Day of the basketcase and biological war

I slept until 3. That was good, I think.
Aggie barked and woke me up, prompting a pee-run.
Managed to get back to sleep at some point, woke up grouchily and showered.

Jacob 'spit up' into his bowl of Cheerios. See, his therapy appointment the day before was disastrous. He shut down and admitted to the therapist he was no longer listening or participating in the conversation.. rather rudely.
When he gets in his funk of bad behavior, everything becomes a trigger.
Saturday he intentionally pooped on himself while we were out, having to divert back home and get him his second shower of the day 'because he wanted to'.
So, we were discussing that with the therapist. It was an inclusive appointment and Tabitha and myself were in the room, although not participating in the discussion between Jacob and his doctor.
At one point Tabby gets the magnadoodle off his toy shelf and scrawls the message "don't poop on yourself!!!" and shows Jacob. Ugh.
The therapist was unhappy about it, then finally Jacob acknowledged his behavior was 'not cool' and deserving punishment. We had taken his TV plug cord away for a week. Fair, we all agreed.
So this morning he was coming off of that and his 'spit up' he was calling 'throw up' was sending me all sorts of red flag warnings about it being just another of countless instances where he uses his bodily functions to control the situation.
When I confronted him on this, guess what... he did a full fledged stomach emptying vomit to prove me wrong.
Except I know he can do this on command, and when faced with staying home with me he recanted and said he was, in fact, fine. He wanted so desperately to go to the sitter. No fever, no bellyache... just pure biological manipulation.
I had an eye appointment first thing, so I dropped Tabitha off with the sitter and dragged Jacob on my morning errand.
The infected thing residing in my eyelid will require a salve, and a course of pills. As the doctor is explaining this to me she warns that the pills CAN NOT be taken if pregnant and advised me to make 100% sure I wasn't before getting them filled.
Damn.
She had no clue about my emotional trauma that is fertility. It wasn't her fault. But I did become a basketcase as soon as I left her building. Internally, of course, to Jacob I was just his boring Mom driving him around town when he'd much rather be with the sitter.
Because no matter how much I didn't show it, the idea of having to buy a pregnancy test is completely harrowing to me. Back when we were actively trying I carried them around with me, lol. But very soon after getting married and having the exploratory surgery and the doctor telling me there was a 'snowballs chance in Hades' chance, you grieve and move on.
I have been taking birth control pills for a few years because that is the only way with the PCOS, endometriosis, and endosalpingiosis I could ever regulate my periods.
Still, when you ONLY have that 0.00000001% chance and you believe in the Lord's Will, you can't just ignore the doctor's words. So, I sucked it up and bought a box of pee-sticks. They were out of the single packs so I had to buy the 3 pack.. I wonder if I can donate the other two to charity, LOL.
Even admitting there is a 0.00000001% chance made me reel. I had already promised to God my baby saint names before beginning the test. That's how awfully consuming the emotion becomes.
Sorrowfully, and utterly predictably, it was negative. It had been so long since I had to even live through that type of anticipation that my heart hurt.
So, after freaking out over that, I headed to KIA to get the car fixed. Turns out the cd player that went kapooie is 3k miles out of warranty. Really?! Yeah, no one told us our 60k mile warranty didn't exactly cover everything. Hmmph. Another bump. Got car washed and vacuumed, then I got a little sick to my stomach and headed home, hoping to go to work later in the day.
Once home I finished up watching Pillars of the Earth (fantastic), and had to cleanup another biological mess. The new dog had yet another seizure and it was BAD. Poop, pee, slobber, and 'glandular spray'. Ugh.
I picked up the kiddos and headed to CVS, where my prescription had not been filled yet, even though they had received it around 6 hours prior. Double damn.
Came home and watched TV and settled with Matthew on Long John's Family Chicken pack.
Tabitha is not listening to any of our words tonight and acting whiny... but that's pretty normal after Jacob gets negative attention, it becomes her turn.

