Baby J

What a difference a doctor makes who truly listens and gets what you're telling him. We've been having some problems with Baby J for awhile now...he wakes up between 4-5 am and will not go back to sleep...rarely takes a nap...and then he goes to bed between 7-8 pm at night. We've tried pushing his bedtime back further, nothing matters he's up early anyway. He is such a sweetheart, but he hits the floor running and it doesn't let up all day. He runs in circles grabbing and pulling at everything and nothing holds his attention for long. He learned how to take his seatbelt off in the car and does it over and over and over. He's learned how to get the locks open on the door and will try to run outside. He runs from me constantly if we're out and about, so I constantly have to be watching him. I use the restroom, I have to be extremely quick about it as he will find something to destruct with the time that I am in there. And boy does he have a little temper, and his temper has begun to escalate and it can be over the dumbest thing and he will scream and scream and scream (no tears, just him screaming). And that could last a couple minutes to an hour or longer. I had brought him in to see the psychiatrist a month or two ago as I wanted to know what was going on. My caseworker said "Jessica, they will not give him meds as he's too little." I told her I didn't care, I really just wanted to know what was going on and what we were up against. The psychiatrist confirmed what I was thinking that he may have bi-polar. He was going to look into a minimum age of treatment for me and told me to bring him back to see him if I had questions. Well, a week or two ago I had a little meltdown, I felt like a failure as a parent...he does not listen, he runs and runs and runs, time outs and reward systems work for a few days and then he's lost interest, my occupational therapist says "put him in time out each time he doesn't listen, the defiance is all intentional, and you have to start realizing that you're the adult here." I kind of took offense to that statement as I am consistent with him, but it just doesn't work and honestly if I put him in time out each time he didn't listen, he'd sit in time out all day long. I can't imagine what that would do to his self-esteem. Anyway, we talked to our caseworker and she said she'd get us in to see another doctor who does behavioral stuff. We went to see him last night and he asked us to tell him about him. I told him that I had been wondering if there's something wrong with him, if he just has SO much energy that he cannot listen or what is going on with him. He let me know immediately "he's not doing it on purpose...you couldn't go and go like that on purpose or you would drop of exhaustion at some point." He said to him it sounds like Baby J has clinical ADHD. I never believed in ADHD...I always thought it was a discipline problem. Well, that has all changed now. We talked for a long while about him and he made us feel so much better. He told us to get into see the psychiatrist the next time he's in and he's open to trying some meds with him to see what works and what doesn't work. I had told him that the psychiatrist thought it coudl be bi-polar and I knew that if he was bi-polar and we gave him the ADHD meds that it would make it worse. He told me "yes, but you'll know immediately...it will only take a day or two and then we'll know that ok, it's not ADHD it's bi-polar." We had this happen with another little girl that we had here before. Anyway, they're going to try and get us in to see the psychiatrist this week or in a couple of weeks when he's back. It felt so good to finally have some answers. So, the plan is to try him on some meds and then go back to the behavioral doctor to see how he's doing and work on behavioral stuff if we still feel that he needs it. That's a prayer answered!