The school just called husband

Karen & Crew

New Member
I'm at my wit's end with this child. I'm serious. I am "this" close to going into the nut house myself because of him.

He's staying in trouble at school. His teacher called Friday and said he'd had a simply awful week. Our weekend was straight from the depths of he!!. He got a disciplinary behavior report sent home yesterday for throwing things at another student.

We did have a good night last night and I was optimistic today.

I spoke with his teacher right before lunch. He's refusing to do any of his classroom work for her or the English teacher today and he wouldn't do any of it yesterday. He's having to be removed from the classroom several times a day for 10 or so minutes at a time because of disruptive behavior.

I spoke with the lunchroom monitor last Tuesday evening and she said R was eating the fruit smilies out of his lunch and eating maybe half of his peanut butter sandwich and throwing out the yogurt, granola bar, applesauce and chips. Since then he's been getting a juice pouch and a peanut butter sandwich. When I talked to his teacher Friday she said he was still eating at least half of that.

husband got a call from the cafeteria manager about an hour ago. R threw his entire untouched sandwich in the garbage today and informed her that he'd outgrown peanut butter.

WTF?

We had to cut out fast food chicken nuggets because that is literally ALL he would eat other than the 1/2 of the peanut butter sandwich and quite frankly I was going broke going to BK every day.

He had approx. 6 ounces of yogurt and a couple of spoonfuls of cereal this morning and now he's thrown his lunch out.

He's on an appetite STIMULANT for crying out loud!

What gives? I am seriously about to have a nervous breakdown.
 

Loris

New Member
Does he have an IEP at school? If not, think about looking into one. I think I would have his medications checked or maybe a new evauation? It does sound very frustrating. I hope it gets better soon.
 

kris

New Member
<span style='font-size: 14pt'> <span style='font-family: Georgia'> <span style="color: #663366"> which one of those medications is an appetite stimulant. the concerta would supress his appetite.

does he eat well in the morning before school? how about when he gets home & the concerta starts to wear off? does his appetite increase then?

try to get breakfast in him before you give him the concerta. instead of sending a big lunch i would just give him a few snack things to choose from at lunch. have healthy snacks out for him when he gets home & allow him to snack at will till about an hour before dinner.

if you're concerned about calorie consumption milkshakes & those protein drinks can be helpful...pediatric ensure for instance.

i would try to avoid making food a huge issue if you can.

kris
</span> </span> </span>
 

Karen & Crew

New Member
The periactin is the appetite stimulant.

I suspect R has some degree of sensory problems also. Compound that with the fact that he was subjected to some mental and physical abuse at a child-care center - most of which related to food issues and that's where we are today. A child with a diet that's limited to peanut butter on white bread with no crust, perfectly smooth yogurt and chicken nuggets from Wendy's or BK. There's a couple of other things but those are the biggies.

He's always fed breakfast, or what he'll eat of it, before he's given the Concerta and it seems to make no difference.

I've always packed plenty of healthy snack-type foods in his lunch previously - tubes of yogurt and applesauce, juice...things he ASKED for. I was rather shocked to hear he was dumping it all out every day.

We have an open door policy on the pantry/refrigerator but because he's been filling up on crap food and not grow food the crap has disappeared. There are still plenty of options available for him to eat but he chooses not to. If we try to force the issue he gags himself until he vomits.

He's supposed to be drinking a Boost or an Ensure twice a day but he refuses, saying they're nasty.

The food issue causes me concern because he's already so skinny and he dropped 20 pounds in just a couple of months after school started.
 

smallworld

Moderator
Karen, my kids have been on Periactin several different times over the years, and we've been told by the prescribing doctors that its effectiveness wears off after about a month. Sometimes doctors do a dosing schedule of a week on and a week off to boost Periactin's effectiveness. Furthermore, Concerta will absolutely kill an appetite regardless of Periactin. My son was very skinny when he was taking Concerta. One other thought is that anxiety can be an appetite suppressor. My daughter (difficult child 2) lost a lot of weight when she was anxious and depressed. Once we got her on the right medications to address her anxiety and depression, her appetite improved.