Parenting

My problem is I take it personally. I internalize and take all of the kids' bad behavior as a reflection of my failed parenting. It drives me crazy. Although I know they have issues, we are doing the BEST we can, and it will not be an overnight fix.. I still despair.
Two phone calls from school this week. One from principal, one from teacher. Check forgery (he tried to make his own check; scary, brilliant, gutsy), theft from a classmate, lying, stealing, wandering off... the list goes on. Unfortunately I can see him being suspended in the immediate future.
We saw his prescribing Dr. this week and made a lot of changes. Instead of Vyvanse and Celexa, we now have a 4 med regimen. Concerta, celexa, tenex, remeron.
Day one went not so well, both me and Matthew had to go get him from school.
I took him to the Fort Oglethorpe police department, hoping they would 'talk' to him as an authoritative figure. Nope. The officer was nice, but explained they don't 'scare' kids anymore. But, he himself had also adopted 3 boys from DFACS and his advice was to tell me that I was well within my rights in the state of Georgia to invest in a leather belt.
The book I ordered on the 10 Commandments came in yesterday.. just in time! Matthew and I read it to the kids before bed. It is written to relate to their age group, and I thought for certain they were getting at least some surface information from it. The plan is to read it every night.
Matthew worked hard to get Jacob back into his room last night, because if he was going to sleep in our room and still sneak a DS (which he had to have gotten way up in the living room closet for) and manage to play it under the covers in the same room as us.. then our entire purpose of him being in close proximity to us is moot.
So, Matthew took Jacob's room down to a mattress, sheet, pillow, blanket. Set the motion alarm in the hallway, and we went to bed.
Woke up this morning and Laptop was half under Jacob's mattress, and Matthew's small ipod was missing. After all of the disciplining and speeches and moralizing we had done, he couldn't give a flip. He couldn't even go a few hours making good decisions. We're baffled. The first night the remeron knocked him out.. apparently last night it did nothing. Matthew guesses the motion alarm wasn't set properly.
He finally told us the location of the small ipod, and when Matthew turned it on it had several games on it. This is one of those old ipods that is like 2'' x 4'' with a small color screen. (not the Ipod touch that Jacob flushed this weekend)
We didnt even know you could get games on that old device.
Matthew is home today and so is Jacob. Matthew had already signed up for Adoration at church, so taking Jacob can only be a blessing.
So that is my rant for this week. Tonight is tennis lessons. I'm exhausted.

Struggles and Balances

My blogging friends who battle their children suffering with a wide range of both genetic and trauma induced behavioral issues can understand. Most people cannot.
My kids can go from little angels to absolute confusion in lightening speed. Their ability to coerce, manipulate, lie, and confound us has us reeling and speechless even after over 2 years of parenting them, accompanying them to therapists, psychiatrists, reading books, and leaning on each other. They still have the upper hand, the shock, the ability to knock us down on our butts and realize we have accomplished nothing. We may have even regressed. All our efforts have been only to comfort ourselves, and have not changed, modified, nor even remotely begun to make our children think any differently about their behvioral choices.
I could go into specifics. We had a weekend of much the same bad behavior, just repeatedly. We would have emotions, hugs, moments where we might have even given ourselves the glimmer of sincerity in their eyes. Then it goes away. Just like that.
It has spilled now into Jacob's school life. Not good. Next Dr. appt we will have to try a different medication.
So, we stare at ourselves alot. We scratch our heads and say, "what's next" "what now" "what can we possibly do to correct it".
We rationalize, we give dumbed-down speeches on the greatness of good citizenship and character and morality and religion. I've got some books ordered to help in those areas ( I hope ).
We say to ourselves "they dont think"... they will do something that 5 minutes ago just got them into trouble. Even the dog has better judgement than that. It's frustrating. We've spanked, we've touched toes, we've had noses on walls, books held out on hands, faces in corners, sitting on beds, running around the outside of the house, sentences...
We improve in one area, and the scales tilt, the pendulum swings, and we go back into having to deal with issues we thought we had already finished and moved on from.
Lent begins this week and I am giving up facebook, possibly blogging only once a week (as I do now). I need more time to focus on my family, to weed out the distractions of people who do not lift me up, who do not support my family and lend us strength. I am going to make sure I get back to spending my free time where it is needed and deserved, with Matthew and the kids.

The Truth Hurts

Our Wednesday was pretty normal. I did a little grocery shopping and a little homework supervision.
In second grade they're still doing the 'color' conduct charts. Jacob's is in the back sleeve of his homework folder. The teacher trusts them to color their circle in on the calendar themselves. You see where I'm going with this, right?
So, everyday after school the kids immediately tell me "Purple!". With Tabby I was 100% she was towing the line and giving her all to please her teacher.
With Jacob we kept being impressed and proud that he was doing so well in class, a testament to his ADHD medicine and motivation to please his teacher.
So, yesterday I have a note scrawled along the top of the conduct calendar informing me that 'Jacob has been giving himself 'purple' when he has not been getting it. The colors he has gotten were not bad". She had handwritten over his calendar the correct colors which were not BAD, in fact 'blue' and 'green' are perfectly acceptable. But the little angel had decided (months ago) to just give himself the highest color code.. and then proceeded to seek out praise by mentioning it when I picked him up everyday.
I'm torn on this one, because I know that it is good that he is motivated to earn our praise, even if it is bad to cheat and manipulate to get it. Sigh.

