special Education credentials (don't know yet what specifically her credentials are). Started this week on Monday. First two days were great, today they called my husband to come pick him up because he was having a meltdown. Found out later from the teacher that she was out of the classroom when the incident happened and came around the corner to find the aide restraining him on the floor with all the other kids surrounding them watching. The teacher immediately had the aide release him and the teacher tried calming him down, but he was so upset at that point he was beyond reason. Even when I picked him up later from his GG's house, he wasn't acting like himself at all. He kept hiding his face in the pillows, wouldn't listen or do what I said, wouldn't talk to me. I felt so bad for him and knew he must have felt humiliated by having all his classmates watch him being restrained. I'm supposed to find out tomorrow what led to him being restrained because the teacher didn't know at the time I talked to her.
I'm so frustrated at not knowing how to handle him when he doesn't listen to me and only reacts to me if I yell. Of course, he's learned it's ok to yell back and I know I'm going about this all wrong. The psychiatric hasn't diagnosis'ed him yet and has only been monitoring how the time outs have been working.
After reading the posts on here, I'm tempted to have him see a neuropsychologist. His aggression towards others seems to be lessening, but his lack of participation in the classroom worries me. His outbursts have increased in intensity since starting pre-k. I forgot to mention he was in a state funded pre-k program for half a day back in April and May. I'm trying to get him back into the same program, but he's on the top of the waiting list. The teacher in that program didn't have problems with him at the time.
The psychiatric said it sounded as if he needs to be stimulated and challenged more. He's a bright kid but has a fascination with scissors and cutting things which we hide in the house. His main obsession is playing with trucks, tractors, any kind of vehicle and loves to be outside playing in the dirt and riding in his gator. I don't know what's typical for his age since he's my first.
Do any of you have suggestions for course of action to take? I'm currently reading The Strong-Willed Child which was recommended by the psychiatric but haven't gotten into the meat of the book yet but will read the one recommended on this site (What your explosive child is trying to tell you).
Oh, and the funny thing is...I work for a special education cooperative. lol I've talked to several of our psychs and some of the administrators here. I'm scared to start the IEP process on him.
Sorry for the long intro. If you got this far, thank you!
My difficult child is now 4 and has always been independent and willful. From very early on he was content to play by himself for 30 minutes at a time (< 1 yr). Up till he was 2 1/2 yrs old, he was the easy child in public. I put him in daycare instead of a babysitter so he could have the social interaction from 10 months old till he was almost 4. Before that he was with babysitters that maybe had 3 more kids at a time. Since starting daycare, he's displayed the usual bad habits like hitting, biting, kicking, etc that other kids at daycare are seen doing. The ladies at daycare used to joke around and say he was the alpha male of his class. He was always the taller, more aggressive and more assertive boy and tended to lead the pack. He got better about not being as aggressive towards others in daycare and I rarely heard from the daycare ladies about his behavior. It could be they were used to it. At home he would occasionally have an outburst if he didn't get his way or he was told 'no' too many times. I tried diverting his attention from what I knew would cause an outburst and tell him things like "instead of going outside because it's raining, let's build a house with your Legos". My husband on the other hand, tells him no all the time and it's a trigger point for difficult child to start acting defiant sometimes escalating to a screaming match. I feel like my husband antagonizes difficult child and is constantly pushing his buttons. From this point, he is typical 90% of the time.
In August I enrolled him in a private school. It's an all day pre-k program and I had heard good things about the pre-k teacher. From day one she would call me to come talk to difficult child or send home nastygrams (as I call them) detailing what he did wrong that day from hitting a kid at recess to not participating in class. We had PT conf. and she was wanting to know what we do at home to discipline him. We mentioned time outs, taking away privileges, etc. I also contacted a child psychologist and he started going there once a week with me. The psychiatric mainly talked to me the whole time and gave me suggestions to deal with his behavior such as time outs (restraining him if need be till he will sit in time out on his own), setting up a token reward system (for home and school), and asking the teacher to rate his behavior from 1-3 for each main activity at school on a daily basis. The teacher tried it over a series of three weeks, only sending home the tokens he earned and rating scale three separate times. Last week she sent home all the tokens I had given her to give him for good behavior with no note or explanation why. The next morning she called me and said from now on my husband or I would have to come up to the school to talk to difficult child anytime he misbehaves. She also said she sent home the tokens because she can't do it anymore since it's not fair to the other kids. Needless to say with her lack of cooperation, that was my difficult child's last day at that school.
He's now in another private school that said they wanted him there and had experience with ODD/ADHD and the aide in the class has Special Education credentials (don't know yet what specifically her credentials are). Started this week on Monday. First two days were great, today they called my husband to come pick him up because he was having a meltdown. Found out later from the teacher that she was out of the classroom when the incident happened and came around the corner to find the aide restraining him on the floor with all the other kids surrounding them watching. The teacher immediately had the aide release him and the teacher tried calming him down, but he was so upset at that point he was beyond reason. Even when I picked him up later from his GG's house, he wasn't acting like himself at all. He kept hiding his face in the pillows, wouldn't listen or do what I said, wouldn't talk to me. I felt so bad for him and knew he must have felt humiliated by having all his classmates watch him being restrained. I'm supposed to find out tomorrow what led to him being restrained because the teacher didn't know at the time I talked to her.
I'm so frustrated at not knowing how to handle him when he doesn't listen to me and only reacts to me if I yell. Of course, he's learned it's ok to yell back and I know I'm going about this all wrong. The psychiatric hasn't diagnosis'ed him yet and has only been monitoring how the time outs have been working.
After reading the posts on here, I'm tempted to have him see a neuropsychologist. His aggression towards others seems to be lessening, but his lack of participation in the classroom worries me. His outbursts have increased in intensity since starting pre-k. I forgot to mention he was in a state funded pre-k program for half a day back in April and May. I'm trying to get him back into the same program, but he's on the top of the waiting list. The teacher in that program didn't have problems with him at the time.
The psychiatric said it sounded as if he needs to be stimulated and challenged more. He's a bright kid but has a fascination with scissors and cutting things which we hide in the house. His main obsession is playing with trucks, tractors, any kind of vehicle and loves to be outside playing in the dirt and riding in his gator. I don't know what's typical for his age since he's my first.
Do any of you have suggestions for course of action to take? I'm currently reading The Strong-Willed Child which was recommended by the psychiatric but haven't gotten into the meat of the book yet but will read the one recommended on this site (What your explosive child is trying to tell you).
Oh, and the funny thing is...I work for a special education cooperative. lol I've talked to several of our psychs and some of the administrators here. I'm scared to start the IEP process on him.
Sorry for the long intro. If you got this far, thank you!
I'm so frustrated. I've been in contact with the special education coordinator and she's going to try to circumvent the system and will get back to me.
It makes sense if you think about how different the setting, the stimuli, and the people are.
