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That’s more like it

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· January 24th, 2013

Five months into Kindergarten, and Daniel is still struggling. Not with the concepts – he’ll happily talk your ear off about planets and how many bones are in your body, and his reading-writing-arithmetic is just peachy. No, it’s still the focus and distractibility that is keeping him from actually completing his tasks. So after our disastrous first attempt at an evaluation, I took another friend’s recommendation and set us up with a different office.

Oh, what a difference.

As you may recall, the first try involved a nurse practitioner who offered us a drug prescription within 20 minutes. This time? Yeah, a little different. We have FOUR appointments set up. Yesterday was our intake interview – mostly me answering a lot of questions while Daniel played with some toys in the office. It lasted an hour, and I felt like her questions and observations really started to get a sense of who my son is and what some of his strengths and weaknesses are. The next two are both two-hour testing/evaluation sessions one-on-one with Daniel, and the fourth is a parent meeting to discuss the findings and make recommendations. And all of this is with a neuropsychologist.

I feel much better about this already. I felt like the psychologist was really listening to me and understanding what I’m looking for. I got the sense that her focus would be to really find out what makes Daniel tick, and then how best to teach skills and strategies for him to manage his distractibility and for us to be able to parent him the best we can. Does that necessarily rule out some medical intervention? I’m sure not. But she has already given me the feeling that, whatever her recommendations may be at the end of this, they will be a lot more grounded in who my son really is and what he needs.

Comments (11)

Categories : Behavior, Kindergarten

Tags : ADHD, evaluation, neuropsych, testing

She’s not a part of your system

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (2)· January 15th, 2013

It’s only in the last couple of months that Ellie will actually sit and play with a toy or a book.

Her fine motor skills are fairly delayed for her age, and between that and whatever other factors, she had very little interest in holding onto much other than her lovey until pretty recently. Those links/rings that every baby loves? She could care less. It’s not that she was totally unable, but for whatever reason, she went through a really long phase of throwing EVERYTHING behind her or onto the ground. Almost from the very moment she picked it up, it got thrown. Couldn’t get her to hold onto something to play with it. It all got chucked.

Thankfully, that’s changing and she will now play with puzzles and draw with markers and other good fine motor stuff. But still, if she’s all done with something, it gets tossed. And every time she does, M and I look at each other and say, “she’s not a part of your system.”

Are you a Lonely Island fan? Cracks us up, and we think of this video every time Ellie tosses something overboard. (Mild language warning, probably not best for when the kids are around.)

Comments (2)

Categories : Behavior, Toddlers

Where it’s at

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· October 9th, 2012

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I am really falling out of love with my big, fancy, top-ranked Boston hospitals.

First on the list is Ellie’s feeding therapy. Oh, where to begin. So, we had a feeding therapist through the hospital. A Feeding Therapist! At The Greatest Pediatric Hospital in the Whole Wide World! What else could you want, right? How lucky are we?!

Yeah. Well. Feeding therapist at the hospital takes two months to get an appointment. Not just an initial one, but each appointment. I had a kid who didn’t eat, and I saw our primary feeding therapist about four times over the course of a year. At every appointment, she’d be disappointed at how little progress we’d made. And then offer advice that mostly boiled down to, “keep trying to feed her.” And me? I had no freaking clue what I was doing. I don’t know about you, but I’d never had to teach a kid to swallow before, so I don’t exactly know how it’s done. But I also didn’t know if this was just how feeding therapy goes, you know? How would I know what to expect?

Well, after months of frustration, I went to make another appointment with the therapist, only to be told that it was her last week at the hospital. No, “and we’re transferring her patients to this person,” just “no, sorry, can’t make an appointment for you. Like, ever. Bye!”

After a lot of screaming and swearing, I asked around for some referrals and found a smaller agency, closer to my house, with a feeding therapy program and called for an intake. We were evaluated in July, and started WEEKLY appointments last month. WEEKLY. EVERY WEEK. ONCE EVERY SEVEN DAYS. And not only that, but our New Feeding Therapist gives me actual, concrete advice and assignments, as well as what to expect Ellie’s reaction will be as it progresses.

For the first time, I feel like I’m actually doing something right when it comes to feeding. For the first time, I feel like someone is giving us the help we need. And it is ABSOLUTELY NOT coming from my super-fancy hospital. It is coming from a nondescript office park in the suburbs. That’s where the real stuff goes down.

