A Diagnosis

I've been hesitant post this for several reasons, but I just need to put it in words and get it off my chest.

Justin's propensity to initiate trouble, his boundless supply of energy, and his ability to look through you when you're trying to talk to him have long been sources of concern for his father and me. At his 5 year well visit, 10 days before kindergarten started, Justin was in rare form, seemingly bouncing off walls in the examining room and making it nearly impossible for the doctor to take a good look at him or for she and I to have any type of dialogue. She mentioned at that visit, "I won't be surprised if you are back here for help after school starts." We had hoped that a change of scenery -- from preschool to kindergarten -- would help and that he'd slow down a little as he grew older, but that obviously proved not to be the case. The entire month of October was an endless stream of red on the behavior chart at school, and nothing we tried got through to him. We tried taking away toys, privileges, etc., but he just honestly didn't seem to care what the consequences were and continued on a path that looked like it could only get worse. We felt like we needed to address it and rein it in now, so that he doesn't struggle more than necessary in school in the future.

I love Justin's pediatrician and while we had mentioned our concerns about his behavior for a few years prior to this, she had been resistant to do anything with respect to testing for learning disorders or behavior problems before he was school age. The rationale from care providers, among other reasons, is that it's difficult to tell the difference between normal toddler/preschooler behavior and what's not normal in a child so young. I can appreciate this, but when you're a parent seeking some guidance, it's tough to be told "we need to wait a few years" before doing anything. My biggest struggle was knowing in my gut that we had a problem, and not wanting to wait until Justin had been in school for a few years before doing anything about it. Why have your child needlessly suffer trouble if you know you need help?

Fortunately, the school setting afforded us the opportunity to test for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), which I had long felt was the root cause of Justin's behavior. The pediatrician's office uses the Vanderbilt Assessment Scale to evaluate behaviors for an ADHD diagnosis. Forms are completed by both parents and teachers that interact with the child on a regular basis, and then they are scored. Justin's scores showed a definitive conclusion that he does indeed have ADHD, specifically the combined inattentive/hyperactive type.

After the doctor's office scored the forms, my husband and I had a conference with his physician. It was really honestly such a relief to finally know what we are dealing with, but it's very overwhelming. Although there are many options for treatment, it's tough to realize that the school years will be an uphill road for your child. Choosing medication as a form of treatment isn't as easy as it sounds......there are side effects to be considered, some of which aren't known, and there is constant monitoring and evaluating taking place because the entire time a child is taking medicine, they are growing and changing and nothing stays the "same" like it would in an adult. Behavior therapy -- for both the parents and the kid -- is always recommended in conjunction with any decision to medicate. Some families are successful in treating the disorder with behavior therapy alone, but in children with the type of ADHD that Justin has, its success rate is low. It's really hard to decide what to do. The diagnosis itself has a stigma attached to it (at least in my opinion), and the decision on how a family chooses to manage it is very personal.

Justin's doctor recommended the combination approach of medication and behavioral therapy. We started him on his medicine during the Thanksgiving break from school, since it afforded us several days to observe his behavior and any adverse reactions that he might have. for the first few days, he honestly was a completely different child. I would almost use the word "subdued" to describe him, and believe me when I say that's never been in my vocabulary when describing my oldest son. It definitely affected his appetite -- he wasn't and isn't the least bit interested in eating anything. It's a struggle to get food in him at all. After 4 or 5 days, he seemed to be getting used to being on the medication, and was more like himself, but a calmer version. It's kind of hard to describe the differences.

Unfortunately, we started all of this during the holiday season so we have not been able to sign up for behavioral therapy sessions yet. There are a couple of series through Children's Hospital that were recommended for us to attend, but the last session for 2012 ended at the end of November and they don't start up again till early March 2013. Hopefully, once we get started on that, we will have more tools in our arsenal that will help us handle things at home.

The best news, though, is that he's made a remarkable change for the better in school. After being on mostly yellow and red for the first 3 months of school, he was on blue for nearly the entire month of December. (For reference, every student starts out on green for the day. They have opportunities to move up to purple or blue, or down to yellow or red, based on behavior choices.) It was wonderful. We visited the doctor the first week in January to make sure there weren't any concerning physical side effects. Justin lost two pounds since his visit in August, and grew an inch. I honestly thought he'd have lost more weight, although I wish he hadn't lost any. We made the decision to keep him on the medicine at the same dosage and follow up in the summer unless something changed.

