I love our occupational therapist...

She came over yesterday and Baby J has been a handful and a half lately. She was working with Little E and Baby J was just all over the place and screaming bloody murder when everything wouldn't go his way and then he'd start laughing when he'd get a time out. One time out he started spitting and laughing and I asked him to stop and he continued to do it and so I picked him up and put him in his room where he didn't have an audience and when he came back out everything was a test after a test with him. I knew part of it was that he was dead tired, but he wouldn't give in and just rest. Anyway, when it got to be his OT time, she sat him down and did some deep compressions on him and that relaxed him and I've never seen him lay so still for so long. He did his occupational therapy time and the OT and I talked. I asked her if she thought there was more to him than ADHD and sensory processing issues and she said she wouldn't be surprised to see him being ODD (oppositional defiance disorder) and that he wasn't exposed to drugs or alcohol at some point when mom was pregnant. I told her that I had found a sensory board and a lady in Chicago told me that the biggest thing that helped their family was a clinic at the hospital that had a sensory type school and they focused a lot on behavioral therapy as well and now a year and a half later he's doing a whole lot better. She told me that there is a child study clinic in the area in Ft. Worth that I could take him too and they would sit down with a panel of doctors and test him and we could see exactly what we were dealing with and they'd tell us if he needed to see the neurologist on a regular basis, or if he needed more psychiatrist appts, or if he needed behavioral therapy (I think this one is a given), and they could do the CAT scans and so forth to be able to tell us exactly what is going on with him and why he's the way that he is. She told me that if they felt he needed it that they also had a school there. Granted, it would mean that I'd have to drive him out there and so forth, but if this is what it takes, I will do it. I felt a great sense of peace and relief when she told me about this. I've always said that she is my biggest supporter when it comes to him as I don't think anybody else sees the big picture of how he is. She told me yesterday that she doesn't understand how I do it everyday and that if he was her first, she would have never had another child. She thinks I do an awesome job, so that was nice to hear!