Things with Emily have recently been coming to a point in which I was seriously considering counseling for both her and I. I was having a very tough time dealing with her behavior and she seemed seriously beyond any control of her own emotions. She was angry, all of a sudden clumsy (she was falling down a lot and disobeying "safety rules") and couldn't follow a simple set of directions to the point of my wondering if she may have been having seizures that we weren't aware of but perhaps could be causing these behaviors.
Our recent vacation was wonderful most of the time, but even there, with the pressures of "real life" set aside for the moment, she had a few total meltdowns. I couldn't help but think of the last time we were camping...she was 6 years old and life was well, just different. She was calmer, more peaceful and just seemed...happier. It was the next summer that would bring her diagnosis of Epilepsy and an abnormal MRI, with a problem detected in the frontal lobe of her brain. At her parent-teacher conferences prior to her diagnosis little things would crop up (her kindergarten teacher said that she seemed a little immature, her 1st grade teacher said she was lacking in her organizational skills). These things were concerning of course, but it was her 2nd grade teacher who really hit it home saying that she wasn't passing in her homework, was speaking out of turn and not raising her hand, had a disorganized desk and was being slightly disruptive in the classroom. This was the year we invoked her 504 plan, based on a diagnosis of ADHD: Inattentive Type given by her neurologist. This was based on his own observations and medical findings related to the MRI, as well as forms filled out by her teacher and I. As things at school and at home continued to go downhill in regard to her attention and planning, organization and time management, and impulsive behavior, we decided to have a neuro-psych evaluation done which indicated severe ADHD: Inattentive Type as well as Executive Function Disorder. It was recommended that she be evaluated for Special Ed services (which I knew she wouldn't qualify for given that despite her issues she was still making academic progress). I was right. We ended up adding a few accommodations to her 504 and called it a day.
Things had been getting so bad around here lately that I was legitimately getting concerned about the upcoming school year. Would any of this behavior come out at school? How was her schoolwork going to be affected? Would she manage to hold it all in at school, thereby exploding when she got home?
On Monday, Emily woke up with what I thought was the start of a cold. Her nose was so blocked that she was blowing her nose literally every five minutes. I gave her Dimetab, which has been the be all end all of colds in this house. On Tuesday, it hadn't yet gone away and she was still going through tissues like they were going out of style. About a year ago (or possibly longer) we had Emily's allergies tested after a reaction to a dog. It came back that she was allergic to dogs, cats, every kind of grass, every kind of tree, dust, and had a small reaction to peanuts and soy. She, except for the hives from the dog, had not been having any symptoms of allergies so we didn't treat her for them. So, on Tuesday I decided that maybe she was having some sort of major allergy attack and had Ryun stop and buy Children's Claritin on the way home. It worked almost immediately. We have been giving to her each night since.
On Wednesday, Emily and Katherine started camp at a local kids gym that is connected to a regular gym. Part of what the camp entails is an hour of cardio using some of the equipment in the gym (treadmills, stairmasters etc). The instructors show them how to use them and let them try different machines. They are required to stay on the machine of choice for at least 10 minutes at a time before they switch around to another machine, so as to get the cardio benefits. They also do gymnastics, free play and arts and crafts.
So, where am I going with this? Since we have started treating her allergies and she has been getting exercise, her attitude has all but vanished. In my quest to "figure her out" I had been doing a lot of reading. Turns out untreated allergies can be a major factor in diminished attention spans and behavior, and, exercise can actually have benefits other than the physical ones. Emily is living proof.
So, it looks like my $600 treadmill is going to get some use, other than as a collector of dust, and stocks for the makers of Claritin are going to go up.
She's still a hormonal "tween" and she's still too smart for her own good but her attitude level has gone from like a 10 to a 5-6. A 5-6 is manageable people, almost even enjoyable because she is gone back to the smarter and funnier Emily that was sort of MIA for a while.
YAY!
No comments:
Post a Comment