Category Archives: bipolar

and so ends the great debate

Our youngest son David loves to argue.  Everything for him is something that can be debated.

Tell him that he needs to clean up his kleenex, and he will tell you why he can’t do it, and he might use something you said yesterday to him as an excuse.  Tell him he needs to eat his supper before he has a snack, and he will tell you that he ate his supper and then will tell you what he ate for lunch.  When you ask him who made this supper, he would say, so and so made it for me at lunchtime.  Well, since it is 6:30 in the evening, you need to eat a regular meal before you have a snack.

For discipline, one of the few things that works is to have him cover his head.  Normally we don’t keep him under there for more than about 10 minutes.  1 minute for each year of his life.  But, he will pop in and out with different questions, excuses and arguments for the next hour and never fully be disciplined for 10 minutes.  It doesn’t matter to him that he has been there for an hour, all that matters is he didn’t have to be under the blanket for 10 minutes.

So why had the debate ended?  He fell asleep. 🙂  I love him and tomorrow is a brand new day!

 

Parent Teacher Conferences. fear or bravery?

I don’t dread parent teacher conferences for any of my kids.  Mostly because we keep such close touch with their teachers that we aren’t surprised when conferences roll around.  This doesn’t occur with our youngest though since we are home schooling him.

Before this Spring, the teachers would quake in fear when they saw my wife and I coming.  Mostly because we had to pull teeth, nails and hair to get things that they should have provided without a fight.  In the case of our youngest, we are still fighting, but feel that his needs are better met with us through home school.  Sadly, he is missing so much by not being in public school.  He misses his friends, he misses interaction with other adults, he misses PE, music, and what not.  But he doesn’t miss getting assaulted on a regular basis, he doesn’t miss being restrained, he doesn’t miss being made to feel inferior to others.  He doesn’t miss being locked in a room by himself.  He doesn’t miss being threatened with intervention by the Sheriff Department.

Today he has a calm about him most of the time.  He still is very hyper.  We do school work when he is capable of sitting still long enough to do it.  Rather than forcing the issue, we work around his needs.  Regrettably, the school hasn’t wanted to think about that possibility.

In time, hopefully we will be able to return him to public school.  Until then I am satisfied that we can meet his needs.  After all, my wife and I are both teachers.  Albeit, I am used to teaching college students, this is a change for me.

The transition to junior high / middle school for our two oldest boys seems to be going smoothly.  Hoping that it goes as smoothly when our youngest gets there.

how do you do it each day?

Each day moves forward without prompting.

We start when the rest of the kids leave the house.

  1.  8am – four kids off to school.
  2. 8:30 breakfast and clean up
  3. 9:00 play time
  4. 9:30 exercise period
  5. 10:00 study math
  6. 10:30 break
  7. 11:00 spelling lessons
  8. 11:30 – 1 lunch
  9. 1pm grammar and reading.
  10. 1:30pm. done for the day

For exercise we use games on the Wii. When it gets warmer, we will go outside. We also have an exercise bike.
Three times a week, we try to have an outing of some kind.  Go to the store, a cafe, bank or whatever.

Our day varies depending on his temperament and how he is responding.  Because of the severity of the ADHD, the above schedule is very flexible.  Some days we might not get started until 11am and might get done at 1.  We work when he is able to focus and function.

I try to combine some history stuff in the reading when it is available, or turn on the History Channel during his free time.  Last week we watched a show about the bottom of the ocean and how things survive.  So far this is working for him.  It is still our hope that he gets to go to public school.  We would modify his day to a level that is appropriate.  There are just some things, like social skills, that can’t be learned one on one.  A lot of the learning takes place via the computer and a number of educational websites.  This is especially true for multiplication tables and spelling lessons.

But how do you get through the day?  Will.  Each day is unique, celebrate the successes leave the failures for another time.  Even in the failures, one can find success.  We document as much as we can both positive and negative.   This is then shared with the medical and psych team.  Above all, we remember that he isn’t this way because he necessarily wants to be this way.  He is this way because of what his birth mother did.

Last week, David, in a moment of apparent clarity asked me why we kept him, and adopted him into our family.

My answer was, “you complete our family, and we loved you.  we still love you, we may not always like what you do, but we still love you.”