—–

I ran into this phenomenon again, today. I got a referral from our pediatrician to get Daniel evaluated for attention problems. She recommended a great developmental specialist at another one of the Big Awesome Boston Hospitals, with whom she had trained during her residency. Great. Called today and asked to set up an initial evaluation.

“Oh, no. We don’t make initial appointments over the phone. I’ll mail you the packet of intake forms. After you send them all back, it will be about 4-6 weeks before one of the doctors can take a look at it. Then you’ll get a letter in the mail confirming the appointment we’ve given you. The wait for an appointment right now is about 6-8 months after the doctors read your intake forms.”

I shit you not. It could be JULY before we met someone face-to-face. I wasn’t expecting to get an appointment tomorrow, but the better part of a YEAR? Insanity.

So I checked out a private agency recommended by a twin mom friend of mine. I couldn’t bear another phone call, so I used the email address on their website to request an appointment. I got a call back within an hour. They had a cancellation and an open appointment tomorrow (!), but we booked for about two weeks from now.

—–

Look, great things happen at those Big Boston Hospitals. There’s a reason they’re so highly ranked and sought-after and all of that. If you need a new kidney or an experimental surgery or have some scary thing that only shows up in like three people every year? Big Hospital is great. Go there. They have amazing resources, technologies, and wicked smart doctors.

But if you’ve got a five-year-old who can’t sit still in class, or a toddler who needs ongoing, nitty-gritty intervention and therapies, community agencies and private practices are where it’s at. It’s too easy to get lost at the Big Hospitals. There are so many more urgent cases, and the doctors there are looking much more big-picture and long-term. When what you need is a great occupational therapist or speech pathologist to get you through the day-to-day practicalities, stay out in the ‘burbs. I just wish it hadn’t taken me this long to figure it out.

Comments (11)

Categories : Behavior, Hospital, Toddlers

Tags : attention, feeding therapy, g-tube

Overwhelmed

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (15)· September 30th, 2012

Hey, remember when I made it seem like our transition to kindergarten would be no big deal? And then I fell off the face of the earth for the next three weeks? Yeah. That.

This month has, in fact, kicked my ass. The extra two hours of school, while a good thing, completely changed the rhythm of our days. When we eat lunch, when Ellie naps, how our afternoons are spent, everything.

Mornings are a little more rushed than before, now that I have to pack lunches. But once the kids are off to school, it’s largely Ellie time. Every week, she has four standing appointments: feeding therapy, physical therapy, Early Intervention (at least they come to the house), and an Early Intervention-sponsored playgroup. When we aren’t going to an appointment, we’re probably going to the grocery store or Target, since at least it’s easier to go with one kid than it is to go with three. By 11AM, we’re back home so Ellie can take a nap, so I do get almost two hours in a quiet house to prep dinner or shower or something.

Afternoons are no better, we have two days of karate and one day of gymnastics, and I still need to get the big kids signed up for swim lessons. And did I mention they started Sunday school? Oof.

But as go-go-go as all of that feels, that’s not what has me stressed out right now.

At the beginning of the second week of school, I had a meeting with Daniel’s teacher. As was the case in the spring, and as has been the case all along at home, his lack of ability to focus on tasks is becoming a real problem at school. Yes, he’s a boy. Yes, he’s young. But the fact that he can’t pull out the letters at school without zooming them around his head or turning them into lightsabers means he can’t get his journal done. It’s not that he can’t write, or add, or any of the other academic concepts. It’s that he can’t sit down and focus on completing the actual task. He has so much to say and so many stories to tell, but can’t keep it inside when it’s time to listen and not talk.

I’m going to call his pediatrician and ask for a referral. If nothing else, I need strategies to help him stay on task. Consequences don’t really work, incentives don’t really work. And while I won’t pretend that I’m 100% consistent, 100% of the time, it’s not like I run a loose ship around here. No, it’s time to ask for help.

But for the last few weeks, I mostly feel like I’ve been staring up from the base of a mountain, too paralyzed to even begin. Wanting to hide my head in the sand. Not wanting one more phone call and one more appointment to make. Embarrassed, maybe? Nervous? Sure. All of it. But at book club this week (OK, maybe we spend 10 minutes talking about the book, and the other 3 1/2 hours talking about everything else), I finally ended up talking about it with people outside of my immediate family, other moms and good friends who helped me see the forest for the trees. I’m going to make the calls, I’m going to be as active an advocate as I can.

He’s a great kid. I don’t want him to start to dislike school. I don’t want teachers to see him as a troublemaker or a behavior problem. I want to catch this, whatever it may or may not be, while it’s early and we can shift our course.

