glenolam's madness - April passed away

[glenolam]

Your animals are all just beautiful. The snow looks wonderful, from a distance that is.

I am not an expert on this or even that well informed. But many of us on the forum deal with children who have learning disabilities. ADHD, Anxiety, etc. Some medicate and some use a more holistic healthy eating approach. My question is has your son been evaluated for an anxiety problem by a doc? I am sure the weekly visit with the social worker will be a helpful strategy. But it will not address the cause of his anxiety.

sorry, you can tell me to but out but my sil is having the same problems with her son right now.

g

Thanks for loving the snow from a distance...sure wish I was! Today's another 4"+ and then we're supposed to get 8-12" tomorrow night into Thursday. This just plain old stinks.

I won't tell you to butt out at all - I appreciate the concern and feedback. He hasn't been evaluated for anything - we always just chaulked it up to shyness. He was one of those toddlers that would scream and cry and cling to me every morning when I dropped him off at daycare. I'd cry in the car to my hubby and tell him I'm not doing this anymore - he can. Our son started off in a home daycare setting at 10 weeks old for 2 days/week and as soon as he turned 1 she started telling me he's bipolar or has issues. When he was 1 he started going there 4 days/week. He would come home and grab our chins and say "listen to me" which is something we'd never do to him (we're raising him without using force...well...we only bring the spanking out when it's a "special" occasion which isn't that often so he knows when we threaten with that it's serious). We talked with her about that and of course she denied it. We had several friends with kids in her home and none of them experienced anything like we did. Anyway - at 2 1/2 I gave her our 2 weeks and we scheduled to put him in his current center. The day before his last day she calls me at work and asks if Grammie can watch him the next day (HIS LAST DAY). I asked why and she said "Well, he's had a rough day and I've had to put him in 3 time outs already and I think he'd just do better there". I said "It's his LAST DAY - you don't want to see the baby you've had since 10 weeks old on his last day with you?!?" Then I got really angry and told her fine, I'd pick him up early that day and she started apologizing but that was that. I was super peeved. Threw her christmas present right in the garbage!

At his new daycare it took him a while to adjust, but after about 6 mos he loved it. Love the people, loved his new friends, loved preschool but he was still super shy around everyone else - doctor's, our friends, our family members that he hadn't seen in a while. As he's gotten older he's gotten so much better - I think when he was 4 1/2 was when we really noticed the change. He started letting me take his picture and he'd smile! He even let the photographers at preschool take his picture. Then he surprised us even more when he actually sat and smiled for kindergarten pictures!! We're talking people he's NEVER seen before instructing him on what to do! He eats a lot better now (we're talking veggies, rice, any meats we put in front of him) and is way more social at functions. But alas, I still get notes saying he has challenging days. They have 1/2 days here so I think the change isn't something that's agreeing with him. At daycare they always say he had a great day - he's always helpful, nice to friends, respectful...of course there's a bad day from time to time, but that's usually few and far between.

Good grief - sorry, didn't mean to drone on! It's nice to have people to communicate to about this, though!

 

[savingdogs]

Kids are all so different and learn differently. We did not find public school was catered to our oldest or our youngest children. We were very surprised by the things teachers told us.

Your description of your son reminds me very much of my brother's children. My daughter (same age) was always outgoing and social. They were shy kids, quiet teens. Now, they are normal, happy well adjusted adults who just are not loud and crazy, they are reserved and fairly conservative people by nature. They were born that way and still are that way and my brother and his ex wife really did not create it.....I'm a firm believer that kids are born with their personality.

I had the real outgoing daughter and I thought it had to do with the way I raised her. However, nine years later, my son....is a hermit! No one ever encouraged him to be this way. We work to make him the opposite, just like we had to rein in our daughter.

You just have to recognize what type of child you have and encourage their strengths, work on their weaknesses. He is probably going to turn out to be a reserved, polite type like my niece and nephew. Not a bad thing! It is hard when they are little to see this perspective, once they grow up you see it more clearly.

My outgoing daughter is now the extreme talker of the family to this day. No one can get a word in edgewise around her. Maybe it is good your son is reserved.....in 20 years you will get a turn talking at the dinner table at thanksgiving.

