We just got back from the peds. office
Question:
snip He also takes my large kitchen knives out of my butcher block cart and hides them in closets. He won’t go to bed unless the shades are completely shut in his windows. etc. etc. I’m not sure, because he’s only 10 now and has been on Ritalin for a year, but the meds. seem to exaggerate it.
I recall, somewhere in that 8 to 11 ??? age bracket "running away from home" for about 3/4 of a day :) Maybe, I even did something like that a couple of times. … What motivated me to do such a thing? LOL! … My mother was fond of coercing me by threatening to "Chop me up into little pieces and make mince meat out of me." I seem to recall taking her semi-seriously at the time. My method of responding to the emotional potboiler was to ‘literalize’ it. Heck, there seemed to be more to be gained than lost by taking the situation overly seriously. I recall using that method on several occasions. … Quite safe and effective, actually! :-) IMO, pure, classic ADD response. "Embrace the hyperfocus with gutso!" For those with ADD; the "Hyperfocus is your friend". No bullshit. Why? .. It’s a property of perception, .. a method of "proof". MothWrangler uses this method ( *maybe* ) without realizing it ( *maybe* ). Others *may* do the same *perhaps* … Why some many ‘hums & hahs’? … It’s very difficult ( for me atleast ) to know that is occuring. WTF am I driving at? I mean thus: Humans are ‘Convergence junkies’ … Even those who claim to only live outside the box <g … Not doubt about it. When it comes to communicating between two or more people, there is contest for siezing and holding the focus of awareness ( Attention ) … Diving into a hyperfocus seizes that tactical high ground. Famous Example: Bill Clinton’s philandering with Monica Lewinski. Here is what I mean by seizing the focus of awaereness …. ~~~ Is or isn’t Clinton, "fit" to be Preident of the U.S.A. for his philandering with Lewinski? Answer, Yes or No? The focus is seized and a decision is demanded, contingent upon that focus. Given that focus, the answer is obvious … No. ( Although, I consider myself to be a liberal, even I would have to accept that a head of state should restrain themself from "such" ) Why didn’t Clinton get impeached. … Amazingly, people weren’t as stupid as they might have been. In seizing the tatcical focus high ground, a person is also seizing the strategic high ground. … Most, all other consierations are displaced and pushed out-of-sight, out of mind. Don’t ignore the question. A serious business! Does or doesn’t Clinton … ? And the falicy. there are 100,000 questions of the form: Does or doesn’t Clinton deserve to be President for his performance on issue "X". Every person will fail to make the grade on at least some minor proportion of those 100,000 questions/criteria. The super human doesn’t exist. If the fitness of acting as President comes down to the hair breadth hinge point of just-a-single question … the answer to the overall question must be No, for sure. Having a president who holds that post by the slimmest of margins of competency/appropiatness is dumb . .. it’s too important, a job. The person who does it must be clearly qualified .. over qualified with a wide margin of safety. The ruse was to "Ask the question on the basis of a single criterion for evaluation. " ..It almost worked. Cordially,
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – He also takes my large kitchen knives out of my butcher block cart and hides them in closets. He won’t go to bed unless the shades are completely shut in his windows. etc. etc. I’m not sure, because he’s only 10 now and has been on Ritalin for a year, but the meds. seem to exaggerate it. Does his doctor know about that? No, this is fairly new behavior. I’ve always viewed the things he has done as personality idiosyncrasies. It never dawned on me to have him diagnosed or medicated…until at a "well child" office visit with his ped. when she told me she thought he should be tested for ADHD. The more I research, the more *symptoms* of various disorders I discover in both my boys. Do you think these behaviors should be mentioned to his ped.? I would. They might be related to his medications. They might be signs of a comorbid disorder that might make treatment more complex. Better to mention them and find out they’re nothing serious, than to not mention them, and later regret that you hadn’t. Especially if the doctor later asks: "Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner? You should have." Nancy Unique, like everyone else
Yes, that makes sense.
