Tired Friday

The Kiddo woke up this morning feeling a little under the weather. He crawled into my lap and curled up on my shoulder and then randomly he said “mom, when do we get to go to Arizona again?” I asked him why he would ask that and he said he really wanted to go visit and see all his friends. I told him that maybe we would see about going sometime after Christmas. He said “do we have enough monies?” I guess the realities of things we want costing money have finally sunk in for him, I think that is a good and bad thing …

Anyway he said his stomach was upset but not throw up bad (come to think of it I can’t even remember the last time he was that type of sick). He only had a low grade temp (99.7) so I sent him to school anyway but I warned his teacher and am keeping my phone close by just in case. Here’s to hoping he feels better by lunchtime and makes it through the day.

Smarty Pants

The Kiddo is a smarty pants, you knew that already though (because I brag about him often). His parent teacher conference last week went well, his teacher Mrs. H told us that she has seen some improvement since we started giving him the ADHD medication. I am glad to hear that because I haven’t seen much at home! Still I’m not seeing side affect either so I’m pleased.

Anyway Mrs. H explained that she has placed the Kiddo on reading level N (which I gather in on par with third grade). She says in reality he is above that but she is stopping him there until he can get better with his creative writing. Which I am okay with, N books are actual REAL books for him to read but they still have enough pictures to help hold his interest. As for the creative writing it’s suffering because his handwriting is so poor. We discussed that as well, I asked her to please look into possible school help with that because I do not know what else to do (I’ve been having him write daily at home and there has been no improvement). She is letting him use pencil grips to help keep his fingers positioned correctly and hopefully that will help as well.

I have a lot of appreciation for Mrs. H, she makes an effort to make sure the Kiddo knows that even while she’s nagging him and pushing him to do better she also knows he is smart and she likes him. He responds well to that type of approach, he hates being in ‘trouble’ and she has a way of keeping him happy while making him try harder. She says when she ‘reminds’ him to work in class he turns around with a grin and says “yes Mrs. H” before getting back to work, she says the way he does it makes her want to go hug him he is so cute. Gotta love an adorable smarty pants!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted any videos and I thought I might put a few with this blog. The Kiddo needs to work on identifying coins and adding them together. First I made him a wall chart so he can reference it (for the next week or so anyway) then I have him practice daily. Of course I’m not one to let him go unchallenged so I’ve made a game of it. He picks at least four coins from a box filled with pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.

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Then he lines them up highest to lowest, and then he adds them together. For the game I’ve had to teach him to carry, and we’ve talked about how he doesn’t have to ‘count add’ two of the same coin (one/two/three/etc) instead he can use skip counting (e.g. with nickels - five/ten/fifteen). He took that concept and ran with it the other day, and I almost fell off the chair!

In class next week the kids are going to be putting on a small Thanksgiving program. They are building shoe box floats for a parade (he is still working on his so I’ll blog and post pictures once it is finished) . After the parade the kids will sing a couple songs and read some of their creative writing to the audience. Because the Kiddo reads so well Mrs. H has chosen him to be the narrator. He has been practicing every day, the video is of him reading his “part”… note that it is only the second or third time he has read it so I’m pretty proud of him and by next Tuesday I'm pretty sure he will have it memorized...

snow

Earlier this month we had our first ‘real’ snow. The kiddo was dressed and ready to go as soon as breakfast was finished.

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I stuck around out there with him for a bit but then I got cold .. AND smart.

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I realized that we live on the first floor now and that means we have a ‘yard’ in front where he can play while I watch through the window!! Makes him throwing snowballs at me so much more fun!!

scans and waves

What do you do when your child's Kindergarten teacher complains that he doesn’t pay attention or complete work. When she says repeatedly that he will fail first grade unless YOU (the parent) can figure out a way to help him fix it? Well first you talk to your pediatrician, and then you and the teacher fill out a Conner's form. As my regular readers know we did that last spring, we filled out ours as honestly as we could. The Kiddo’s teacher filled hers out far more conservatively then we expected from how she had been talking. The pediatrician said that our scores showed he was probably ADHD, but the teachers scores showed that he was not. Long story short we ended up doing nothing and hoping his attention problems were due to maturity and nothing else.

Skip to this fall - First grade and a month into the school year when the Kiddos teacher pulled me aside and mentioned that he was having trouble focusing on his work in class. More importantly he could not seem to follow multi step directions and she was concerned. We were one step ahead of her, already concerned ourselves due to the mid term grade report. Our genius child had mostly 4’s, which are (from what I understand) like a super A+ (meets and EXCEEDS expectations), except for handwriting (a warning flag for ADHD) and aside from respecting adults (which he does) he was marked with ‘needs improvement’ in every single ‘social skills’ area (another ADHD flag).

So we did what any super paranoid parents would do. We found an attention disorders specialist who had the capability of testing the Kiddo in a way that was as far from the subjective questionnaire form as we could get. On the 25th of October we took the Kiddo in and had his brain mapped. The Kiddo loved it! He said it was like being Xavier hooked up to Cerebro.

The following week we had his short term memory tested as well. I didn’t take a picture of that one but basically it was a computer game. The computer told him a number, he repeated it. Then it told him two words, he repeated those. So on and so forth up to 4 or five words. There was “remember where the dots are on the screen and then point to them” games, and remember the last word in a sentence games. I think he had a good time taking that test too.

