Our appt with the neuropsych and our attachment therapist

We had our neuropsych appt today with our attachment therapist. He wasn’t familiar with our kids like our AT is, so it was interesting to hear him describe our kids to a t just based on neurological data and what the numbers represented.



We did Emily first…she has no problems with anxiety or depression, it did point to some problems with attention and ADHD, but it said that she had the fair ability to concentrate once she got going. So, she needs lots of reminders to get her going on her task, but once she’s in the middle of doing it she has a fair amount of concentration to keep going. That was good news about Emily.



Then, we discussed Tracie…she has no problems with anxiety or depression, it did show that she has some problems with concentration, she has a little anomaly (sp?) with her frontal lobe, so she has a lot of issues with processing, sequencing, and trying to figure out how to do things or what she needs to do to do them and we found out that that’s where all of her crying comes in…so we just need to work on teaching her to use her words when she doesn’t know how to do something so that we can walk her through it and teach her some better coping skills. Her scan also points to ADHD. That made me feel better about Tracie and now we know how to help her as well.



Then, we discussed Josiah…it threw us all for a loop as he has the most normal scan of them all. No history of anxiety or depression, his scan points to ADHD, frontal lobe slowing, so problems with thinking and processing, He’s our kid that has to be constantly moving to learn and take everything in (sensory processing). Where the ratio there to show ADHD is normally only double, he’s a little more than triple. He thinks his coping mechanism with it all is his anger, defiance, and destruction. He asked us if you did get him sitting still for a few minutes if he just would go to sleep and we said yes. That’s him. With everything that we’re going through with him, we’re going to start doing neurofeedback. He’s going to give us the first 10 sessions for free as he said there is a small percentage of the population that doesn’t respond, but it can’t hurt anything to try. So, he said if things are moving after the first 10 sessions, that we’d work something out for the cost…he’d charge us so much per visit or I could just make payments until we had it paid off or whatever..he just wants to help. We have to commit to doing them 3-4 times a week at first and then once things get going, we can move to 1-2 times a week after that. We did discuss whether he saw reactive attachment disorder in the scans and he said where he normally sees that in the scans, he didn’t see a problem there with Josiah. However, he thinks that neurologically he may be attached in his own way, but the loving feelings and all that you would show towards people may be covered up by all this anger and aggression that he has right now. That gave me some hope right there. I told him that with all the problems that we’ve had over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been about ready to pull out my hair so I’ll do anything if it has a chance of helping and I know that he gets angry at himself as well. He did say that he gets overstimulated quickly so if we had a place for him to play alone or by himself until he got back in check, that was what we should be doing. We already do it and it causes a huge rage. He wants to be around everyone, but we have the rule of if you hurt someone you need to be separated for awhile. He thought that was good, but I’m going to try explaining to Josiah why that’s good for him and see if hopefully I can help him a bit more there. They did tell me that they think there’s a question on whether his meds need to be upped. I told them that he’s always been my hard to medicate child. He does well on new meds for 2-4 weeks and all of a sudden they quit working. I told them the story of when he was on Clonidine. We started out on a half tablet and worked our way up to where he was taking it 4 times a day. The psychiatrist that was seeing him at the time shook his head once while watching him bounce off the walls in his office and he told me “when I see teenage boys in the psych hospital, I give them a half of a tablet once and it knocks them out for a whole day…he’s on 4 times that dose and it has no effect of tiredness on him at all.” I told him that it did slow him down some, but it never made him tired. That’s making the neuropsych think that maybe there’s a problem with the brain stem and that we need to try to increase the medication and see if that helps for the short-term until we can see if the neurofeedback can help him there as well. I’m going to see if we can move our psych appt up. I discussed all that had happened with him over the course of last week and how he really got out of control on Friday. She told me that the next time that happens, she wants me to take him to Children’s. She told me that if I wasn’t such a good mom that was up for a challenge and Andy wasn’t such a dedicated father, that he would have been in residential treatment a long time ago. That made me feel good…I want to avoid that as much as possible.



