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Protected: Grouchy kid (Email purplelorikeet@gmail.com if password is needed)
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Regression
I had an unexpected visit from my closest friend and her fifteen year old son this morning. Game Fanatic was pleased to play his games with another competent player. Lego Lover must have woken up shortly after they arrived and he was in a foul mood. He’s known both since he was born but we’ve not met for quite some time. Lego Lover might have just stayed in his room and kept to himself. Instead, he decided to attach himself to me and regressed to some of the less appropriate behavior he had when he was younger. Typically, he locked himself away after the visitors had gone. With this friend, I don’t have to feel any embarrassment but it was a nuisance to have our visit sabotaged by this behavior.
This is mostly a regressive blip, though, when looking at the overall picture of Lego Lover. It’s been a great joy to watch him as he matures and takes such pleasure out of life for the past year.
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Melatonin wonders
There have been ongoing sleep problems with both the boys for years now. Lego Lover started on a prescription medication to help his sleep a couple years ago. We had some success but the effect seemed to wear off after some time and he had maxed out on the dosage for his age and weight. He takes another medication to help with irritability and anxiety that is supposed to cause sleepiness. Not with our Lego Lover though. It keeps him awake and we had to change the timing of doses to accomodate that. Lately it has been a struggle to get him to sleep before midnight. Game Fanatic more recently tried the same medication for sleep and has had mixed success so far.
I’d heard about melatonin and its sedative effect. But it’s not available for sale in Australia, except by prescription. A month’s supply will easily cost $60-70 for one child. Through the grapevine I’d heard several parents had ordered it from the US quite successfully, even in large amounts. I finally made an order for eight bottles of tablets, which worked out very cheaply. The shipping was another matter but altogether it cost about the same as a month supply on prescription here in Australia. The package arrived about two weeks ago and I started both boys on it.
The effect for Lego Lover has been incredible. We were able to eliminate his prescription medication completely. He’s been asleep before midnight most nights and I’ve even managed to get him to sleep before 11pm a few times. I’m hoping to eventually shift the time to around 10pm. The effect hasn’t been so great for Game Fanatic but he did say it made him feel sleepy a few times, which is far more than he’s said about anything else. In my view, it has been very much a success for Lego Lover, so the risk of such a large order was very much worth it.
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Previous acquaintance
Last month I was at the local library, with the Scientist, when I happened to see the mother of one of Game Fanatic’s former classmates there collecting books on reserve. I couldn’t remember this woman’s name and did not approach her. But we ended up next to her at the self-checkout machines and I noticed that one of the books she was checking out was about using art as a therapy for children with Asperger’s and a few other conditions. Her family moved to another part of our suburb and her daughter changed schools many years ago. I think I may have met her once in all the years since, probably at the grocery store. The daughter was in my son’s class for pre-primary (kindergarten) and grade one and she was a good kid but she definitely wasn’t an average kid and was very quirky. I wouldn’t have known anything about Asperger’s then, but I suspect that maybe she is on the spectrum. It might make some sense of the quirky little girl I once knew. Of course, I only making some assumptions based on what little I recall of them and the fact of that book. It also highlights how little I recall of people and events from eight, nine or ten years ago.
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My amazing son
I cannot believe the amazing things done by Lego Lover in recent times. He has made so many leaps in his social interaction that it’s very much like having an almost different child. Emphasis is on almost. Several weeks ago we were at a family lunch and the normal behavior for Lego Lover is to keep a wide berth between himself and just about everyone else. This has always been especially true for the cousins. This particular weekend was the occasion of my nephew’s birthday and it just so happened he received two different Lego sets. Enter Lego Lover and his expertise with Lego. What eventuated was a certain amount of interaction between Lego Lover and the cousins. We adults all watched with dropped jaws as he carried on some conversations. It continued to be amazing because he joined in at the playground for a bit and then sat comfortably with his cousins on the swing out on the back patio for awhile.
We thought this could have been a one-off event but it was repeated to some degree not long afterwards as we visited the home of the cousins. Only the uncle and the two younger cousins were at home but Lego Lover again joined in with some of the play and was very comfortable. I think Lego Lover must have allowed some of his self-imposed restraints to be eased a bit on that first time and so he has had more confidence since then. We’ve not had a further occasion for him to visit with his cousins but I feel somewhat assured that he will continue to be more at ease in their presence, at the very least.
So this brings me up to a visit last week with another boy with Asperger’s. Lego Lover has “met” this boy a few times in the past but would never have anything to do with him. The other boy recently started homeschooling and his mum has been in regular contact in hopes of working out some sort of relationship between the boys. We didn’t have any particular expectations on the first visit but we made sure both had their Nintendo devices and their Pokemon games. The other boy has problems understanding about personal space and was a bit too far into Lego Lover’s space at first. But after a while both were playing their games and eventually talking to each other. Again, I was quite please but it was a jaw-dropping moment. That’s not to say all went smoothly. The other boy has a whole collection of cheats he has used to level his Pokemon to what I guess is the highest level. Lego Lover isn’t happy with that and refused to battle him after a while due to the unfair advantage carried by the other boy. It wasn’t an issue that was immediately resolved but we two mothers mediated to some degree. It worked out to be a learning experience for both. We are hoping to have regular meetings of the two boys and they have now exchanged a couple messages by email.
