Today was a rough day all day long. Howard and I had some business/financial issues that absorbed large portions of brainspace and energy for most of the day. In addition to that Gleek had a really bad day at school. She spent most of Kindergarten time sitting in the Power Chair. The Power Chair is where you go sit until you regain your power to control yourself. Gleek doesn’t like the power chair. At all. Her dislike of school has escalated at an alarming rate this past week. Something is going awry there. Starting Thursday I’ll be volunteering in the classroom once per week. Maybe seeing her in the classroom will help me get a handle on where things are going wrong for her. Also I need to snuggle her into my lap for stories at least twice per day for the next while.
Link was emotionally volatile today because he didn’t get enough sleep last night. I put him in bed on time tonight, but last I checked he was still awake. I think I need to be charting his sleep to find the new patterns. I also need to be recording the exact time he gets his medication for comparison purposes and I need to be taking behavioral notes as well. I’ve been doing some of this, but a more focused approach is probably called for. The good news is that even when he was on the edge of tears he was able to form complete sentences to explain what was upsetting him. Without medication he goes completely nonverbal when he is upset. Since he can’t talk it out, he ends up suppressing it.
At dinner hour there was madness. There was howling and growling and property damage. (casualties not too serious, one pencil, one hole poked in a sheet, and a shattered burned out light bulb.) Curfews were stretched and consequences handed out. There were pants that needed changing, twice. There were strewn legos. On the heels of this chaos came homework time and bedtime.
It has not been a good mood day.
Thank goodness for wonderful neighbors. They showed up at our door and sang us carols. Then they gifted us hot chocolate mix and went off into the night. It is amazing how cooperative children get when the possibility of hot chocolate with marshmallows is in the future. Pajamas happened in no time at all. And once the chocolate was gone, they tripped merrily off to bed with only minimal begging for additional treats or favors.
Hopefully tomorrow contains more of the relaxed happiness I’ve been enjoying lately. I’ve grown addicted to that feeling. I missed it today.
I’m sorry to hear the day is woe and spiders and chaos.
But the medication followon effect is quite a doozy. I dimly recall mentioning it; one other item to note is that it has been known to make the length of sleep importaint in sleep cycles rather than pure longer-is-better. Routine, once it can be established by mapping the sleep (Which you’re already doing, kudos there) now and plotting for later, is a good thing.
Is he old enough to sleep in a completely dark room, yet? One aspect of the condition exaberated by the followon stimulant effect of the medication is the inability to shut out distractions. It can help to forcibly shut them out – darkness so one cannot see, silence/white noise (Computer fans are a famous favorite) to help drown out the little noises one hears, etc, can help still the senses long enough to still the mind, and accordingly, gain sleep. None of this works if he’s still too young to handle such, of course – I couldn’t do it until I was ~12-13, but the day I honestly tried a dark room (Rather than fretting over the lack of light), I actually remember going “Wow! This is so much better!” just before passing out. 😉
It’s all part of the toolbox he’ll need to develop side by side with the mental discipline to cope later on, but as far as I can tell, you’re on the right track from what I’ve heard so far.
Good luck with tomorrow, though. The thought of an actual lightbulb being among the casualties is not a happy thought at all… >.>
I’m sorry to hear the day is woe and spiders and chaos.
But the medication followon effect is quite a doozy. I dimly recall mentioning it; one other item to note is that it has been known to make the length of sleep importaint in sleep cycles rather than pure longer-is-better. Routine, once it can be established by mapping the sleep (Which you’re already doing, kudos there) now and plotting for later, is a good thing.
Is he old enough to sleep in a completely dark room, yet? One aspect of the condition exaberated by the followon stimulant effect of the medication is the inability to shut out distractions. It can help to forcibly shut them out – darkness so one cannot see, silence/white noise (Computer fans are a famous favorite) to help drown out the little noises one hears, etc, can help still the senses long enough to still the mind, and accordingly, gain sleep. None of this works if he’s still too young to handle such, of course – I couldn’t do it until I was ~12-13, but the day I honestly tried a dark room (Rather than fretting over the lack of light), I actually remember going “Wow! This is so much better!” just before passing out. 😉
It’s all part of the toolbox he’ll need to develop side by side with the mental discipline to cope later on, but as far as I can tell, you’re on the right track from what I’ve heard so far.
Good luck with tomorrow, though. The thought of an actual lightbulb being among the casualties is not a happy thought at all… >.>