We may or may not decide to do it with the girls at a later date…I have a pretty good handle on them. However, he did say that they could probably correct the anomaly with her frontal lobe with neurofeedback, so we may do them later. However, I think Josiah is first and foremost right now. I’ve got to get a handle on him and I know it’s not fun for him either. And if we work on this throughout the summer as much as we can, hopefully that will give him a better chance at doing better in school this year.

Attachment Therapy...

We had attachment therapy this morning. When I saw the neuropsych come in, I thought today was going to be the day we found out the results of their brain mapping. However, no such luck. We are going to get our next appt with him and the attachment therapist though. I can be patient and wait. :-) Honestly, I'm a bit scared to find out anyway if I'm totally true to how I feel. I'm scared they're going to tell me that how Josiah is, is just how he is and he'll be that way for the rest of his life. I'm trying to be hopeful though and I'm praying that's not the case. I have to hand my fears and worries back to God. With God all things are possible and I have to trust that it will all turn out for good. :-) Anyway, we were able to tell her that my Mother-in-Law is moving out and she was thrilled that we can finally start moving forward again. The kids just can't have someone else living in the house. It doesn't work and they spend all their time trying to lie and triangulate and I've also learned that unless you've experienced the things that we have the past 4 years, nobody truly understands RAD. She just kept trying to come up with excuses for the things that they were doing and giving into them and that obviously doesn't work with parenting these kids. Not to mention, all of the times that I'd tell them that they couldn't do something and she'd let them have their way because she wouldn't tell them no or physically make them stay out of it. You cannot sit and tell them what to do in this house, you're on your toes all of the time enforcing the boundaries. Anyway, it will be good to have our house back and be able to get them moving forward again. At our last appt with her, she told us that the kids were going backwards and not forwards and that we were losing ground and undoing progress that we had made with them with her still living here. We knew that, but it was another thing to hear her say that. I think MIL was unhappy about having to move, but I think it will be good for her too. We also talked about the problems that we've been having with Josiah. He's been getting more and more aggressive when things don't go his way, shoving furniture, throwing things at people, he's getting harder and harder for me to make do things as he's solid muscle. She told us that she's predicting that in about 18 months or a little longer, that we may need to start talking about sharing him with someone who can help drive home the point of your actions have consequences and working that fine line a little more. It's not what I wanted to hear, but in the meantime I will do all I can and pray, pray, pray and hope that his heart changes and he can begin to see cause/effect a little more. She gave him a little tool to help that was a visual for him and when she asked him to tell the girls about it, he wanted to play dumb, which she called him out on. We'll just continue to connect the dots for him and pray and hope that eventually something clicks sooner rather than later. We were also able to ask her about the bedroom situation that we have been trying to figure out. Currently Deidra and my MIL share a room, Emma and Tracie have their own room, Josiah has his own room, and Melina is in with Andy and myself. I was going to move Emma in with Deidra and then move Melina in with Tracie, however I got to thinking that Deidra's going into tween years and probably should have her own room. I had talked about changing the garage into bedrooms or doing an addition on the house. Andy wasn't game with that plan as he says if your grandparents can have 6 boys in one bedroom and 2 girls in the other we can certainly figure something out here without having to add on. So, we talked to the therapist about what she thought. We finally figured out that Deidra will move into the smaller bedroom that Emma and Tracie now have and we can put the 3 girls in the big room that Deidra is currently in. So Melina will be moving in with Emma and Tracie. I will admit that I'm nervous about it. Deidra had asked if she could have Melina with her, but they're 9 years apart and I think the novelty will wear off after awhile. So, hopefully this will work. If we run into problems with it, we're going to have to work on saving up to do an addition or changing the garage into bedrooms, but we'll see. I think we can give it a try though.