If we don’t see some improvement, I know his teacher is going to suggest that he repeat kindergarten when he enters public school next year, instead of going on to first grade. For a lot of reasons, I don’t consider that to be a particularly viable option. But that means we need to do some work now, so that we can all be better prepared.

Whew.

Comments (15)

Categories : Behavior, Kindergarten, School, Toddlers

Summer, bummer.

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (12)· June 27th, 2012

What is it about summer that seems to bring out the worst in my kids?

Is it the change in routine? Is it being out of school and therefore ALL UP IN EACH OTHER’S BUSINESS for even more hours of the day? Is it just an age-related phase that coincides with the build-up to their birthday?

I don’t know, but it’s a pain in my ass.

Whereas before they would sometimes get on each other’s nerves, now both of them are actively poking, bugging, and pestering each other. But can they ever leave each other alone? No, of course not. Some kind of sibling/twin/magnet-force is in play, requiring them to be within three feet of each other for 98% of their waking hours.

They’re crankier, bossier, more possessive. They’re much more physical with each other than they’ve ever been – suddenly there’s a lot of wrestling in my house, when there had been next to none, and you know that never ends well.

Daniel continues to have zero impulse control, which results in many a head-bonk. Of course, with the breath-holding wail and instant river of tears, you’d think he was dropped in a vat of acid. Oh, the hysteria. On the flipside, if I tell him to stop doing something (for the 900th time), he’s just as likely to cross his arms in a huff and glare at me from over his angry pout. There’s also quite a bit of stomping.

Rebecca has a certain manic edge to everything she does and says right now. If Daniel is being reprimanded for something, she goes into full-on brown-nose mode. Daniel says he doesn’t like green beans? Suddenly they’re Rebecca’s FAVORITE FOOD!!!! Look like you might be getting grumpy with her? I WILL TACKLE YOU WITH A HUG AND KISS!!!! But when she’s not being frantically “good,” she is whiny and fragile, frequently falling apart and claiming she’s “tired” if she feels anxious about something. She is incredibly bossy and particular, and getting sneakier – all but waiting until my back is turned before she gives Daniel a swift kick in the shins, and then trying to negotiate her way out of it.

Like I said, I don’t know if this is an age thing. A lot of kids seem to go through a rough patch somewhere around the 3/4-year mark, which would be us right now. It could be that our summer days have a less-predictable structure, or that they aren’t getting as much space from each other (OR FROM ME). It could be some anxiety about turning five and starting Junior Program (aka kindergarten at their Montessori school) next year.

I’m trying to roll with it, trying to do fun things and make the most of summer. But it would be a lot easier if my kids were in a better damn mood.

Comments (12)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers

Spring Snapshot – Eleanor

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (5)· April 2nd, 2012

Ellie is so happy, so much of the time, it’s practically mind-boggling.

Seriously, the kid is getting eight new teeth all at once, and is only occasionally cranky. One nap instead of two? No biggie. Getting dragged around to one errand/doctor’s appointment/big-kid activity after another? Whatevs! Just happy to be here! Oh sure, she eventually reaches her limit. But she is really so easy-going, I can’t believe how lucky we are.

So, what is she up to these days? She has started playing peek-a-boo and clapping, and now claps for herself when she plays peek-a-boo. While I wouldn’t say she yet has any discrete words, she’s very vocal and expressive. Lots of variation in tone and pitch and volume, different consonant sounds, different vowel sounds. Seems pretty good to me on the language-development front for a 13-month-old who otherwise has some fairly notable developmental delays.

In the motor skills department, she’s still probably closer to a 6-to-9-month-old than a one-year-old, but she’s making really nice progress on her own schedule. She can support herself standing, either holding on to me or to a bench or something. She isn’t super steady, but getting more so every day. She has been able to get herself up from belly to sitting for a little while, but it involves this crazy legs-in-the-splits maneuver that her physical therapist HATES. Entirely too flexible in those hips, I guess. Anyways, we’ve been trying to encourage a more graceful and less-cringe-inducing bent-knee version. She has finally figured it out with the help of her sleep sack (since she can’t get into the splits in the sack), and with this fun new skill, has decided her afternoon nap is for suckers. Great.

She is getting closer and closer to crawling. When on her belly, she can get up on her knees and rock back and forth. She pivots around, she scoots backwards, she reaches and rolls. And just the other day, for the first time, I saw her just barely inch forward. In the meantime, I’m constantly pulling her out from under a bench or a chair.

