Physical signs of instability?

[Got2Sleep]

Can any of you "see" when your child is about to cycle or have issues?

B has had a rough week with anxiety. Time has been a big factor as has seperation. He has regressed in the past month back to the beginning of school academically.

Anyway, today as he walked out of music(I work at his school) I noticed he looked different. The big purple bags..sunken in eyes, and overall blah look.

I asked the teacher and she said she noticed he looked more tired today, but he had had a fairly good day.

Since being home...well, things have not been good. He has been in trouble and has had many many melt downs. Going from raging to crying, to name calling in minutes and all over the place. Lots of crying and baby talk.

Of course Dad is trying to play mean guy and totally ruining any head way we might have made in the last month...but that is another post.

Any thoughts?
~S

 

[tina duann]

I was having the same problem with difficult child 1. He seems to be getting better since he has been on geodon. I never know what is going to cause difficult child 1 to rage. Sometimes it is the smallest things that will set him off. Like tonight, he has been in trouble 4 times and is working on 5. I am seriously thinking about giving him his sleepign pill. I wish I could be more help. But you are not alone.

 

[totoro]

My difficult child cycles all day long... but some days there is something a bit off and I can tell it is going to be even harder for her. She will either come flying out of her room talking a mile a minute, amped way more than usual, with the agitation about her, and get set off very easily right from the word go. She also has the look, very manic, dark eyes, wild eyed...
Then she will come out of her room and she is dark, very down looking, mumbling, shuffling, lethargic... sad looking. Dark eyes and lost looking. Gets into a everything is no good state. "Go on without me" Sullen... cries easily.

When she is extreme either way I know I am in for a bit more of a crazy day. She is much more unstable... Her cycling becomes more dramatic, much more severe. At these times husband and I look at each other and say, here we go... Longer day ahead.

Like today!!!

For us it is usually a look and the way she is talking and moving.

 

[smallworld]

Just wondering whether your son has ever been evaluated for seizures by a pediatric neurologist?

 

[tiredmommy]

Duckie has been struggling more & more over the last week: difficulty sitting still & staying on task, spinning in circles (she says it clears her brain), rubbing her cuticles until they are sore (sensory? anxiety?), struggling on occasion with being a good friend, irritable, night terrors, loud & monotone voice, grinding her teeth.
It all made sense when I got the pollen forecast on Tuesday: grass pollen is very high in our area right now. She too looks exhausted.
I used to love the warm weather. Ugh.

 

[bystander]

My DS definitely cycles. Usually it's for a month or two where his behaviors are tweaked. Not sure if it is connected with anything organic like allergies ... I think it has more to do with growth (mentally and or physically).

The things I can plainly see and predict? If DS is coming down with something - a day or two before the visable symptoms hit, he's impossible to live with practically. husband going on a business trip - same deal. Finding out his classmate had cancer? - same deal. Anything that might rock his world.

 

[kris]

<span style='font-size: 11pt'> <span style='font-family: Georgia'> <span style="color: #006600"> it seem logical to me that there would be some physical precursors....deep shadows under the eyes, sluggishness, even a change in gait. i'd try keeping a journal to see if this pans out.

kris </span> </span> </span>

 

[flutterbee]

I can tell when my daughter walks in the room what kind of day we are going to have. It's in the way she carries herself, the look on her face, sometimes it seems I can feel the tension in the air when she's particularly agitated. I can deal with that. It's when she does the sudden seemingly out of nowhere flip from one extreme to the next that makes my head spin.

 

[Sheila]

Yes. Biting nails and cuticles, chewing on shirt, etc. Often accompanied by a deterioration in general behavior.

 

[Fran]

<span style='font-size: 11pt'>When difficult child was in grade school it was fairly obvious we were heading for a downward spiral. Difficulty sleeping. Waking up at odd hours of the night. Jumpiness, irritability, silliness and less attention to tasks than normal(for him)
Sometimes getting him to have a solid night's sleep helped curtail the problem since lack of sleep made everything worse. Mostly we just tried to ride it out. I sometimes kept him from school for a day since it would be accompanied with progressively worse days and reports from the teachers. </span>

 

[klmno]

i've also noticed forgetfullness and other signs of depression that can appear a few weeks or a few hours before he completely changes and goes from a motivated kid who cares about the consequences of his actions to a kid who can't or won't think past the minute. (along with the physical symptons mentioned above) i too have wondered if it's just coincidence that this seems to happen at least more often, when allergens are high.

 

[Shari]

My best friend can physically look at difficult child 1 and know what child she is dealing with.

Her husband was difficult child 1's baseball coach for years, they lived a few miles farther out of town than us, and she would take him to practice a lot, so she spent a lot of time with him (time that still makes her skin crawl, by the way), and she can look at him and knows who she's got.