Josiah

I got the documentation from our attachment therapist from the school saying that he had RAD, but I was surprised to see that she had another diagnosis listed with it. He also has PTSD. It makes me so mad to know that even though we got him at 13 months old, that we couldn't prevent this. All the damage to my poor little baby had already been done. I never knew neglect could cause all this. Of course, I think there's a lot of his missing puzzle that we'll never know. What I keep telling myself is that our God is HUGE and can fix all of this. I just keep giving Josiah back to Him over and over. Abba, you know my precious Josiah and how hard he is to parent and discipline and you can see his heart. Precious Jesus, please heal him from all of this and let him become healthily attached to our family.

What an answered prayer...

We had been trying to get some neuropsych work-ups done based on something our attachment therapist had wanted us to do with another dr. she knew. We found out that he didn't take our insurance, but he was really helpful and didn't want the cost to stand in the way and said we'd work something out. He asked for a list of difficulties that the kids were having problems with. I sent him a rather lengthy email and he met with our attachment therapist. He wrote me back today and said that he's going to do the 3 of them for free and we'd schedule a Saturday appt. What an answered prayer! I can't wait to find out what the results are! Maybe now we'll finally find out if they are capable of learning certain things, or if they're just choosing not to do certain things, and how to help them in the best way possible.

Attachment Therapy

Things are going well with attachment therapy. I did let her know that Tracie has been so much more affectionate with me since our last appt when she had her little breakthrough. Dr. was thrilled! I did let her know that Emma has been really struggling and doing things to try and get the others in trouble, lying, major attitude, and very bossy. She asked how long this has been going on and asked if it started up shortly after our last appt. I said now that I thought about it it did. She said she thought maybe she knew why. She had Emma draw a heart and label all the people that she had love for. Then, she had her make a fist and hold it next to me and then I had to do the same and put mine next to hers. She told Emma...see how much bigger Mom's heart is...she has room to hold all the love in there for all the people that need it from her. There's plenty of love for not only Tracie, but for you too. I think that really got through to her and I never even realized that was what was going on. However, Emma was always used to giving me hugs and kisses all of the time and Tracie wouldn't do it as much. That used to be the complete opposite a couple of years ago. But, I'm glad that Dr. saw it and was able to help us to talk through that. She went back to being her loving little self afterwards. Josiah really struggled while we were there. When she brought them back she told them to come sit with Mommy and Daddy. Tracie came and sat by me, Emma sat on the chair by Andy, and Josiah chose to sit all the way on the other side of the room almost. She told him to go sit down by Mom or Dad. He went up to her and stood there. She said "am I your Mom or your Dad?" He says "Mom." She looked at him adn asked the question again and he had the same answer. "Mom." She wound up sending him to the corner. She brought him out a few minutes later and asked again and he then said "Dad." She sent him back to the corner again. After another couple of minutes she asked him again and he finally said "no." Her advice to us though on all of his temper tantrums, acting like a baby, bed wetting in underwear, but holding it and making it to the bathroom while in a pull-up was just to treat him like a baby for now and hopefully he'd make the decision to want to grow up and take some developmental steps soon. She said too that with all the constant talking he does, that he really needs to learn dialogue and not monologue. I told her that's hard too as it's very hard to hold a conversation with him. You either get "i don't know." or he just stares at you or he says something off the wall that doesn't even pertain to what's going on. She said to kind of talk down to him for awhile and use 2-year-old talk as that seems to be the stage that he's stuck in right now. We had a good appt and she has been such an answer to prayer.

A break through with Tracie...