Ellie is still fed 100% by her G-tube. The leap forward she had made back in January has tapered off and taken a step back. While she no longer gags every time something is near her mouth, she has lost interest in actually trying baby food. Basically, she has decided she’s a toddler and just doesn’t feel like it. Awesome.

There are times when I feel badly for Ellie, being the youngest of three. The older kids determine so much of what we do each day, with school pick-up and drop-off, activities, habits, and opinions. She doesn’t have the classes and baby-centered outings and playdates that her brother and sister did at this age. She just has to fit into the pre-existing machine.

On the other hand, she gets a lot more one-on-one attention than the older kids ever got. It’s just me and her for a few hours every day. The big kids are relatively self-sufficient, while she’s cute and cuddly and needs to be picked up to go anywhere and DOESN’T TALK BACK (yet). Plus, she’s got these two goofballs who will do literally anything to make her laugh. Yeah, it’s not so rough being Ellie.

Comments (5)

Categories : Behavior, Child Development, Infants, Toddlers

Spring Snapshot – Rebecca

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (2)· March 30th, 2012

Becca the Bean, girliest girl I know.

As far as Rebecca is concerned, anything is better if it’s pink. Or Purple. Or Red. Or Peach. That’s the list of favorite colors she’ll recite to you if you care to ask, or even if you don’t. She loves princesses and fairies and butterflies and dresses and headbands and anything else that screams GIRL! Like these ridiculous Rainbow Fairies books…

She, like Daniel, is crazy about her little sister and will to to great lengths to make her laugh. It usually involves a lot of arm flailing, head shaking, and shrieking in gibberish. What can I say? The baby digs physical comedy.

Rebecca is always doing something crafty, usually drawing a picture or a card. She is big on rainbows and flowers, and always likes to get individual eye colors correct when she’s drawing family portraits. She has also gotten into the joys of tape, so her artwork is decorating nearly every wall in our house. The one above the couch is particularly well-adorned.

She’s been in a rough four-and-a-half-year-old phase recently, a lot more whining and complaining than is her usual, quicker to dissolve into tears. TONS OF FUN, let me tell you. The whining in particular is a real trigger for me. Thankfully, she seems to be coming out of it. However, she’s reverting to her holier-than-thou “look, I’m doing good listening” bit, especially if Daniel is getting in trouble for something. One of these days, he’s gonna get so pissed at her…

Rebecca is incredibly sociable with other kids her age, especially other girls. She doesn’t have to know someone for long before she’s grabbing them by the hand and coming up with some kind of imaginary game to play. She is very sweet with other kids, and especially with kids younger than she is. She is also clever and crafty and seems to know how to be just a little bit manipulative when she needs to be. She’s so socially clued-in, I worry that this skill could morph into a Mean Girl as she gets older, if we aren’t careful to instill a real sense of empathy.

But for now, she’s delightful and sincere. She is affectionate and helpful. She spends much of her time at school doing the same works OVER and OVER again, because she knows she can do them well (ahem, I’m sure that’s NOT AT ALL like her mother), but will try new things without too much cajoling. She reads well, not quite catching up to Daniel’s fluency but still really well for her age. She loves her dance class, and is excited to get back into gymnastics soon. Swimming is a little more complicated, but we’re working on it.

My big girl. While I have no doubt she’ll give us a run for our money as she gets older, I’m going to enjoy this little-girl-ness for as long as it sticks around.

Comments (2)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers

Everybody wins

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (12)· January 4th, 2012

Yesterday, I resurrected the star chart for earning privileges and completing tasks. I’ve got an app on my iPad (naturally) that easily keeps track of the running total and lets you dole out the rewards. I had started using it last winter, but it kind of fell off in use by late summer. But four-year-olds, like elephants, never forget. Occasionally, the kids would do something and ask me to give them a star.

Well, after one of those requests and a realization that video game time was again getting out of hand, we reinstated the star chart. They can earn a star for all variety of things – making their beds, clearing the table, putting away laundry. I even have the generic “help mom” on there as a way to reward otherwise unspecified good deeds. But after 24 hours, my favorite star-earner is “read a book.”

At almost 4.5, both kids can read pretty well. Daniel, honestly, is ridiculous. He can read it all. All of the words. ALL OF THEM. And he has so much committed to memory as “sight words,” his speed is downright alarming. Rebecca is still sounding a lot of things out, but is getting faster and smoother by the day (she’s also more likely to “cheat” and just guess by looking at the picture on the page). Regardless, I want to encourage both of them to keep practicing their reading at home.

