Conference with the Behavioral Therapists for Josiah and Emma

We met and talked about our goals and the progress the kids have been making in therapy over the past 3 months. Emma has come a really long way. Whereas we rated her in 2s and 3s in some things in the beginning, she is now at a 7 (10 is the best). Sure, she still has her moments where she's quick to tantrum and not want to use her words and she has a hard time sharing and playing with others if they're not doing what she wants them to do, but she's come along way. She's a lot more compliant when asked to do something and most of the time will follow through now, whereas before she was very oppositional when we asked her to do anything. I still feel that she acts a lot younger than she is, but that's to be expected with her history and again she's come a LONG way and I know that it's just going to take some more time.

Josiah we gave an overall rating of 4/5 this time. We both agreed that he cooperates with what he is asked to do about 40-50% of the time. We didn't really have an initial rating to compare how far he's come as he came right out of family therapy into this progrma whereas Emma had been doing this before about 6 months ago and Josiah just started doing PEP 3 months ago. Anyway, I voiced some concerns that I had about diagnoses stuff that I still had fears about (RAD, bi-polar, is this really ADHD?) and they said that time will tell as he's still a bit too young for us to get an accurate diagnosis right now. She said that she wouldn't want a psychiatrist to come out and diagnosis a 4 year old with bi-polar and that I just needed to keep collecting data. I told her that the psychologist had told me to chart his behavior and I was starting to see some patterns and that is what is making me wonder about bi-polar and it has the psychologist wondering too, but she just gave him an umbrella diagnosis of mood disorder as bi-polar does fall under that. I understand being hesitant to diagnose him this early, but I just have a lot of fears and just want to get him the best help that I can. I need to just keep going in the direction that we're going though and quit worrying so much. They feel that he is making some progress, we feel that he is making some progress too and we both feel that while it's slow, it is something and for that I am thankful. We will keep working on our relationship, keep doing the behavior stuff, and collecting the data to take to the doctors. They told us that we're on the right track and so we'll continue on for another 3 months until our next conference and then decide where we need to go from there. The behavior therapist that primarily works with him said that she's noticed that he has a LOT of energy and that he does require a lot of one-on-one and close supervision. I just laughed and nodded. I told her that he's the one that makes me doubt myself sometimes as I don't understand why we have some of the same battles everyday, he gets the same consequences, and yet he will still do it over and over again. She told me that I'm not a failure and that some kids just are like that and that it will eventually click at some point. So, we'll continue with behavior therapy and hopefully at the end of the 3 months we'll see some more progress being made in the 3 core areas that we are working on...compliance, regulation, and my mind just went blank on what the other one is. lol