I think you have to look at the food problem as a symptom, one that will improve once the doctors identify the underlying disorder and put the proper interventions into place. The medications don't seem to be making things better so I'd recommend a close look at them. If this psychiatrist is not helping you, it's time to find a new one.
 

Karen & Crew

New Member
We go back next Thursday unless someone cancels for this Thursday. She's only in part-time right now as she's still on partial maternity leave.

I spoke with her about 10 minutes on the phone yesterday and she said the medications are going to have to go. All of them (except maybe the Periactin). She thinks the Concerta is agitating him instead of calming him and the Zoloft isn't doing squat for his anxiety. She just doesn't want to pull him off without seeing him first.

I'm just trying to hang on until the 29th. We're going to Cub Scout camp this weekend. I'm hoping the alone time with just me will help him.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Don't remember if I asked before. Hate to be repetitious. Has he ever seen a neuropsychologist? With his symptoms, I'd want him to be tested for high funcioning autism, maybe Aspergers. It's hard to catch in younger kids, but can cause real disruption in the child's life and yours, and ADHD stims won't fix it. Psycologists and pediatricians tend to miss it. Sensory stuff is a real problem with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) kids. Not saying he has it, but I do think a neuropsychologist exam would be a good way to spot his problems. They do a really intensive evaluation. All of his symptoms combined--Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)/anxiety/ADHD/ODD-like behavior really sound like it could very well be Aspergers or Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)-not otherwise specified. I wouldn't leave any stone unturned. I'd also want a Child Psychiatrist to see if he thinks he has Early Onset Bi-Polar (EOBP). IF so, Concerta and Zoloft would likely make him worse. I"m not a doctor either, and shouldn't be one, but it doesn't sound like the medications are doing much good, so I'm guessing from experience that they are probably not the right medications.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
I think you'll be much happier with-o the medications, or at least when you cut back on them.

Unless he's anorexic, I wouldn't stress out as much about the lunches. How much does he weigh? How tall is he?

Our difficult child went through that too, although he didn't have the history of food/day care abuse your difficult child had. It infuriated me that difficult child picked out things at the grocery story that HE specifically wanted and then he'd toss it at school. It went on much longer than what happened with-your difficult child. No one was on top of it. I don't even remember how I found out but I remember standing in the kitchen, fuming and pacing. (Bush's Shock and Awe tactics have nothing over my difficult child!)

Now I make sure I feed him b4 he takes his medications (and he's very hungry with-o them). They tend to wear off around dinnertime so I can feed him more, then. If he skips lunch, too bad. I get semi-angry but don't show him that I'm mad (I've got plenty of other issues where I do show it!) I respond by not giving difficult child any "fun" snacks when I find a squished sandwich or week-old turkey at the bottom of his backpack.
We occasionally give him a day off of his medications, so he will eat like a horse to make up for lost time. I will also allow a bit of junk food (he loves Reese's peanut butter cups and Sprite) but not every day. (I use it for bribes when we're traveling, too.)

In re: to gagging, our difficult child did that too for a couple of mo's and we just got tired of it and told him to leave the room and throw up in the toilet with-the door shut where we couldn't hear it. We didn't know if it was truly that bad or if he was manipulating us but we didn't care at that point--we just wanted a peaceful meal. When he returned to the table we had removed his food--incl. dessert. Within a few days he had stopped gagging. We never force a huge meal on him... I have literally put one pea, 1 diced easy child of chicken, and 1 tsp of mashed potatoes on his plate when he says he's not hungry. If he wants junk food he has to eat real food!
And quite frankly, if he wants junk food, he IS hungry.

Yes, we've had HUGE meltdowns but after awhile, he gets hungry and he'll come back. Sometimes it's an hr, sometimes he doesn't "get it" for a wk. or more.