In the last 3 weeks, the behavior reports coming home from school have not been good. It's more of the same type of stuff we experienced at the beginning of the year. After 2.5 weeks of the reversal in behavior, I called the doctor. She is a great listener and she asked me several questions. She recommended that we tweak the dosage of his medication to see if it will help. I didn't honestly believe we'd be doing that only two months into his treatment, but he is growing fast so it's entirely likely that he needs a different dosage. I'm still so conflicted about the medication, though. The whole situation is so utterly frustrating and to be honest, we feel really helpless. No amount of talking to Justin and asking him why he doesn't listen, why he doesn't follow directions, etc., yields any useful information. It makes me sigh heavily, and sometimes I just want to bury my head in the sand and imagine that we won't have years of this struggle. It makes me sad for Justin, because he's just so darn smart and ornery, but he can't focus and I'm worried that he won't be able to achieve his full potential.

Justin's teacher has been very supportive and helpful as we've gone through this process. She has worked really hard with him this year, and I think that's really to her credit. He can be positively unlovable some days when he is at his most energetic and, for lack of a better term, hyper. She's handled him extremely well and has found creative ways to help him get his work done. I'm really happy about that aspect of it, because we wouldn't be successful in trying to treat him if we couldn't partner with his teachers.

So that's it -- the diagnosis. I don't talk to people about it much, because I'm a little embarrassed, I guess. I know that this is nothing that we, as parents, have caused or could have avoided -- but the way he acts sometimes garners some stares from people who don't know us, from people who see me frustrated and chastising him for the 117th time in a restaurant or store, etc. I just really hope that as Justin gets older, he will naturally calm down a little bit (after all, he is only 5) and start listening. I'm worried about first grade, where they sit in desks and are required to be even more quiet and attentive than in kindergarten. Lord grant me strength to be the advocate and support that he really needs.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

In my excitement to post about the holidays, I overlooked posting about Parent-Teacher conferences. All grades, from preschool on up, have them. Given Justin's troubles in the fall, I was anxiously awaiting conferences as an opportunity to see how he's been progressing and talk to his teacher face to face as an in-person "barometer" of his academic and social performance.

I don't really know what I was expecting but truthfully, I was really disappointed in the whole deal. My first gripe is that I thought it was too difficult to sign up for a conference slot. Signup sheets were posted after all of the masses in the church the weekend before the conferences were scheduled, and that was the ONLY way to sign up. I was more than a little irritated about it -- the fact that the school accepts out-of-parish students means that they have families that don't belong to or attend the church. We are one of those families. Also, the school calendar that was published at the beginning of the year included the date of conferences on it, so the date was planned well in advance. Yet, parents were not able to sign up until the Saturday and Sunday immediately before the Thursday conference date. In this period of time when families' schedules book up due to working parents, extra curricular activities, juggling multiple children, and needing to arrange for child care, three days is not really enough time in advance for scheduling such an important event.

Finally, the conferences themselves were really kind of an anti-climactic non-event when all was said and done. I'd expect that in preschool, really, but we did get good, useful feedback from Tyler's teacher. The kindergarten conference included some examples of Justin's work throughout the year so that we could see for ourselves how he's changed and improved, but we didn't get much additional written or verbal feedback from his teacher outside of that. A checklist had come home about a week before the conferences that showed the various things that the kindergarten students are evaluated on, with checkmarks next to the items that the child can do satisfactorily, left blank if they need improvement. I guess that was really the barometer of his progress more than the conference itself, because I just didn't feel like we learned anything about him.

Sometimes I feel like I'm too hard on Justin's teacher. She is really a nice person and I think she handles him pretty well. He really likes her and I do feel like he's doing well in school. Maybe my years in the corporate world and suffering annual performance reviews have caused me to expect more in the way of communication than I should, especially at the kindergarten level. But the flurry of notes and negative feedback we received regarding Justin's behavior struggles early in the year did not really come up during the conferences, nor was there much opportunity for it. However, today's kindergarteners have full schedules and it's the foundation for 12 more years of school, so I guess I hoped there would be more "meat" to meeting with the teacher. I suppose I can always request a conference if I feel the need for one. We didn't receive any negative feedback about either of our boys. But if I'm being honest, I was pretty let down by the whole thing.

Holiday parties and celebrations

I really should have posted sooner, because now that it's January 3, it seems silly to be talking about Halloween. But I don't want to overlook the fun that the kids have had in school since my last post.

Tyler's preschool class had a Halloween party, which was really cute. All the kids got to take their costumes to school and wear them for the party. There were a couple of different crafts they got to do at the party as well as play a game and have some snacks. There are only 7 kids in Tyler's class, so it's a fun little size to do things like this. He got to paint a pumpkin, and play Halloween bingo, but his favorite part was the goody bag :)






The rest of the school, from kindergarten on up, gets to participate in a Halloween parade in costume. Justin loved it. Some of the costumes were so creative! Despite warnings that no masks or costumes with violent themes were to be worn, there were plenty of those too. The Halloween party followed the parade. Justin had a really good time, and it was nice that the kids had these celebrations at school since Halloween was a rainy and cold affair that no one particularly enjoyed at all!