 

[TanksHill]

Very true SavingDogs. Every child is different.

glenolam, like I said we are all dealing with different things. Feel free to unload anytime. It's nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

g

 

[Henrietta23]

Oh, do I know what you are talking about. I PM'd you as you know but we can discuss here too so that others can chime in.
DS is 3rd grade now. Since he was 3 and in PreK I've had that same dread, will there be a note. Today there would have been an email but I bumped into his teacher and we discussed things face to face.
DS was supposed to work with the SW at his public school last year. What that ended up meaning was that he worked with an intern. He liked the intern a lot but I never saw any improvement. My biggest issue was that communication was pathetic and mostly one sided. My best suggestion is that you make sure the school is communicating with you. That is key!
Last year his 2nd grade teacher decided he was ADHD, despite the fact that his pediatrician disagreed. She seemed to stop trying to get him on track so I called for a child study team meeting. The school's solution was to call in the school pyschologist. He implied that we were doing DS a disservice by not persuing the ADHD route. I careful explained our reasons for not wanting to medicate him, with facts to back up our opinion, and that was that. They stopped trying to much of anything with him. He was supposed to check in with the pysch at the end of everyday which he did for a few weeks but it wasn't consistent. Then when we told them we were transfering him to the Catholic school and they stopped doing anything to help him at all. He just coasted through the last month of school. He is still unlearning behaviors he picked up last year.

 

[TanksHill]

Hen I am glad you chimed in on this. I like the way you approached your sons issues and the results you have seen.


g

 

[Henrietta23]

Hen I am glad you chimed in on this. I like the way you approached your sons issues and the results you have seen.


g

Aw, thanks! The coolest thing here? I live about 20 minutes from glenolam!!! I know someone whose kids go/went to school in her town. Small world!

 

[glenolam]

Hen - I got your PM and will send you an email later. It does sound like our children are a lot alike and I'd like to hear what else you did for him. Catholic school isn't an option for us, so for now we have to deal with the public system. I would like to try some home-remedy stuff, though, including sending him to a naturalist or whatever they're calledforgive me for being naive, but I'm just starting out!

It's hard to keep the lines of communication open between us and the school right now since the teacher's only available for a small portion of the day and I really don't like talking on the phone at work. If I leave the door open the nosey neighbor will come and stand in my door way waiting for me to get off the phone to re-discuss my conversation with her and if I shut the door nosey neighbor waits until I open it to find out why I closed it (can you tell I avoid her at all costs?). I'm going to find out if the SW does email since that's the easiest and best method for me - unless they all want to talk at 7pm at night after bedtime, which I highly doubt they would (not that I blame them on that, though).

What's good is that we are trying to give him tools to succeed and survive on his own. We try to teach him to be independent and to earn things, but you can't shelter them. He knows life/death and where his food comes from. We don't shy him away when the boys meet the girls for "play dates" because he needs to know where animal babies come from. He's even watched most of our animals have their babies. People babies...well...that's coming

What's really funny is when we were in the car today he started talking about what's for dinner and said that some people have turkey for dinner, so they go out, kill a turkey and cook it. I said "they sure do!"

Then he said when he grows up, tomorrow, he's going to be a farmer and kill all the food for me and dad.

 

[TanksHill]

That's really cute.

 

[Henrietta23]

Cool! The naturopath we take him to is in Storrs but there are others. The woman I worked with from your town sent both her boys to the Montessori school in Mansfield for PreK and K. That's how I met her and her husband. Definitely see if email would work. That was one way we got around the phone call issue last year. This year his teacher will call me at night if she feels she has to.

 

[glenolam]

Well - sorry, Hen. Didn't get the email sent - I was super busy today trying to get everything done so I can leave early. Since our computer is still broken work's the only chance I get...well, I have phone email but that's more just to keep up with soap orders and any emergency emails -stuff like that. I'll try to get ya tomorrow!!

On a side note, I did get a call today, but it was just to let me know there was early dismissal so I had to tell them if little g was going to eat lunch at school or if he was getting a ride to daycare. Since daycare wasn't able to go get him (I love them so much - they're willing to drive to the school to get their kids!) he had to each lunch there so I took the opportunity to ask his teacher how his day was. She said he had a great day and she thinks the HUGS program will help greatly. So I tried to ask her a few more questions, got the SW's email address then was quickly stopped from talking anymore since she had a lot going on at the moment :/ I just wanted 3 minutes. I don't blame her, though, it was 11:15, they had to figure out where all these kids were going, who was staying for lunch and I'm sure had little ones running around crazy about the snow.

We'll try to stay hunkered down. After I bury my car from the depths of 'the white devil' as one SS member so greatly put it, I'm going to creep to my house and check on the animals. I'm sure the cows will be out in the pasture, the chickens will be roosting and the goats will be looking at me like I'm the one to blame.