We had attachment therapy this morning and just talked about how everything was going. How my MOm got us the book by Nancy Thomas about parenting techniques for the parents of children with RAD (something like that anyway...I'm too lazy to look for the exact wording right now) and how I put 4 pages of techniques up in the kitchen for all the common behaviors that we deal with and a couple reminders for us too about things. The kids have been getting angry at some things (she said that's good...they're learning that they don't have the control), coming forth with good behaviors a little more frequently, and we talked about how Josiah was now taking Kapvay and has been MUCH more calm and behaving better. She said today was the first day that she's seen him where it seemed like he actually acknowledged that we were going to go discuss something and that it even pertained to him, so she sees that as a great medication change. We talked about how I get upset sometimes that Tracie when she first came to us would not let me leave her sight without screaming and how it took me a couple of years to get her to understand that I wasn't leaving her. Now, she's almost the exact opposite...won't hold eye contact with me, will glom on to anyone else, but it's almost like I have to force her to cuddle or if I try to take her hand she fidgets with my hands to try and make me let go. She brought Tracie in by herself and took her hands and Tracie did the same thing with her and then started fidgeting with her clothes. She asked Tracie what she was feeling and she half giggled and started pulling away. The Dr. kept a hold of her and held her eye contact and finally she started half giggling/half crying. The dr. pulled out her feelings chart and asked Tracie to point to how she was feeling. She pointed to the happy face. The dr. told her that she was seeing the shy and scared face at different times. She wanted me to take over the exercise with her and I got the same reponse from Tracie at first and kept asking her what she was feeling. Finally, she wrapped her arms around my neck and started to fullly cry and said "I just want you." I pulled her up on my lap and hugged her and rocked her and the dr. told her. Mommy is your safe place. When you get scared or feeling shy and need your happy back, you go cuddle up with Mommy. That's your Mommy and she won't let anything happen to you. I think it got across and she wouldn't let go of me for a long time. The dr. told me that she sees a little girl who desperately wants to let her walls down and let me in, but she can't quite yet. Even when Josiah and Emily joined us, Tracie didn't want down from my lap. When the kids went to investigate the toys that Melina had been playing with too, Tracie was the last to join them. Dr. says that she just wants to soak up all the love that she can. It was a good breakthrough and it made me feel a lot better about things too. This was also the first time that we had brought Melina with us. Dr. told Andy and I that we make good babies. We had a talk about how Melina has taught us a lot about the attachment cycle and in a lot of ways she's a lot further than the other kids. Dr. says that Melina has already got self-regulation figured out whereas the other 3 don't have that down yet and she knew when she got hurt to come to one of us for a hug and reassurance whereas the others are struggling there too. It was a good appt and it gave me hope. I love my kids. Andy even got a little choked up in the elevator about me and Tracie, although he covers it up by laughing. I'm so glad that we have this dr helping us. She's so understanding and has really helped us a lot so far.

2nd Attachment Therapy Appt

We had our 2nd attachment therapy appt for Josiah today. We had 2 big concerns that we wanted to discuss. One being the fact that Mother-in-Law is now living with us and I can see him manipulating her to get what he wants without her seeing it. That's obviously normal as we're still in the honeymoon period with her and it takes some practice to see what he does and how he goes about doing it. I wanted some advice on how to go about handling it as I didn't want us to have problems like we had with my parents. She suggested that we call the kids out on what they are doing as opposed to trying to correct my Mother-in-Law for giving in to them or whatnot. Just lots going on that we normally don't let them get away with, but they are trying to see what they can get away with with my Mother-in-Law. That and I feel like I can't correct them without her stepping in. I am capable of correcting my children. What she doesn't necessarily see is that whenever someone is here at the house, they up their antics and so there's a lot more stress on my part trying to keep control of things. The therapist understood that. She suggested that Andy talks to her about some things, but that hasn't happened as of yet. Nothing bad really, just we all need to be on the same page and the bottom line is that the kids need to understand that they need to listen to me. Emma is already pulling the "well, Grandma said" when she doesn't want to listen to me.

The other big area of concern that I have is school. Josiah will be going from half days to whole days. He loves to exaggerate, confuse things that have happened, or just lie outright. It's been happening a whole lot more this summer than what it ever has. THe therapist knows about that too so I wanted suggestions from her...do I come out and have a talk with his teacher and the school about his behaviors upfront, or do I just let it go and let them find out for themselves. This is a whole new school with all new teachers for him this year. She asked if his file was given to the school and I said yes. She said that they will see that he already has a discipline file, but she said it would be in our best interests to let them know up front that these are the things that he does and that he likes to make stuff up and that we won't believe the things that he tells us about them if they don't believe the things that he says about us. She said to ask them to inform us if he makes accusations and that we would do the same when he makes them about the teacher and the school. We also talked about the support system of if his behaviors continue to escalate at school or on the bus. I told her that his IQ is high and he is very smart and that he's surpassing Emily with the stuff that he knows. She said that is all good, but what she is fearful about is the stuff that he is really lagging in...conscience development, morals, poor sense of hurting others and remorse...that type of thing. His behavior will get in the way of his learning...I told her that his occupational therapist has said that from the beginning. He is very smart, but the behavior gets in the way and prohibits him.