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<snipped I really hope so. I had to deal with so many *ism’s* and *schism’s* as a child with the adutls in my life. And then chose to deal with them (for a while anyway) as a young adult. I’m anything but a drama queen- I don’t revel in adversity. I’m not saying that I want my children to be *poster children*. I love them for who they are- all that they are- I just want them to be happy, healthy kids. *Normal is subjective*-LOL
Oh, I quite agree. :-) ADHD-C is "normal" for my family (all 18 criterion to some degree). It’s the rest of the world that’s odd. lol For all that we’ve got plenty of ADHD in the family, we’ve got plenty of successes, in our terms of success, anyhow. My mom, both my sisters, and both my female cousins are nurses and quite good at what they do. My male cousin is in partnership with my aunt and uncle, running a successful farm. (Tough to do these days.) My brother seems to have chosen "career" military. On the non-employment end of things, we’ve all done a pretty good job of raising our kidlets thus far. We’re fairly emotionally healthy. And we’ve all got good goals for our lives. Speaking of goals, that reminds me. I’ve got to get plans finished up for enrollment of YD and YS in Freshman Comp at one of the local colleges. We’re looking at doing a dual enrollment for their English coursework for their junior and senior years of high school. Kitten
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<snipped
Sorry about the top post- dinner on stove When were you diagnosed with ADD, RL? <snip One of my son’s teachers told us that he *probably* had ADD. .. This occured almost coincident to my own discovery that I had ADD.
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – No, this is fairly new behavior. I’ve always viewed the things he has done as personality idiosyncrasies. It never dawned on me to have him diagnosed or medicated…until at a "well child" office visit with his ped. when she told me she thought he should be tested for ADHD. The more I research, the more *symptoms* of various disorders I discover in both my boys. Do you think these behaviors should be mentioned to his ped.? There are a few things I wish now I’d mentioned to the doc we took the kids to when they were younger. Anything to do with knives – yeah. Inflicting pain upon himself or others – yeah. Negative comments about himself – yeah. "Seeing" or "hearing" things noone else sees or hears – most definitely. These are things that your ped. really needs to know about. If any of these things are going on, the earlier you start looking for help, the sooner you can get him through it. Kitten My son’s just sooo afraid of so many things! Some things, like the dark, seem rational- for a child. But at 10yrs. old, I would think some of the things he’s petrified of- are irrational. I don’t know. But yes, when he started hiding my kitchen knives because they are scary… My mother’s younger brother was diagnosed with "paranoid schizophrenia", but it didn’t manifest until his mid-twenties…. a) To be honest, I don’t know any schitzophrenics BEFORE they had their first episode. .. I always had the impression that the pre-first-episode schitzophrenic is a very high functioning, well put together, strong achieving individual. A fine, well crafted piece of precision machinery. … Perhaps, too fine and precise for the person’s own good. Perhaps, I am just spouting an urban myth, here … ????? b) A *typical* (hehe) schitzophrenic has a rather specific "Pattern of Awareness" .. Some describe it as a ‘Word Salad’ which seems to fit .. but really doesn’t say much. What does ‘Word Salad’ mean, specifically? OTOH, the structure to the Schitzophrenic "Pattern of Awareness" is remarkably clear and distinct. .. I cannot describe it very well but some of those who specialize in diagnosing Schitzophrenic are quite sensitized to this attribute and used it for effective diagnosis. What people don’t seem to realize *yet* is that there are other, different "Patterns of Awareness" assoiated with other cognitive disorders. The Autistic "Pattern of Awareness" is very evident to me The Bipolar "Pattern of Awareness" is evident to me. The ADD "Pattern of Awareness" is evident to me. The Schitzophrenic "Pattern of Awareness" is evident to me. The OCD "Pattern of Awareness" is NOT very evident to me. Forf me personally, those with OCD are rich, complex and mysterious individuals. … I suppose this is why I married one. … I suppose this is why all (?) of my friends have been OCD type thinkers. I did not plan it this way. .. That is how it turned out. Very strange. Significant. c) As I see it, ADD and Schirtzophrenia are about as far apart from each other in the spectrum of disorders as one can get. Those features that describe