High Hopes, and Failings

This weekend was salvageable. We were a little worried about how much family time we would have since I was working Saturday and Matthew was working on Sunday.
I ended up forgetting my medicine, and having forgotten it the previous day also, decided to leave work and run home for it.
Once I arrived home, the kids were up and excited to see me. I decided to give up the overtime and grab everyone up, throw them in the van, and set off to Atlanta. We went to IKEA, and in true family tradition, drove around for an hour trying to find a place to eat we could agree on.
On the drive home we stopped into Cracker Barrel for dinner. While there we had episode #456 of Jacob not waiting to get to the toilet for his #2. It was awful, traumatic, and I should have expected it.
He was doing so well there for a few weeks we had taken him off the pull-ups and had bought all new undies for him. But unfortunately just when we had the hopes it was behind us...
So, now he is back on the pull-ups. Come to find out it wasn't his first accident in the last few days, which is a whole other rant. Anyway, it was just a big disappointment. So, according to our book, we had him get his soiled undies and handwash them. I think he disliked that enough.
So, on Sunday we travelled up the mountain and took Matthew some lunch at work. It was nice.
We went to the Mexican place for dinner. It was nice and deserted, and they had a big flatscreen on the wall with a movie on it. At the end of our dinner the movie we were semi-watching went off and this movie came on.
Woah. The deserted restaurant meant we could hear the TV from across the room, and the captioning meant we could read along. Turned out this movie had about 20+ "F" words in the first ten minutes. Ick.
We were eager to get our check and get out the door!
Normal Sunday evening with Jacob having a meltdown and going to sleep crying. His behavior was consistently bad this weekend, but we also were sensitive to the fact that his anti-depressant is probably in full force by now.
He was crying so bad tonight, it was really heartbreaking. I went in to hug him and talk to him and he said how he was going to change his behavior and I was pleased with him taking the initiative to say that without any prompting. That was a big deal. Just having him say that was a breakthrough.
So, we all went to bed. Even me, who never goes to sleep when everyone else does. Twenty minutes later I was back up with a backache and decided to get up and walk around.
Jacob had his light on and was playing in his floor. Literally 20 minutes after him promising to try harder to behave better. ugh. Par for the course, I'm afraid. When I opened the door he just looked at me, surprised. No remorse, no trying to reason with me, no anything... so apparently the breakthrough we had managed to backfire somehow. It is so frustrating!

MLK Day.. at work

Ah, the sweet smell of overtime.

Sunday I caught up on much needed rest. Matthew took us out to lunch to Texas Roadhouse, then to a little shopping for sunglasses.
Although I love getting out with my family, I was happy to be back home. I was just exhausted.
My parents and nephew came up and spent some really good quality time with the kiddos and I watched the Golden Globes.
We let Jacob sleep on Tabitha's bunk bed thinking my nephew and sister would be staying overnight, but they ended up going home for the night.
Everyone seemed to like my butter-pecan-applesauce-molasses cake. I'm grateful, because most things I try do pretty badly.
Saturday night when I was playing in Jacob's room we found a juicebox hidden under his bed. Last night I found an apple.
It is times like this I have to remind myself that he has only had one real session with the new Dr. and I can't expect overnight (pun intended) results. It is just beyond my comprehension that as smart as he is, he doesn't change the behaviors that he gets into trouble from.
Which is why I am still picking up the book and getting reassurances that it: 1.) Could be A LOT worse, and 2.) Isn't the end of the world.
I also had thought the 'nighttime' pills were going to keep him asleep, only to find out the second night he took them he woke my sister up numerous times asking for food. My guess is he had attempted to steal food from the kitchen but thought twice to wake her up since she was on the couch sleeping near the kitchen doorway.
Then when I asked him Saturday how he had slept, he said he slept the entire night. Ugh.
It used to be the 'no response and no remorse' attitude from him that made me angry, now I sort of get that.. but now I'm having a hard time with the 'I know you'll find out but still do it' mentality.
We feel like we are having to deal with the same rules getting broken each day.
And then there's Tabitha, the charmer. She see's his negative attention and immediately turns on her 'baby talk' and 'I love you's and 'didn't I do good's. So, while her behavior is obviously manipulative of the situation and completely irritating.. the only real thing we can correct is the baby-talking. If she is talking and I say, 'stop the baby talk' then she will go back to sounding like a 6 year old. It is really wild.
So, with both kids on the bunkbed, I put the baby gate up right outside the closed door, hoping to stop Jacob getting up and roaming the house for food and electronics to play around with. He did have to ask one time around 2 a.m. to go to the bathroom, and I lifted him over the gate and back over afterwards. Silly, right? But I am confident that he was so surprised by the gate being there that he didn't venture climbing over it to go on his midnight scavenger hunt.

So, today is MLK day, my sister has my kiddos, and I have a 3:00 with my own psychiatriast. Having first visit nervousness, but I feel like I need help with my own things going on, in addition to being able to be a better parent to RAD kids.

RAD book

I cannot tell you how valuable this book has been in shaping our new parenting approach to not only Jacob, but Tabitha as well. Everytime I re-read a section I have more understanding. It is a great tool for us RAD-kid parents.
nancythomasparenting.com