She brought him in and asked him how things were going and if he was being nice or mean to us girls in the house. He said that he was being mean. She had a talk with him about why he is doing that. They talked about his birthmom and how she wasn't safe and how he was then brought to live with us and how he is projecting all of his feelings of mistrust about his birthmom onto me. He got really sad during that portion, although he wouldn't say much. Then, she asked him about riding the bus and how he felt about that and if he was scared. He said no. She then said "you're not scared about riding the bus with all the kids who are bigger than you." He said no. She moved suddenly (he was sitting on her lap) and he jumped. She asked him if he knew that she was going to do that. He said no and that it scared him. He was then able to say that he was a little bit scared about riding the bus. SHe feels that he is masking a lot of his feelings and it's just coming out in all this anger and agression and having to constantly pick on the girls. The other thing that I wanted advice on was his constant need to talk and make noises. It gets to the point sometimes that I can't even hear the girls who are right in front of me asking for something because of how loud he is and sometimes I honestly can't even complete a thought. She told me to start giving him some nonverbal cues so that I didn't have to talk during that time so I wasn't yelling over the top of him. She said to hold up my hand and say a simple stop. If that didn't work to motion to zip your lips. If he continued after that, to put him in time out or send him to his room as he's being defiant at that point. I told her that I know he uses that as a controlling mechanism. You can't be talking to anyone, he's going to interrupt...he's gotta get in there at some point. She said that she's noticed that even when he's supposed to be keeping himself occupied on the other side of the door...he's constantly coming to knock on the door and he does it way more often than what a child would need something. Anyway, that gave me some stuff to use and try and we'll go back again next time. I think I'm going to have her start seeing the girls next time too. She gave us some homework as she said that he really needs to understand the concept of dialogue and that it's not all about monologue.

One thing that I did find interesting too is that when she lifted him up on her lap, she asked me if he was always so stiff. I said yes. She asked me again if I knew much about prenatal exposure and I said that she denied anything. She said with how stiff he is that makes her think that she used some coke and meth as that's typical with those kids. I guess it can't be ruled out as we really don't know.