As a side note, I would also like to point out the amazing thing the other boy did. We went into the cafe at the park and this boy went up to the counter on his own, ordered his serving of chips (fries) and paid on his own. He did a beautiful job and was extremely polite. He was on his own, with me just behind him in case help was needed. It was also very impressive.
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Protected: Working towards diagnosis
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A step forward, a step back…
I was quite pleased when my suggestion of trying a robotics class (for homeschoolers) was receptively met by Lego Lover a few months ago. We booked into the class and the Scientist organized to go along and work with him. He was still keen before we left today and all seemed to be fine. Unfortunately, the way the class was organized didn’t suit Lego Lover and he found it too overwhelming. There are three more lessons planned but I suspect that we may not see it through to the end after the disaster that occurred this afternoon. A rather expensive lesson in the end…
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A spectrum of emotion
On Monday afternoon, there was a bit of a meltdown happening with Lego Lover about an issue that he’d been unable to resolve. It was the end of the world for him at that point and it was not only his fault but also mine and his brother’s fault. I managed to point him in the right direction to solve the problem and from that point he just was happier by the minute. He kept telling me he couldn’t thank me enough to the point I asked him not to do so any more. In the past, these meltdowns might have taken hours of my time but this really only lasted a very short while and before long, life returned to our concept of normal.
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Too close
I’ve written in the past about our trials of medications to help Lego Lover feel better about the world. He has always tended towards extreme shifts of moods, although I must admit he has far more of a middle ground now than when he was a toddler and preschooler. Still, his moods shifts can be really alarming and we’ve had incidents that motivated me to take action. Last year we started medication to help with sleep issues and that has been mostly effective aside from the fact he has become resistant to its effects. Still he is better taking it than without it.
A trial of meds to help with anxiety earlier this year didn’t go well. It didn’t go badly either, but we found there was no real improvement and moved on to a different medication near the middle of the year. The current medication has been increased twice now and we feel that there has been some improvement but question whether it’s enough to warrant continuing with it. What has been interesting is that we’ve had positive feedback from two family members and a friend who all agree that he is much better than he’s been in the past. I think the Scientist and I have been too close to him to see any dramatic effect because it’s been gradual for us. But for those who seem him infrequently, it’s been rather significant.
I’ve had to make certain adjustments on the dosing of his medication to avoid the side effect of sleeplessness (which is less common than the drowsiness experienced by most users). We also had to put the previous sleeping medication back into the mix or he would be awake until 2am or later each night. But I think we are on to a good thing right now.
I’ve been attempting to reintroduce Lego Lover into some regular social outings and I think my attempts are going far better than they have in the past. I keep the situations fairly controlled but he is becoming more open to the idea of spending time with similar-aged peers that we often come into contact with. I’m hoping to create some relationships with other children so that he can share his passions with them instead of relying on me or other immediate family members for that role.
At our last pediatrician appointment, I must say I felt totally unsure whether it was worth continuing but the doctor suggested we might stick with it a bit longer and I think this turned out to be the right choice. I can’t help feeling that when we look back in four or five months, we will realize the benefits of sticking it out.
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Tidying things up
It was one of those cold and wet days of winter today. The rain has stopped but there’s a chill in the air which reaches my bones. I noticed my knees are feeling better today but other body parts are still aching quite a bit.
I managed to start some school “work” with Lego Lover today but that didn’t quite succeed and we ended up in another battle. Last week we stopped the medication he started back in March. We couldn’t see any positive effects and he ended up with stomach aches most nights so it wasn’t worth it. He has now started a different medication which has me feeling somewhat edgy. From reading the experiences of others, it’s a bit hard to judge how well the meds will work for any particular individual. The same medication can be wonderful for one and really terrible for another. So far, I think Lego Lover falls sort of in the middle since we’ve not had particularly great or bad experiences. I do think the shift from one medication to another could be affecting the current mood and hopefully he will settle down in the next few days.
During a heated discussion about “work”, I threatened to remove access to Lego for a time. This didn’t exactly eventuate because LL finally decided he would cooperate. I also started digging into his messy bedroom and the end result is it’s looking quite tidy at the moment. It is no longer the hazardous zone it’s been for weeks and months. Lego Lover did attempt to assist most of the time. It often happened that he would rediscover a forgotten toy and want to “test” it out, delaying the end of the task at hand. Finally, I was able to bring in the vacuum cleaner and remove the layers of dust.
Tomorrow I must get into Game Fanatic’s room and clear out all the dust that’s accumulated there. In the past, I would have had to do a similar cleanout of his room but I’ve found the he is doing quite well at keeping it in good order in the last year or so. It’s quite remarkable, really, that he’s always been particularly untidy and now he’s not. But he doesn’t take it any further so dusting and vacuuming is required at the moment.