ADD work to protect against Schitzophrenia. Here is an example of what I mean … Is it possible for me to hear voices? Maybe? … Perhaps? … But here is the thing … even if I DID "hear voices", it would be irrelevent. My perception of reality is always in flux. How I perceive things never remains fixed long enough for me to feel that it is real. Say that I imagine a voice in the back of my head. … By the time I go to investigagte, the voice has disappeared. … It will always disappear because my sense of perception is always changing. .. It just doesn’t remain stable long enough for some "voice artifact" to gain meaning as ‘plausible reality’. The ADD condition blocks the Schitzophrenic condition. ’Reality’ just doesn’t get that ‘real’ for me. My son doesn’t hear or see *things*, but since my uncle disappeared off the face of the earth 20 years ago, …. AFAIK, Schitzophrenic DON’T hear or see things *until* their 1st episode. I am NOT an expert. Nevertheless, I don’t think that it is expected until it reveals itself. Yes well, your uncle’s disappearance would tend to support the diagnosis of Schitzophrenia as being apropriate :( my grandmother won’t talk about him- so I can’t ask what he was like as a child. I really don’t know what the *symptoms* of other disorders are… the more I look, the more it seems like: a little of this, a little of that. Which even I know from abnormal psych- is not the way to use the DSM-IV 1) For whatever reason, I find it very difficult to "figure out" children. … Even my own children. "Figuring out" adults is easy for me. .. I was even able to "figure out" my own children when they became adults. Understanding kids seems to be a whole different game. .. Very strange. OTOH, perhaps, I just haven’t had the opportunity or experience to become sensitized to it. There is an explanaition for this. …. Children spend their time listening, re-acting, testing and learning. … mostly learning and exploring. This is what obscures the signal for me. 2) Most of *most* of the DSM-IV criterea converge to these focii a) The person is stressed b) The person is ineffective and frustrated … that sort of DEFINES ‘Dysfunction’ : What ‘ TYPE’ of dysfunction it "is" regrettably is a secondary attribute. ADD, Schitzophrenia, Bipolar, Autism, OCD, ___, ___, ___ all lead to the same focus: DYSFUNCTIONAL. If a person is dysfunctional; then any path of diagnosis to that "Not viable as functioning ( dysfunctional) " focus will ring as being somewhat TRUE. … stupid psychiatrists. Most of the time, he seems like a *normal* kid w/ ADHD… And the $64,000 question "IS" … What makes you believe that your son has ADD? That is the real question, isn’t it? One of my son’s teachers told us that he *probably* had ADD. .. This occured almost coincident to my own discovery that I had ADD. .. Wrong diagnosis. My son is clearly an OCD type, IMO. It was never suggested that another of my son’s had ADD. .. As a father, it’s difficult for myself to believe it. The son that I am talking about is an incredibly quite and inactive, nice, well behaved, skinny, completely accepting, good natured kid. ADD? .. sorry, I can’t see it. Yet, there are some very strong, unmistakable signs that pretty much guarantee that he is an ADD type. … The problem is that you won’t find these traits on your standard diagnostic criterea list. How do I know that I am right? A little birdie told me?, … fuddle duddle?, … a fortune teller?. .. I just KNOW.
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Well, we spoke with the pediatrician for a good while this time. She came up with a few options. She doesn’t think the Ritalin is causing my son’s insomnia. Well, in the respect that lowering_the_dose_is_the_solution.
I’m in a rush, but I want to tell you this: My son started out on Ritalin LA and it gave him insomnia and did not control his behavior at school. We switched to short-acting and the insomnia stopped and his behavior at school improved. Apparently he was metabolizing the drug very slowly in the long-acting form so it was still working at night. Just my 2 cents. ~Patti
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No, this is fairly new behavior. I’ve always viewed the things he has done as personality idiosyncrasies. It never dawned on me to have him diagnosed or medicated…until at a "well child" office visit with his ped. when she told me she thought he should be tested for ADHD. The more I research, the more symptoms of various disorders I discover in both my boys. Do you think these behaviors should be mentioned to his ped.?
Yep! The new behaviours as well as the idiosyncrasies he’s shown in the past. The more the ped. knows, the better she’ll be able to help. Vashti
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Does the TV have a sleep timer?
