rough start

The Kiddo has been sick off and on for the better part of the school year. It was mostly just a stuffy/runny nose but every now and then he’d develop a cough and every couple weeks he’d spend the weekend with a fever. It was odd but I didn't worry to much because my friends told me that he probably had allergies.

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A few weeks ago Thursday he woke up with yet another fever. I kept him home from school and spent the day alternating Tylenol and ibuprofen to keep his temperature down. The next day he woke up still feverish so we kept him out of school again and set an appointment with his pediatrician. Turns out he had a sinus infection, poor little guy. It’s all cleared up now (thank goodness) but the allergies are persisting so we give him a daily Allegra to help keep things under control.

Even with being sick that weekend was a pretty good one for the Kiddo, his grampie had randomly send him a new toy (a Lego kit of Mario Cart). So when he was feeling a bit better we gave it to him to see what he could do.

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I’m impressed, he build it by himself!! He loves the thing, he lugged it to and from school for a week (it waited in the car while he was in class).

So that’s the good news so far for the month. The bad news is that the Kiddo’s teacher this year has mentioned that he is (still) very unfocused in class. Mrs. H says she knows he’s smart but that he has a lot of trouble following multi step directions and/or finishing his work without constant reminding. She mentioned that he is smart enough that he can probably continue to go through class and learn even with the attention problem but that it might be beneficial to look into it. We were thinking the same thing already because even though his mid term report card was great, all A’s, the ‘social skills’ section was not (all “needs improvement). So we set up an appointment with a attention deficit clinic. We had our initial consult earlier this week, and next Tuesday we’re going to go in and have the Kiddo tested.

(in this picture he is working on learning to type at home)

The first test will be a Quantitative EEG. They will stick a dozen or so electrodes onto his head while he’s watching a movie. Then they will ask him questions with his eyes open, and with his eyes closed. The electrodes will measure his brain activity during the whole process. The results are mapped and the doctor can compare them to the level of activity that a ‘normal’ 6 year old brain exhibits.

The second test he will be taking will be to assess his level of working memory. As I mentioned above he has a lot of trouble remembering multi step instructions. Sometimes we will ask him to go wash his hands and get his pajamas on and by the time he gets to his room he’ll forget what he is supposed to do. This year is different from last in that he recognizes that he is forgetting, you can hear the frustration in his voice when he asks us to remind him what it was we had asked him to do. Mrs. H says it is the same in school, she can see the frustration when he realizes he has forgotten what to do next with activities. She tries to help by laying out his work in ‘order’ so he knows, and she watches him so she can step in and remind him when he needs it.

The tests are scheduled for Tuesday next week. I am excited to have them done because this sounds to me like an actual quantitative way of testing for attention issues (v.s. the questionnaire we did last year that was more subjective).