So I tossed “read a book” on the star chart. Well, being the first day and starting from zero, both kids were desperate to earn more stars. So when we ran out of laundry to put away and the dog had been fed, I suggested that Daniel read a book to Ellie. Over the course of the afternoon, Daniel read three books to Ellie, and Rebecca read two.

When they each asked to read a second book in order to earn a second star, I hesitated. Were they just gaming the system? Then I realized I DON’T CARE IF THEY ARE. It takes 10 stars to earn 45-60 minutes of video game time. Read your baby sister ten books in exchange for some time on the Wii? GO FOR IT.

This is a win for everyone. The kids earn a reward while practicing reading (nearly any book they want, though I draw the line at the super short ones that they have completely memorized). Ellie gets extra attention from her big brother and sister, and gets read more books than I find myself able to do in a given day (oh, am I a slacker second-time-mom on that front). And I get eager, happy kids and anywhere from five to fifteen minutes of peace, interrupted only by the occasional request for help on a tricky word.

WIN.

Comments (12)

Categories : Behavior, Infants, Preschoolers

Tags : reading, reward chart, star chart, video games

Pride

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (3)· November 8th, 2011

Daniel is in such a nice place right now. Oh sure, he still frustrates me on a daily basis, and tries to wheedle his way out of things. But in general he is so charming, so funny. Polite, enthusiastic, downright compliant by 4-year-old standards. He randomly compliments people. Delightful.

And he’s doing so freaking well in school. Reading amazingly well, picking up the wacky nuances and exceptions of written English faster than I could have imagined (seriously, we have a messed up language). Picking up all kinds of new concepts, getting to the point that his handwriting is fairly legible most of the time.

Today, he finished his first map. The Montessori families in the crowd will recognize this work. They use a push pin to punch out the shape of each continent, and then glue it all onto the map. He’s been working on it periodically for several weeks.

I’m so proud of him, and I love how proud he is of himself.

Despite only being two short months into the school year, we already got the re-enrollment forms for next year. They’ll be five next August, just making the cutoff for kindergarten. We could certainly save a lot of money by sending them to the neighborhood public school next year. But I already signed the form, and the kids will stay at their school next year for “Junior Program,” the name they give to the kindergarten year. Worth every penny, we’d practically keep them in that school until they’re teenagers if we could.

Three cheers for preschool.

Comments (3)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers, School

Tags : montessori, NaBloPoMo

Too Clever By Half

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· November 2nd, 2011

I have long suspected that Becca’s teenage years will be the death of me. OK, who am I kidding, it’s going to start so much younger than that.

Like, you know, now.

Someone told me that Four is the age of attitude. (Well, Four through Seventeen, but whatever.) Rebecca seems to have gotten the memo. For all of the times that Daniel has been the one to push me straight over the edge, these days he is downright compliant. Persistent and stubborn, sure. But reasonably compliant.

Rebecca… oh, she has mastered that sulking, pouty glare when she doesn’t get her way. She’s not foolish enough to actually talk back and get in trouble, but she will give you the stinkeye, big time. She calculates, she manipulates. She knows exactly how to poke Daniel and rile him up and piss him off, all while technically not misbehaving.

The daily occurrence is with regard to the carseats. While the seats are identical, they each have a “side” that is their own. Occasionally they like to switch seats, and the long-established rule is that both kids need to agree on the switch, or you can’t do it.

At least once a day, I watch her block him out and say “no,” just to assert her power to do it, and to piss him off. Daniel being Daniel, this tends to send him into dramatic wailing, which only satisfies Rebecca even more.

I can see that she’s manipulating him over something completely trivial. I can see that she’s doing it on purpose. And yet, technically, she is doing something that is well within her rights.

I am trying to tell her that I’m onto her, that I see what she’s doing and she needs to stop being mean to her brother. I am trying to get Daniel not to react so strongly, adding fuel to her quietly smoldering fire. But this stuff is so subtle, it’s a tricky line to walk.

Since she was a baby, I knew Rebecca was clever. Always watching, always figuring people out. Sometimes a little quieter than her brother, but more because she is observing, and lying in wait. She is figuring out the game and exactly what she needs to do to play it.

Middle school? High school?

I feel faint.

Comments (7)

Categories : Behavior, Discipline, Preschoolers

Tags : attitude, NaBloPoMo, sibling rivalry