Only a few short weeks later, the Christmas celebrations were in full swing. The school has a large variety of things going on during the Christmas season, from fund raising to outreach to just plain celebrating. There were opportunities to buy treats ($1 each) to send to friends, the PTO sold gift cards (no need to go to Kroger!), food donations were collected for St. Vincent de Paul and local food pantries, and on and on. The higher grades participate in a Christmas program, but the kindergarten has their own. The theme was "Breakfast in Bethlehem". The kindergarten classes did a re-enactment of the First Christmas, which had to be one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Following that was the class Christmas party. Tyler's preschool class had a Christmas party on their last day before the winter break. They made ornaments and played "Reindeer, Reindeer, Santa" - the Christmas variation of Duck, Duck, Goose. :)












The PTO also hosts "Santa's Workshop". They purchase all kinds of little items and adult volunteers set up a little "store" for preschool, kindergarten, and first grade students to shop for the special people in their lives. Every item costs $1.00 and the volunteers help the children "shop". We provided a list of people for them to buy gifts for, and both boys had a blast picking out presents for the special people in their lives. Justin was so excited about his purchases, he wanted us to open our gifts the day that he brought them home! I thought this was such a neat activity for the kids and they really enjoyed being able to buy things that THEY picked out.

What really hit home for me later, in the midst of all of our celebrations, was that we were watching the Christmas story as told by sweet, innocent kindergarteners at the precise moments that the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings were occurring in Connecticut. We are very blessed indeed and I cherished each moment with my kids that much more this season.

Empowered children

It's one of every parent's worst nightmares -- learning your child is being bullied. We've all witnessed it before, or worse, experienced it ourselves -- and just pray that it won't happen to our own sweet babies.

Justin's school is very serious about equipping students with skills to confound bullies to keep them from being victims. To that end, the administration brought in an expert therapist with years of experience working with both children have been bullied, and ones doing the bullying. This past week, assemblies were held all day on Tuesday with all students from kindergarten on up to teach them strategies for protecting themselves and preventing future bullying.

The best part about this was that there was also a workshop held for parents to cover the same material, and understanding what to do and not to do if you discover your child is being bullied by another. The speaker was phenomenal, and very relatable. He gave some really practical advice on how to follow through on the training at home, as well as cautioning parents on what NOT to do should bullying become an issue for their child. The information actually transcends more than school students -- bullying, unfortunately, occurs all throughout our lives. It happens in our neighborhoods, our social circles, even the workplace. The speaker said it even occurs in nursing homes, and he wasn't kidding. Learning how to control our reactions to intimidating children (or adults) who perform verbal, physical, or social bullying is empowering to those on the receiving end of such abuse.

My husband and I both got a lot out of the session we attended. It made us feel good to know that there are things that can be done to stop and prevent bullying. And it reflects highly on the staff at the school that they take this widespread problem to heart and are working to do something about it.

In search of the Holy Grail

God bless kindergarten teachers. Well, all teachers really. But God bless especially those teachers that have my child in their class. He's a high-energy, stop-at-nothing class clown that loves attention. He makes life interesting, no doubt. And I know it must be a real challenge to do your job with him as a student.

Over the years, children have been given grades on their behavior in school. It goes by several names.......conduct, citizenship, deportment, social development.....but it all boils down to the same thing. How does your kid behave in the school setting? Do they make good choices?

We are 6 weeks into the school year now and it's been a roller coaster ride to be sure. Justin's school uses something called a clip chart to track students' behavior throughout the day. It has five colors on it: blue, purple, green, yellow, and red. Everyone starts on green at the beginning of the day. It looks something like this one, except his doesn't have the orange level:



Students have the opportunity to move up or down the chart based upon the choices they make during the day. In addition to that, each child's take home folder has a chart in it where they color in a block with the corresponding color they ended on that day. Justin's spent a fair amount of time on the bottom half of the chart, although his good days have so far outnumbered the others. Every time he ends up on red, a note comes home discussing what occurred to land him there.



Most of the time, it seems as if Justin's struggles are that he just spends too much time talking when he shouldn't be. He doesn't raise his hand, he talks while the teacher is talking, he talks in the hallway, or quite often, he spends time chatting it up with his friends rather than doing his school work.

