Free To Good Home:
Mar. 8th, 2006 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciroccojJustin.
He is driving us all around the bend. For the last several weeks now, he has been increasingly louder, rougher, hyperactive, frantic, pesky, annoying, and just all around crazy-making. Daniel is beside himself. I'm ready to throttle him. Chris is probably pretty damn happy he's studying till almost bedtime every single night.
I keep reminding myself that he was like this and worse when he was little. For years, this was all there was to him - plus destructiveness, since he routinely took hammers/scissors/blunt or sharp implements to everything in our home, be it walls, furniture, appliances, toys, etc. For years, there was no being near Justin without wincing from the noise and the random physical attacks. Not that he was deliberately violent, but his version of a hug would leave us bruised, and being near him inevitably meant being crashed into on a regular basis.
For years, he was like this. I swear I have no idea how we survived that. I only know that I don't care to repeat the experience. I believe it's been less than a month, so far, this time around, and it's incredibly draining.
Next week is March Break. The idea of having him home full time was causing my heart to sink every time I thought about it, but I was doing "positive self-talk" and telling myself it would be a good opportunity to bond, and maybe address the nature of his current difficulties, maybe even start turning this around, blah blah blah... and then I discovered Loblaws is holding Kids' March Break Cooking Camp, which is right up Justin's alley, and I'm sorry but to hell with the bonding experience. He's enrolled for the week. I only hope the cooking class people don't poison him halfway through the week.
The whole time I've been writing this, he's been confined to his room because Daniel and I can't take him any more. It's been about 35 minutes. There has not been a single break in the thumping, slamming, shooting sounds and screams.
::closing eyes, breathing in and out::
This too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
We've got an appointment for him to get an MRI. A long time ago, we talked to our family doc about the fact that he was getting headaches. Really bad ones. Chris is a lifelong migraine sufferer, and started when he was about seven, so we wanted to make sure we didn't just ignore Justin's headaches if they were of the same nature. Our family doc sent us to a neuroguy, who said it didn't sound like anything too serious, but asked us to contact him if they became more frequent than once a month or so. This January, they did. Accompanied by a tendency to nap during the day, especially if he was suffering from a headache or particularly hyper. So now we're off to the MRI place. And it'll most probably come out perfectly fine, but at least we won't be sitting here wondering if there's a physical cause for his headaches or behaviour.
Because we've been down that path before. The "misbehaviour caused by physical problem" path, that is. For the longest time, as an infant, he was glued to me, and always, always, always nursing. Whining whenever he wasn't nursing. I felt like a bloody cow, and couldn't understand how he could be so incredibly whiny and needy and clingy. I'd nursed Daniel on demand and, contrary to conventional wisdom (AKA parenting myth) nursing him on demand had not made him clingy or whiny. In fact, he was a lot more independent and happy than most of the toddlers we saw on a regular basis.
Then we found out he had ear infections. Constant ear infections. Like, over one winter he had ten. It was affecting his hearing, and quite possibly his speech development, as he was a bit behind on his verbal milestones. We endured and waited and waited and waited for him to get tubes put in, and hoped that once he did, things would improve.
Um, yeah. He detached, stopped whining, and, as his grandfather commented at the end of a week-long visit (about two weeks after the tubes went it) "Is it just me, or did this kid, like, triple his vocabulary since we got here?"
Then a couple of years later, we were kind of impatient with the fact that, while he was no longer nearly as clingy as he had been before the tubes, he was still far clingier than most kids his age. Not so much emotionally, but physically, he was almost impossible to unglue. Very annoying.
Then, thank god, his eye started to wander. We took him to the doctor, who examined him and said, "Ah, don't worry, the eye will straighten out. However; are you aware that your son is nearly blind?"
Um, no, we weren't. He was only three, not reading yet, and somehow we'd never noticed visual impairment. Rather severe visual impairment. Like, 'this kid needs glasses now, he can barely see his own hands' kind of visual impairment.
He got glasses. And promptly walked away from us and became a remarkably independent little person. So, no, it wasn't our poor parenting, or leftover psychic trauma from the pain of two years of ear infections, or our inability to effectively discipline, or collateral damage from our depressions, or [insert armchair psychological explanation here] that was keeping him overly dependant on us. It was the fact that he couldn't bloody well see the world around him, so, being no fool, he stayed where he knew it was safe.
So we've done the whole "Oh, that's why" thing. And both times, it was both a relief and rather terrible, because (a) YAY! it could be fixed and wasn't our fault after all and (b) OMG how could we have missed it? and how could we have been angry or resentful towards him, when his behaviour was not due to character flaws but to pain or disability?
So yeah. Think I'll stop here before I get too far into worrying territory. Sometimes it's cathartic to write things down; sometimes it just makes the worry worse.
... and in the time it took me to write the paragraphs behind the lj-cut, he fell silent and is now asleep.
He is driving us all around the bend. For the last several weeks now, he has been increasingly louder, rougher, hyperactive, frantic, pesky, annoying, and just all around crazy-making. Daniel is beside himself. I'm ready to throttle him. Chris is probably pretty damn happy he's studying till almost bedtime every single night.
I keep reminding myself that he was like this and worse when he was little. For years, this was all there was to him - plus destructiveness, since he routinely took hammers/scissors/blunt or sharp implements to everything in our home, be it walls, furniture, appliances, toys, etc. For years, there was no being near Justin without wincing from the noise and the random physical attacks. Not that he was deliberately violent, but his version of a hug would leave us bruised, and being near him inevitably meant being crashed into on a regular basis.
For years, he was like this. I swear I have no idea how we survived that. I only know that I don't care to repeat the experience. I believe it's been less than a month, so far, this time around, and it's incredibly draining.
