I've been meaning to write a post on this for a bit now, but kept getting
sidetracked.
So Dmitri has always been wild, and crazy. He's always ran the halls at
church, getting up and running out of the Primary room, and the leaders,
or teacher would be chasing behind him.
He makes impulsive choices at times, ones that make you go, "Why did
you think this was okay?" He also gets in trouble at school, for constantly
getting up, or talking out of turn. And then there's his not wanting to go to
bed, and sometimes finding him up past 1am!
Anyways, because of all of this, we looked into having him see a behavioral
therapist, and get evaluated for ADHD.
So we went early on a school day, and met with a therapist.
They gave me a stack of papers (okay, like 5) to fill out. Just Dmitri's medical
history, behaviors we've seen, things like that. Some of the questions left me
grateful this was all we were dealing with! Crazy drug questions, sexual stuff,
law breaking stuff... AHH! Hopefully we won't be back in there for any of that!
So I filled out the paper work while the kids played in the waiting room, spilling
Pirate Booty everywhere, because they were all starving, apparently.
The doctor called us back, and introduced himself. He was a nice guy, and had
a lot of questions for me. I answered the best I could, what I could remember,
and some I had to think back. Needless to say my head was kind of spinning
after so many questions!
After he chatted with me, he then started talking to Dmitri. He asked Dmitri
things that he likes to do, doesn't like to do, why he has a hard time sitting,
why he does this, doesn't want to do this, etc.
Dmitri answered his question pretty well, getting distracted a couple of times,
but he seemed to feel pretty comfortable answering.
Once the doctor had gotten enough info, he summarized everything, and told
me that he wasn't going to be quick to diagnose Dmitri with ADHD. He said
Dmitri does have ADHD tendencies, but if anything, he's on the very low end
of it, and he doesn't want to throw a bunch of medication at him.
He gave some example like when Dmitri wanted to ask the doctor a question,
he tapped him on the shoulder and said excuse me. The doctor said if he were
on the higher end of ADHD, he'd be jumping up and down, wouldn't be able
to wait for the doctor to respond, and wouldn't have been as patient.
So that was the gist of it. He said a lot of Dmitri's difficulties could probably
be helped with more exercise. At his school, they only get one recess a day, and
this year it's around 1:30. They get to school at 8:40.... They do have PE a couple
times a week, but still. So that doesn't help to tame his energy.
He also said we need to be stricter. He said the punishments we're giving him,
aren't harsh enough to make him stop doing the bad behavior. I had mentioned
we were giving him time out in his room, and he hated it. It's throw things at
the door, made holes in the wall, peed on his floor, etc, because he'd get so worked
up. So we stopped those. The doctor said if that's how he's reacting to time outs
in his room (he hates being alone), then that's what we need to be doing. We
need to show him that he can't act a certain way, and when he does, he has to
be taken away from the situation.
It helped that Dmitri was there to hear our game plan, and that he agreed to it.
Since then we've given him a warning of going to his room, and he will correct
himself. So it's really helped a lot.
I don't see the school thing fixing itself totally, because he only gets one recess
a day, but he has had a lot more green days (green is good. yellow, orange, and
red are bad. blue, purple, and pink are best, and bestest).
(This was his first blood draw. In order to see the behavioral therapist, he had to get
a referral. So they did a physical, and blood draw to get some labs on him. He was
pretty brave, but I had to hold him while he said over and over, "I didn't want to
do this!" Poor guy)
So that's that. His doctor gave us papers for his teacher to fill out, and said we
can talk about medication, if we feel he needs it, because we don't see
improvements. We decided for forgo medication, and just keep working with
him.
I'm glad we talked to someone, and we able to figure things out better. My
worry was that I didn't want his mind to not be able to relax, and I didn't
want him to feel out of control. But I'm happy with how things have been
going since, so hopefully we can keep that going.
He is a really good kid; sweet, funny, thoughtful, and smart -- and I can't wait
to see what's in store for him. Daniel and I have always said he will do great
things when he's older, based on his personality. But it's doesn't always make
things easy on us, with his strong personality! :)
I'm glad the doctor gave you good ideas and helped you try to work things out without medication. Medication isn't bad but it seems to be too many people's first choice rather than trying anything else.
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