Author Archives: David's Father

Medications

David, a moment of calm in a chaotic mind.

David, a moment of calm in a chaotic mind.

Every night we have difficulty getting him to take his medications.

If he isn’t pouring water all over everything, he is dropping his medicine on the floor.

He gets distracted and has to cuddle the animals during medicine time.

So we have to hold onto him and drop the pills in his mouth.  Then rub the side of his throat to ensure that he is swallowing them. After that, we sometimes have to feel his mouth to see if he swallowed them.  Then check under his tongue.  There have been times when he has made himself throw up his medicines, though I don’t think that he has done it recently.

Honestly, I feel like I am torturing him some days because of the way we have to be with him.

Someone commented that this is just normal 14 year old boy stuff.  I’d be happy to let him come and spend a couple of days with you.  I wonder how long before you would be calling either me, or the police to come and get him.

There are those who say that we should just not give him his medicine.

This doesn’t work either.  How much energy do you have?

Think that you can stay awake for two or three days?  Because that is what he can do if we don’t medicate him.  Do you remember Tigger from Winnie the Pooh?  That is David without his medicine.  and often times with his medicine.

Keep in mind, I don’t share everything that we deal with.  Seriously, I don’t have time or sanity to do that, and you don’t want to read it.

Why do we struggle through?

Because he is our son.  Our family.

I was just playing around…

When you live in an old home, you worry about fire in the rights hands, let alone in the hands of a child with mental illness.

Today we discovered this when we went into our guest bedroom/office.

burned lock

Do I think he was trying to burn down the house? No.

What he was trying to do, I don’t know.  This isn’t the first time he has been caught burning or trying to burn things.

So I described what basically happens when people die in a fire.

He says he won’t do it again.  Until the next time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

trying something new part II

In trying something new, I described efforts we were undergoing to change how we respond to David, and how we let him affect us.

Yesterday, we were given an added tip or coping mechanism.

Laughter.  When angry we should laugh more, because it is difficult to be angry while laughing.

On one hand, I think it is an act of lunacy.  But on the other hand, it makes perfect sense.  Can you be angry while you are laughing?

I can’t.

Last night the power was out for roughly 5 hours.  We repeatedly asked David to stay in the same room as us.  We ordered him to do so.  He didn’t and wouldn’t.

For most kids this isn’t such a huge issue, however, when your child is a thief and does things like playing with fire, you sure don’t want them roaming around in the dark unhindered.

Especially when we discovered that he was playing with the candles.

So we restrained him.  And he started laughing. actually, restrained isn’t the right word. We blocked access to the rest of the house.

I asked him, “why are you laughing?”

He responded, “the lady said we are supposed to laugh when people are upset with us.”

It took a while, and repeated application of his weighted blanket, but he finally did start to listen and then fell asleep.

 

I guess this change stuff is more difficult than I thought.   We will soldier on.