Next week is March Break. The idea of having him home full time was causing my heart to sink every time I thought about it, but I was doing "positive self-talk" and telling myself it would be a good opportunity to bond, and maybe address the nature of his current difficulties, maybe even start turning this around, blah blah blah... and then I discovered Loblaws is holding Kids' March Break Cooking Camp, which is right up Justin's alley, and I'm sorry but to hell with the bonding experience. He's enrolled for the week. I only hope the cooking class people don't poison him halfway through the week.
The whole time I've been writing this, he's been confined to his room because Daniel and I can't take him any more. It's been about 35 minutes. There has not been a single break in the thumping, slamming, shooting sounds and screams.
::closing eyes, breathing in and out::
This too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
We've got an appointment for him to get an MRI. A long time ago, we talked to our family doc about the fact that he was getting headaches. Really bad ones. Chris is a lifelong migraine sufferer, and started when he was about seven, so we wanted to make sure we didn't just ignore Justin's headaches if they were of the same nature. Our family doc sent us to a neuroguy, who said it didn't sound like anything too serious, but asked us to contact him if they became more frequent than once a month or so. This January, they did. Accompanied by a tendency to nap during the day, especially if he was suffering from a headache or particularly hyper. So now we're off to the MRI place. And it'll most probably come out perfectly fine, but at least we won't be sitting here wondering if there's a physical cause for his headaches or behaviour.
Because we've been down that path before. The "misbehaviour caused by physical problem" path, that is. For the longest time, as an infant, he was glued to me, and always, always, always nursing. Whining whenever he wasn't nursing. I felt like a bloody cow, and couldn't understand how he could be so incredibly whiny and needy and clingy. I'd nursed Daniel on demand and, contrary to conventional wisdom (AKA parenting myth) nursing him on demand had not made him clingy or whiny. In fact, he was a lot more independent and happy than most of the toddlers we saw on a regular basis.
Then we found out he had ear infections. Constant ear infections. Like, over one winter he had ten. It was affecting his hearing, and quite possibly his speech development, as he was a bit behind on his verbal milestones. We endured and waited and waited and waited for him to get tubes put in, and hoped that once he did, things would improve.
Um, yeah. He detached, stopped whining, and, as his grandfather commented at the end of a week-long visit (about two weeks after the tubes went it) "Is it just me, or did this kid, like, triple his vocabulary since we got here?"
Then a couple of years later, we were kind of impatient with the fact that, while he was no longer nearly as clingy as he had been before the tubes, he was still far clingier than most kids his age. Not so much emotionally, but physically, he was almost impossible to unglue. Very annoying.
Then, thank god, his eye started to wander. We took him to the doctor, who examined him and said, "Ah, don't worry, the eye will straighten out. However; are you aware that your son is nearly blind?"
Um, no, we weren't. He was only three, not reading yet, and somehow we'd never noticed visual impairment. Rather severe visual impairment. Like, 'this kid needs glasses now, he can barely see his own hands' kind of visual impairment.
He got glasses. And promptly walked away from us and became a remarkably independent little person. So, no, it wasn't our poor parenting, or leftover psychic trauma from the pain of two years of ear infections, or our inability to effectively discipline, or collateral damage from our depressions, or [insert armchair psychological explanation here] that was keeping him overly dependant on us. It was the fact that he couldn't bloody well see the world around him, so, being no fool, he stayed where he knew it was safe.
So we've done the whole "Oh, that's why" thing. And both times, it was both a relief and rather terrible, because (a) YAY! it could be fixed and wasn't our fault after all and (b) OMG how could we have missed it? and how could we have been angry or resentful towards him, when his behaviour was not due to character flaws but to pain or disability?
So yeah. Think I'll stop here before I get too far into worrying territory. Sometimes it's cathartic to write things down; sometimes it just makes the worry worse.
... and in the time it took me to write the paragraphs behind the lj-cut, he fell silent and is now asleep.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 11:56 pm (UTC)I went through the whole "totally clingy needy infant" thing with EK for the first 18 months. It was hell. I couldn't put her down to shower, or even to pee. She had a condition called 'slow maturation of the gut, and it meant that she had trouble digesting even breast milk for the first year, and adding rice to her diet at one year sent her into paroxysms of pain. Thankfully, she's sensitive to nothing now, and as a nearly-teenager can (and will) eat anything that holds still long enough... and a few varieties of sushi that are actively trying to escape! :-) But those first couple years had us really wondering what we were doing wrong as parents.
It's a credit to both your parenting and Justin's resiliency that he has recovered so well from the previous health challenges. You will all face the challenges ahead, whatever they may be, with similar success.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-09 11:40 pm (UTC)Oh god. Sounds awful.
and as a nearly-teenager can (and will) eat anything that holds still long enough... and a few varieties of sushi that are actively trying to escape! :-)
LOL! I live in fear of Justin's teenage years. He's already eating us out of house and home. I have nightmares of our carefully saved college fund disappearing into a mountain of pizza and hamburgers.
It's a credit to both your parenting and Justin's resiliency that he has recovered so well from the previous health challenges.
Thanks :)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-09 01:38 am (UTC)I have been through behavior problems with animals and feeling teribly guilty when I found out they were a health problem and not a behavior problem for not seeing sooner. It is so hard when they can't tell you what is wrong and you have to go by the fact that the behavior is off but you don't know what the triggers are.
I will keep you in my thoughts and I hope that you find direction soon.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-09 11:42 pm (UTC)Yeah, kids and pets; you're responsible for them, yet so often have so little idea of what it is they need from you. It's nerve-wrecking.
I will keep you in my thoughts and I hope that you find direction soon.
Thanks :)