First Attachment Therapy Appt for Josiah

Andy and I met with a new therapist for Josiah today. This one is a psychologist who is going to help us with some of the problems going on in our home regarding Josiah’s behaviors. I found her on an attachment site for kids who have reactive attachment disorder. She met with us for about 45 minutes and gathered information on Josiah’s life thus far and what has been going on that made us seek her. We told her all that we’ve been through and different stuff that we have tried. She had him in a room where he could play with a video monitor on him the whole time. I told her about my fears with the safety stuff going on in the home, how aggressive he is, how the behavior therapy that we tried doesn’t work (she wasn’t surprised, she said the traditional stuff doesn’t work with these kids and it’s not a problem with the parenting and these kids can be charmers so people don’t necessarily see what we see as they’re not in the home). With his poor cause and effect thinking, he blames us for being mean to him when we have to discipline rather than seeing that his behavior got him there. No sooner did we discuss this as I always fear that he’s going to say the wrong thing to the wrong person and we’re going to be in trouble for something we didn’t even do, than he knocked at the door, the therapist went and got the door and he said he had to go potty (nevermind that Andy had just taken him). He wanted Mommy to take him though as Daddy hurts his arm when he says that he has to go to the bathroom. The therapist saw right through it and said that she thought it was interesting that we just had talked about that. She wanted Andy to take him to the bathroom. She documented that in her notes as she said that if we had any problems in the future, that someone would have it documented somewhere that he does this stuff. She told me to calm down as she could see that I was fearful. She was on our side. We talked about a lot of stuff and then she called Josiah in to talk to her. She looked at his hands and his face for signs of what she thought we were dealing with and confirmed it. He has fetal alcohol effects and that is why he has such a hard time with emotional regulation, making poor choices, and with his cause and effect thinking. She said that she also thinks that he has the reactive attachment disorder, but we can’t work on the attachment until we get him to learn to regulate himself. I am so glad that we finally found a therapist who supports us and doesn’t think we’re crazy and is understanding. She also told us that there’s a difference in someone who studies it and someone who has lived/is living it and she understands as her family fostered 50 kids when she was growing up. We’re going to start seeing her once a month for an hour as she only works out of the Dallas office for one week out of the month. I’m just relieved to know that someone understands. When she talked to Josiah, she let him know that she knew what was going on and that he had some problem areas to work on. She called him out on it in a sing song sort of way. She gave Andy and I each some homework to work on with him each day. His number one rule to understand right now is that his #1 rule of being a man is that you never hurt a girl and Andy has to back me up when Josiah disrespects me to let him know that he is to listen to Mommy and not to hurt me or be disrespectful. Josiah is to understand that Daddy is the top dog and that Josiah is not the one in control. We’re going to make some changes to his room so that the door locks from the hallway and that when we send him to his room, he has a place to throw a fit and scream and do whatever, but we’ll have to make some changes to the door (putting a peephole in) and making sure that he can’t break the window. We go back in one month to tweak some things and for her to find out how things have been going. He had to leave one bad behavior behind in her office when we left…he got to throw a wacky bug up on her ceiling to stay there…he chose to leave behind some of his mad feelings. We have a lot of work to do, but I feel better about things than I have in awhile. Please pray for our family during all of this.

Found an attachment therapist

I had been reading all I can on attachment stuff and the more problems that we've had with Josiah, the more convinced I am that I really need the help of a professional. I had been trying to find an attachment therapist, but the closest one that I could find that took insurance was in Austin. That's a good 3 hours away from us. Anyway, someone had told me about some therapeutic parenting videos on youtube that helped their family and I had watched those about a month ago. I went back to email her and found that she too lives in TX. Anyway, she helped me find a local therapist and I called and set up an appt for July 5. We will go in for an hour interview and then they will set up 4 hours of testing (broken down into two 2 hour segments). The therapist works out of the Dallas office for one week out of every month. I'm just hoping that we can finally get some answers. I strongly believe in my heart that this is what we're dealing with and I am getting really tired of others thinking that they can just fix him. Andy's Mom says "he just needs a grandma." People say "oh, well, he's acting fine here." Yup, because he's not at home. Home is his safe place where he feels safe being himself. Let alone, he has learned to charm others to get what he wants in other places. Yes, he acts up while we're out...he's not perfect...so people see "glimpses" of what we see here at home. Spend a few days with me here at the house and you can see his behaviors in true form. When Andy is home, he controls it more. When that car pulls out of the driveway, he turns the behaviors up. Why? Because these kids take out the brunt of the behavior on the primary caregiver as when they've been neglected in their first years of life or gone from caregiver to caregiver they have learned not to trust and it becomes a battle of control. These kids are master manipulators and are constantly fighting for control. I was told when fostering that every behavior meets a need and that every foster child had attachment problems to some degree and I see signs in all 3 of our littles, but the girls aren't nearly to the extent that Josiah is. When we get Josiah's testing going, I'm going to ask about getting it done on the girls too. I want healing for all of them. We'll see what the testing says, but in my heart, I strongly believe that this is what we're dealing with. I am just glad that we finally found someone to work with.

Attachment-Focused Parenting Day 15

Today was an awesome day!

7:30 am Josiah getting into Tracie's room

8:15 am Tracie getting into Mom's computer

8:40 am Josiah getting into peanuts on the table while I took Melina upstairs. He was just told prior to that that snack time wasn't for a little bit yet.