We received the memory results directly after the test and while he does seem to have a few small issues his scores fall into the ‘average’ range so the doctor thinks they are not something to be concerned about.

We also received the analysis of the Quantitative EEG, it confirmed what we suspected and the Kiddo does have ADHD.

There are several recognized ‘types’ of ADHD and surprisingly his is not inattentive (which would have been my guess). No in his usual “has to be different” way the Kiddo didn’t settle on the average run of the mill type. .. . Instead he has the “only five percent of cases are this type” form…

AD/HD: The theta-beta ratio of 2.86 is normal for age. However, there is significant increased beta relative power compared to controls of the same age and sex. This finding is seen in a subset of individuals who do have ADHD, but may also be present with anxiety or sleep disorder. It is often referred to as “ the too busy brain”.

The over active mind isn’t unusual, but the fact that it comes without the hyperactivity is. I ‘boxed’ in the beta waves section so you can see how overactive his mind is (blue is low activity, green is average, yellow is slightly high, and red is the highest). I underlined sleep disorder because I thought it was interesting; the Kiddo has always been an insomniac and extremely active sleeper I suppose now we know why. Honestly it’s pretty confusing to me but the Man says he understands it so that’s good enough for me …

He has been prescribed Strattera. It is a non stimulant (no hyperactivity means no stimulant) but scary side affects abound (as they do with any medication). He started taking it last Thursday and we hope to see some sort of improvement by the end of this week. So far he has reacted well to it and we haven’t seen any negative physical or emotional side affects. I am hopeful this will remain the case because he has always been ‘the norm’ with medications, responding appropriately with no issues. Soon we should have our amazing perfect highly intelligent child suddenly able to focus… I’m a little excited to see what he can achieve.

Ghost Man

Anybody: What are you going to be for Halloween this year?

Kiddo: I’m going to be my very own superhero, one that I made up… Ghost Man. I have a cape and a utility belt, and my superpower is that I can turn invisible so that the bad guys can’t get me.

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What he forgets to tell people is that he also has his very own superhero team. The members include the Man and myself plus most of his aunts and uncles. He’s named us the Naturals and the way he sees it if anything bad happens or he needs help figuring something out all he has to do is call one of us and we’ll help him solve his problem.

His back story to go with his costume character made this years Halloween so much fun. I love that it was unique to him and that he was the ONLY ghost man walking around.

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(Ready to go trick or treating)

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(We started by going around the nearby shopping center with his friend T)

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(After that we hit Grandma’s neighborhood)

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(He said this was his favorite, he loves walking house to house. He was so funny, as soon as he said thank you and turned around he’d run back to us shouting “I got another TREAT!! Lets go to the next house!”

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(Mean as we are we made him wait till he got home to go through his candy. We were nice enough to let him pick one piece to eat before bed though. He picked the sweet tarts.

I loved this Halloween. The weather was great and he was happy the entire time. I think for him it ranks as one of the best days ever this year. I can’t wait until next year, I really get a kick out of making his costume and I love watching his joy in the holiday.

Adrenal Insufficient United

Lately I have been crusading, if you're on my facebook page you've probably already noticed. More then half of my posts this past week have been reminders for my friends to sign a petition and pass it along to their friends. Why?

Here's the deal, if the Kiddo was ever in an accident and I was not nearby or alert then the responding medical personnel would have NO clue how to keep him alive. In addition even if by some miracle they knew how they wouldn't be able to anyway because the emergency injection that he would need is not one they carry. I had grudgingly almost accepted that there isn't any real way to change this... except that there is, a group of women started an organization Adrenal Insufficiency United and a petition that will hopefully help to create a change in responder protocols. If you haven't signed the petition yet please do, all we want is training and the correct shot to be carried.

One of the groups creators was interviews by her local radio station recently. The podcast is eye opening, and eerily familiar. It's her story, but it's also ours. The only difference is that kiddo's AI stems from his Pit not his adrenals, it's called panhypopituitarism but the symptoms and crisis issues are all the same.

She mentions in her interview that the University of New Mexico has an AI training program for ems. I went and looked it up, it's nothing I didn't already know but if any of you wanted more information feel free to go give it a look.

I have printed out flyers to have the Kiddo's teacher send out asking for signatures, I handed some to the apartment complex office and even sent some with a friend to her church.

The group has made contact with the Secretaries office of the US Department of Health and Human Services in D.C. Right now the petition is up to 1300 signatures. Listen to the podcast to see why our request wont cost much and makes sense, then sign the petition and pass it along.

Every signature we can get strengthens our cause...

oooo pumpkin!

In preparation for Halloween last week on Thursday we went and picked up a couple pumpkins.

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Usually I’m far to lazy to do this type of stuff but the thing is the Kiddo’s best friend T and his brother go every year to get a couple and carve them. Of course that means T’s mom asked us to go and voila, jack-o-lantern motivation :)

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I have to admit it was a really good time. The kids ran around like hooligans, I took a dozen great pictures and we came home with two big pumpkins to carve up. The kiddo helped draw the pattern on them and then I did the carving.

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The Kiddo is really proud of the finished product, he thinks they are the funniest scary pumpkins because they are “eating eyeballs”. Yeah, that’d be my kiddo.