As a side note, I remember throwing up after my dad forced me to eat potato soup once. I still hate it to this day!
I was not a picky eater so my mom took me seriously but my dad was fed up with-all 5 kids that day and forced the issue. I'm one of those kids who cried when I had to wear certain clothes, and, as an adult, still hate scratchy labels and scratchy clothes to the point where I can't even pay attention at a mting, so FWIW, we do grow up to become functioning adults!

As another side note, my husband used food as a manipulator when he was little. He had severe asthma and was in and out of the hospital many times. When he was a soph in HS he was 6 ft tall and weighed 90 lbs. I have no idea why he wanted the attention... he was surely getting enough having his parents call an ambulance every wk, and hovering over his bedside. Or maybe it was because he got all that attention when he was sick, he craved it full time when he wasn't.
(I'm glad I didn't know him then but I have photos!)
He is now a health food fanatic and works out at the gym every day. He has a weird diet but pays attention to the balance between vitamins, protein and carbs, so I just try to turn a blind eye.

I hope that helps...
 

Janna

New Member
He sure is on alot of stims.

The Concerta wipes out both of my younger kids' appetites. easy child is only 40 pounds at 9 years old. He rarely eats. I was thinking about getting him those children's type Ensure drinks just for vitamins, etc.

Janna
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Oh, Karen, sorry I didn't spend much time on the other behaviors... I know more about the food issues, plus, I think you'll have to give it time for the medications to wear off.
Good luck!
 

needabreak

New Member
i would only woory about him not eating if he starts to lose alot of wieght.my difficult child does not eat at all hardly during the day.at lunch i try to make him eat,and im the caft,manager so i try to put food on his dish.but most of the time he does not touch it.i let him eat whatever he want at night.and he does not like junk food so its kind of hard to get him to eat.there are times he wakes up in the middle of the night saying he is hungry and i will get him some cereal to munch on.then he goes back to sleep.
does your son get pent butter sandwiches because he wants them or is it because he wont eat anything else and there afraid cause he wastes food?
 

Karen & Crew

New Member
Beginning of the school year he weighed 78 pounds. By mid-November he was down to 59 pounds from refusal to eat. He's about 4.5' tall, I think. I don't honestly know. He has a strictly limited "acceptable" (to him) diet of peanut butter (well, b4 y'day), perfectly smooth yogurt (Yoplait or Bryers only) and chicken nuggets from either BK or Wendy's. We have, from time to time, gotten him to eat other foods but something has usually messed that up like a piece of breading around a shrimp breaking and revealing the shrimp underneath, a french fry having a cold spot...

He is always fed breakfast b4 his medications are given per the doctor's orders.

He gets pb sandwiches because that's what he has always asked for and spazzed out at even the suggestion of anything else. Today he wanted yogurt only in his lunch box. That's not feasible, though. I froze one tube of gogurt but eventually convinced him he'd be hungry with just that little bit of yogurt. He agreed to a plain cheese sandwich but warned me he may throw away the bread and only eat the cheese.

I don't believe he's ever had a full neuropsychologist exam. We've seen 3 neurologists. 1st one said he had Tourette's and severe ADHD and put him on 200 mg of Neurontin and 40 mg of Strattera. We moved back to LA and the 2nd neurologist said there was nothing wrong with him other than he was a behavior problem and we should lock him in his room till he repented; that he didn't need drugs, just repentance. I walked out of that appointment with R. 3rd neurologist agreed with Tourette's diagnosis and worked with developmental pediatrician and put him on Tenex. Developmental pediatrician referred him to a psychiatrist. We went to one on our insurance plan. He mentioned Aspergers at the first appointment but never mentioned it again. He had as many problems with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as my difficult child and they didn't get along. He told me when R became violent in school or started failing he'd worry. We went back to developmental pedi who referred us to current psychiatrist who is NOT on our insurance. She mentioned possible Early Onset Bi-Polar (EOBP) at the 1st or 2nd appointment when she started him on Zoloft.

Last night was miserable, again as was this morning. I'm really not looking forward to this weekend when I have him with a dozen other Cub Scouts on our spring campout. I'm the den leader and really need to be aware of what ALL the boys are doing but R requires so much attention...
 
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