Difficult Child came home from school today and he was on a tear!! Manic is the only word I would use to describe him.
I think a lot was going on in his brain. He knew he had an appointment with the therapist, and he has not been there since before Christmas because of scheduling issues and snow storms, so I'm sure that was ramping him up. We decreased his dose of risperdal recently, and he told the therapist that he feels like he's struggling to keep it together, and while he has been able to hold it together, he feels like the energy it takes to do that is draining him (the fact that he was able to actually articulate that is HUGE for him, so he gets a gold starts for that, and I don't give out gold stars easily). A call to the doctor is now first on my list of things to do tomorrow morning. They did scheduling for next school year and apparently his guidance counselor is on maternity leave, so the guidance counselor he met with is a sub. Then he was told that in order to drop his foreign language next year he needs a letter signed by a parent, which he didn't expect to hear, so I think that threw him a little bit. Even though we had talked about him dropping Italian, and dad and I had told him that that was okay with us, the fact the he had to ask me to put it in writing seemed to make him uncomfortable.
There is this take out place by the therapist's office, and for the last few visits we came to an agreement: cooperate with the therapist and he could buy himself food from the take out place. He did really well with the therapist, so he got to buy himself food (the only way to Difficult Child's heart is definitely through his stomach!! Bribing him with food almost always works), and he came home and is much calmer than was before we left. He ate his food, did the dishes, and is upstairs in his room and he's quiet.
I think a lot was going on in his brain. He knew he had an appointment with the therapist, and he has not been there since before Christmas because of scheduling issues and snow storms, so I'm sure that was ramping him up. We decreased his dose of risperdal recently, and he told the therapist that he feels like he's struggling to keep it together, and while he has been able to hold it together, he feels like the energy it takes to do that is draining him (the fact that he was able to actually articulate that is HUGE for him, so he gets a gold starts for that, and I don't give out gold stars easily). A call to the doctor is now first on my list of things to do tomorrow morning. They did scheduling for next school year and apparently his guidance counselor is on maternity leave, so the guidance counselor he met with is a sub. Then he was told that in order to drop his foreign language next year he needs a letter signed by a parent, which he didn't expect to hear, so I think that threw him a little bit. Even though we had talked about him dropping Italian, and dad and I had told him that that was okay with us, the fact the he had to ask me to put it in writing seemed to make him uncomfortable.
There is this take out place by the therapist's office, and for the last few visits we came to an agreement: cooperate with the therapist and he could buy himself food from the take out place. He did really well with the therapist, so he got to buy himself food (the only way to Difficult Child's heart is definitely through his stomach!! Bribing him with food almost always works), and he came home and is much calmer than was before we left. He ate his food, did the dishes, and is upstairs in his room and he's quiet.