Starcloaked?

starcloaked

New Member
Oops, sorry! Life has been hectic...I know no one here would know about that!

Anyway, difficult child is my five-year-old DS. He has explosive behavior and aggressive behavior; we're still trying to figure out what's going on. Heading into a neuropsychologist evaluation in the summer; he has an IEP (I learned a lot lurking here when we were doing the evaluation back in the fall--thanks!) and is doing GREAT in pre-k, but at 2.5 hours per day, I'm not certain that kindergarten will be quite as much of a cakewalk.

We'd like to have a better sense of what's going on before medicating--the top contenders right now are bipolar (some evidence of family history on my mother's side) or a head injury from a fall in a baby bjorn with my spouse when he was 2 months old (skull fracture but no bleeding seen). We're hoping the neuropsychologist evaluation will at least help us get a better sense of functional issues we can address, if not help us get closer to a diagnosis.

He's seeing a social worker for play therapy and a psychiatrist for medication evaluation, but at just five we all want to wait until we have a better sense before we try medications. The psychiatrist has mentioned abilify--I'm readier to try medications than my spouse is, and I'm not the primary caregiver (we switched who works half-time and who works full-time about a year ago--good to have a fresh team) and if the primary caregiver can hack it, then that's what matters. We'll take kindergarten one step at a time.

I'm going to an IEP clinic with our town's SPED-PAC later this month, and hopefully will be well-prepared to go into the kindergarten IEP. We've been really pleasantly surprised with our SPED experience; many people warned me that even in this same school system, they often refuse to provide services for kids with these kinds of issues, but we managed to do it, I think partly because of all I learned lurking here.

Other than that, I'm an educational researcher at a college, dear spouse is an accountant, my difficult child's twin sister is the easy child, who is still capable of impressive drama. :wink:

Both kids are smart and social and charismatic. Life is never boring around here, that's for sure.

Sorry to pop in and disappear...thanks for calling me out and for all the knowledge and support available here...

Star
 

tiredmommy

Well-Known Member
It's great to have you here, Star. FWIW, I tend to agree on the medication issue. So many symptoms of these disorders overlap that it can be difficult to sort out a clear diagnosis. Especially if the behaviors are able to be managed at home & school. There are, of course, situations where a diagnosis is pretty clear cut & medication can make a world of difference.
 
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