Good or bad, we are on a new horizon. J. has been doing so well in school. He was so good that he received enough stickers to go to the special 'treasure box' where he picked out a crazy straw, which he loves those swirly straws, as he calls them. J. has been to two sessions with the behavioral therapist, Dr. R. She is really good. She has a 14 year old son with ADHD, so she can honestly say that she understands what we are going through. Dr. R.'s experience with ADHD when her son was diagnosed very early on, she was given medication and basically told "good luck" and was not given any help or guidance. Since then she essentially made it her life mission to help others with ADHD.
At church last Sunday, J. had a serious meltdown. I had come to pick him up from his class and he was coloring, which he loves to do and is exceptional at, and I gave him a warning that he had a few minutes to finish up and then we needed to go. The few minutes was up and he immediately melted down. He was scared that we didn't have a brown crayon to finish coloring with at home. He was also freaking out about the animal cracker in his cup and thought the teacher was going to throw them away even after she told J. she would not throw them away. He kept saying that she will. It got to the point that I could not get him to calm down enough to leave the room for at least 20 minutes but what felt like an hour or more. It was extremely intense. I had never experienced this level of behavior with J. before. I will admit it was a period of mixed emotion. I was angry, embarrassed, and scared since I didn't know what to do in that situation. I could tell in his mind that everything was a real to him. These were legitimate fears in his mind at that time.
I finally got him to calm down and we walked somewhat calmly out of church and to the van. Needless to say he was asleep before we got home which is 15 minutes away. So sleep depravation is something that contributes to his behavior. Sleep has become a real issue. The other night, he could not sleep. He was awake and kept coming into our room.
A few mornings before that, he came into our room crying and scared claiming snakes were coming into his room through the window (which was locked up tight). J.'s mom and I were standing there looking at the top left corner of window and J. was telling us that the snake is right there in front of our eyes and is trying to bite us. J. refused to enter into his room. J.'s mom and I looked at each other and the look on his mom's face was one of confusion and concern. My face must of been one of disbelief. The thought, I am sure, that was going through both of our minds was that J. is hallucinating. Could this have been a side effect of Intuniv that is now presenting itself after two nearly two weeks? But we chalked it up to him having a bad dream just before waking up that morning, after talking to him about it.
The snake issue has still been a bit of a problem. He hasn't forgotten about it. After all, it has only been 4 or 5 days and the kid has a memory like an elephant. But the other night, he went to bed at about 7:30 and was awake before midnight and come into our room. I told J. to go back to bed. Which he did. At least he went back into his bed. I doubt very much that he fell asleep since he was back in our room at about 1:30 claiming he had a spider crawling on him.
Well this was more plausible than snakes coming through a air tight window, despite "having sharp teeth" - J., so J. went to the hall bathroom and turned the light on as his mom and I followed behind. So we are all standing there in the bathroom, which feels like someone installed flood lights after we were all in bed that night, and we were looking for this supposed spider crawling on him. After asking J. where the spider is, he looks to the back of his pants, and begins to seriously freak out as he sees it. I then see it moving. Man this sucker is fast, I think. Only problem is, it was moving around in the same spot but at about a million miles an hour on the back of J.'s leg. So I had swiped it expecting to see the spider now on the bathroom floor. I hit that thing pretty good, however, it was not on the bathroom floor trying to crawl to the nearest crack it can fit into to escape the death blow.
J.'s mom has beautiful, long, curly hair. Not too curly, but half way between too curly and just wavy ans it is blonde too. Our oldest daughter, R., has the same hair and everyone always comments on how gorgeous R.'s hair is. With such beautiful things, comes high maintenance. We have to keep a steady supply of Liquid Drano to clear up the gobs of hair that clog the shower drain. I find their mom's hair in places on my body which would even perplex Albert Einstein as to how the hair ended up there. It is like pet hair. It get's everywhere.
The pajama pants J. was wearing were cotton and fresh out of the dryer. So needless to say at this point, the spider was actually mom's hair and some dark lint that got infused with the hair and was stuck to J.'s pants and when J. was moving, so was the "spider." Well in my and J.'s defense, at first glance it did look like a spider trying to crawl up J.'s pant leg.
It was about 1:45 in the morning when J.'s mom and I went back to bed. It was about 2 a.m. when we looked at each other and laughed about not being able to go back to sleep and we were both wide awake. So she went to the living room to work on some things, and I just watched TV until I fell asleep a few hours later, only to be woken up multiple times by J.'s youngest sister N. So no sleep for me. J. had again been unable to sleep and went into the living room at which point some time after the second time, J.'s mom when and slept in the bed with J. to get him to go back to sleep. I think this was around 4 - 4:30 a.m.
For the past week, sleep has been somewhat non-existent. Between J.'s night time adventures, lucid dreams turning into perceived reality, and hairy spiders; along with Baby N., it is no surprise that sleep has become something of a rarity, well, at least uninterrupted sleep anyway.
-Dad2ADHD
No comments:
Post a Comment