9:30 am Josiah giving toys to Melina after I said no. (he keeps wanting to give her toys with tiny pieces even though we keep explaining that those types of toys can make her choke)

10:20 am Josiah not stopping when I said "no."

4:00 pm Deidra, Josiah, Emily, and Tracie all had great days at school. Well, Tracie didn't have school today, but she did have therapy and normally she's been throwing huge fits on the speech therapist. So her deal was that if she wanted a reward, she had to nicely do speech. She did! They all got to pick out of the reward jar. Deidra earned music time. Josiah got coloring time. Tracie got game time and she picked to play play-doh. Emily gets to make a special snack with Mommy. Since, we didn't have anything on hand to make what she wanted, I told her that we'd go during the week and she could pick an activity for that night to do with one of her siblings. She picked to color with Josiah.

Attachment-Focused Parenting--Day 10

The day went much better, Tracie was excited to get to go to school. Josiah doesn't know what to do with himself when he's the only one home with me and the baby, but he did pretty well. He had a good day at school and Mommy and Melina had a lunch date with a friend. The adult time was much needed.

We got home after school and I had some stuff come up that I had to deal with and things just fell apart. He wanted a snack and I told him that I'd get him a snack when Emily came home which was just a few minutes away. I had a phone call that I had to take and the baby was crying for her bottle. While I was on the phone, Josiah started yelling very ugly at me "snack, snack, snack, you get me a snack right now." I told him that he doesn't ask for things for like that and that I would get him a snack after I finished on the phone and Emily was home from school. I turned around to finish feeding the baby and he had picked up a blanket and thrown it at me. Thankfully, it was just a blanket, but I told him for acting like that, he lost out on his snack. He went over to the recliner and tried to push it over. I had to end my phone call and put him in my lap to calm down. Then, we talked about the appropriate way to ask for things and that we don't push furniture over when we're mad.

Another phone call came in that I had to take and this time Tracie went in to use the bathroom, and when she tried to come out, Josiah had ran over to shut the door on her. Totallly ignored me saying "stop" while I was trying to get over there and just before I reached them, he had shut her wrist in the door.

Emily got home from school and got in more trouble at school and then she got in trouble on the way home from the bus driver as she opened up the emergency exit door while they were on their way home. I wound up giving her a time in and we had a huge talk about safety and how she could have gotten very hurt or someone else could have gotten very hurt due to her doing that. Thankfully, nothing happened, but she is not to touch doors and knobs while on the bus. The bus driver said that she wasn't even supposed to be sitting there in the first place as he doesn't let the kids sit there and they know that.

Deidra had a choir performance and we went to a local restaurant and watched her perform and sing Christmas carols. We got dinner while we were there and Josiah and Deidra got brownies for good behavior at school for dessert. Each day that the kids earn good behavior at school, they get to pick a reward from the reward jar. Tracie missed out on dessert, because she threw a huge fit again at her speech therapist over having to do therapy. This is really becoming a problem for her and we have no idea what is causing it other than it's starting to become really hard for her and whenever something gets hard for her, she starts throwing fits to get out of doing it. Anyway, as we were going to leave, Josiah started pushing and shoving as he didn't feel that Emily was walking fast enough and he always thinks that he has to be the first to do anything. Well, the place was so packed that he had to push past other people as well and I couldn't reach him and I'm saying "Josiah, stop. Slow down. Josiah quit." All the while, he's ignoring me...he got stuck against the garbage can that happened to be on wheels and he kept going at full speed taking the garbage can with him. Finally, I yelled out to Andy who was trying to get the other kids out the door as I couldn't get to him. I'm surprised he didn't knock the whole cabinet with the garbage can in it over. Andy finally was able to get to him and get him to stop and slow down, so no catastrophe happened. We had a huge talk once we got in the car about how we don't run and push and shove to have to be first and that we calmly wait and be patient. He is SO full of energy...if we could bottle it all up, we'd be rich!