Advice

[Guest guest]

I keep thinking things are getting better with Kit and then she does something

and makes me think she's not getting better. She has always been my " wild

child " --from almost as soon as she could walk. She has been extremely active

and constantly into everything. BTW, she is 10 years old now. I took a year

off from my job when she turned 5 so I could, hopefully, work with her

consistently to help with self-control, toileting issues and behavior concerns

(she is also very dominating, controlloing and often just not nice (can be mean

to family members and rude to her peers, so she would be better prepared for

school. K-2 grades were extremely difficult years at school--she had many many

accidents, and many difficult behaviors--often ending up in detention and

several times " emergency removed " from school. The past two years have been

MUCH better. At 5.5 after much thought and talking to many people (possibly

even many of you) we began to try medication. Over a course of a

bout 2-3 years and seeing several different specialists we tried about 8

different meds (some of them pretty potent things I typically wouldn't have

tried with such a young child) or combination of meds. I also sought help from

child psychologists and behavior specialists. Things have gotten

better--especially at school--I can only remember one time this year where I've

been called because of her behavior. For the past 2-3 years she has been only

on on one medication, Focalin XR. It does seem to help take the edge off, but

certainly isn't a total fix.

Some of her behaviors include, non-stop chatter (which often seems

meaningless to me, but probably isn't to her) which is often loud, some

perseveration of words/questions hearing " mom " 44 times in 10 minutes (that's an

actual count) can be quite annoying, or " where going? " in the car over and over

when she knows exactly where we are going, she will change her clothes 20 times

a day or more (I've locked most rooms and she only has a handful of clothes she

is supposed to be allowed to change into), hoarding/packing bag--she will take

her suitcase, beach bags, purses, etc...and just fill them with all kinds of

things and then carry them around (often we can't find remotes, batteries, mail,

etc...because she has them in one of her many bags), being bossy and demanding,

when it's time for lunch or something similar in her attempt to be helpful she

will pull everyhting out of refrigerator, or if I mention doing laundry in a day

or two she will immediately run upstairs and brin

g down any clothes she can find (clean or dirty), at restaurants she continues

to make a " room " around her eating place--putting the menu up, lining her

silverware, ketchup bottle, salt/pepper shakers, etc.. around her plate area,

destroying things (she will still write on walls, clothes, tv's, etc...,

tear/cut things up) often there is a purpose to this in her mind, but it is

still destructive.

Today I am in tears because I'm just tired of it and am not sure what else to

do. It seems I have to constantly be with her and make sure she is not in

trouble. Maybe this is just going to be the way it is with her, but it is

exhausting. She was upstairs in her room this am (I just redid her bedroom for

her for xmas and she loves it) and I thought was playing nicely or watching a

video. When I went upstairs, her room was covered in clothes--somehow she got

in the room that is usually locked--and had all the summer clothes and boxes of

garage sale/Goodwill clothes all over her bedroom. I had made her a cute

corkboard and covered it with pictures of her, family, friends, pets, etc...

She loved to look at it and talk about the pictures. Well she had taken ALL of

the pictures off and the pictures out of the three picture frames in her room

and cut them into tiny pieces (some with a purpose to put them in the picture

section of a wallet she had found). Ugh.

People often think Mac is so " high functioning " and " brighter " compared to

Kit. I don't necessarily believe that. She is very bright, but unfortunately,

often all people see (at times including me) are behaviors. These things aren't

constant all day long, but at least one or two of them happens

everyday--somedays, of course, are better/worse than others. She is GREAT 1:1

(for the most part) and can be a happy, cooperative, entertaining, loving,little

girl in a group. I would just like to see that side of her more often. Any

words of wisdom from those of you have been through this or continue to go

through this.

Thanks for listening/reading. I feel better just being able to share this

with all of you.

Jill

Mom to Mac (13, 8th grade, Ds) and Kit (10, 4th grade, Ds)