It's been really frustrating for us as parents. For me, in particular, because I just don't understand this type of behavior. I was a really shy kid growing up and I didn't misbehave in school. I had typical first child characteristics: I craved the approval of parents and teachers, and strived to do everything right. His dad was much the same way. We want so badly for our kids to do well and not struggle in school. It's as if some of our self-image as parents is tied into the behavior charts and the notes home, so it provided some comfort to me that one of my friends who also has a kindergartener was on the receiving end of this:



My sister saw this in the newspaper, and saved it for me. It probably sums up how Justin feels about the whole thing.



This last week ended on a particularly bad note for Justin, though. In addition to talking too much, he was deliberately breaking crayons, taking his classmates' papers, and then bragging that he wasn't going to have to move his clip because he can "do whatever he wants".

After that performance, his dad and I decided that part of his penance should include writing a note of apology to his teacher.



We also thought it appropriate that Justin give up a few privileges over the weekend. It included giving up his Nintendo DS, playing on the Wii, and watching TV. I did tell Justin, however, that if he behaved himself well, he'd have the opportunity to earn some of those things back. Around 1:00 on Saturday afternoon, he looked out the window and said, "When will it get dark?" He's noticed the days getting shorter, so I naturally assumed he was concerned there wasn't much daylight left. I assured him that it wouldn't get dark for several hours yet. To my surprise, he groaned. I said, "What's the matter?" He said, "How much longer do I have to be good?!" I guess he was looking for permission to lose his sense of decorum for a little while. It must be so hard to be five years old and have your whole day stretched out in front of you, confronted with the daunting task of having to be GOOD!

I suppose I need to find a balance between my own feelings of embarrassment, my struggle to figure out the best way to parent this issue, and understanding how much of what is happening is just Justin learning to navigate school. I know he will eventually get it - or at least I hope so. But proper classroom behavior seems to be a problem as old as time. Googling "I will not talk in class" renders images of blackboards with that sentence on them multiple times. This one reminds me so much of Justin:



It's going to be quite the year. I might as well ask my doctor for the prescription for Valium now.

Money, money, money

Fundraisers.
School pictures.
Spirit wear.
Scholastic book orders.
Lunch account.

MONEY! Everybody wants it!

I was a student once. I know I asked my parents for money. I know they remember it. I remember having to sell stuff. I didn't realize at the time how often we had to ask for money for this program, that extracurricular activity, or just to buy lunch. And I honestly believe, even though I went to school a long, long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away), that there weren't fundraisers in kindergarten.

Both Justin AND Tyler came home from school the very first week with these huge packets for the magazine sale fundraiser. Preschool?! Really? Anyway, I get that this is a profitable fundraiser for the school -- they receive 45% of the funds from every subscription. I just wonder how many subscriptions are sold by the kids in the lower grades. I was prepared to ignore it for my kids, but the first turn-in day for orders was last Friday, and darned if Justin didn't come home from school saying, "Mommy, I want to sell magazines. I get PRIZES!" They must really be pushing them to push the almighty subscriptions. Oy.

School pictures were today. The kids get their pictures taken regardless of whether or not you order them, and I wasn't sure I wanted to. As Forrest Gump pointed out, you're just never really sure what you're going to get. With school pictures, you pay upfront. You just have to count on the fact that your kid is going to cooperate and be cute and smile for the camera. But holy shit! (Sorry, I know this is a Catholic school blog but I couldn't help myself) School pictures are OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive. There are 8 different packages, ranging in price from a low (ha ha) $21.00 to $65.00. There are 13 additional "options" to nickel and dime you further, including calendars, magnets, keychains, etc., even teeth whitening! There are five more add-on packages to get additional pictures, or you can purchase a class photo for an extra fifteen dollars. I asked my husband if he thought we should buy the school pictures, and his answer was "Of course!" So we forked over $66.00 for two CDs, no prints. Yipes.

Then there's spirit wear, otherwise known as clothing with the school name or logo on it. Every other Friday is spirit wear day, and kids really look forward to it because it's one of those days they don't have to wear their uniform shirt. Justin was crushed last Friday when he didn't have a school shirt to wear and keeps asking me when he's going to get his. Orders were turned in last Friday and I guess he thought that he'd get his stuff the same day. I will say, the spirit wear is reasonably priced, but there isn't an opportunity to buy this stuff all year long, and you can't buy it in a store like you can with some of the public schools. Because they're not having another sale until the spring, I felt like it was necessary to buy him a couple of tee shirts and a sweatshirt to last him through the winter. I really wanted to get a couple shirts for me and my husband, but it was just going to be too much with all of the other money flowing out, so I restrained myself.

Next on my agenda is to tackle the Scholastic book order. That's due tomorrow. I can't decide whether to share it with Justin or not. He loves books, I mean really, really loves them. His trips to the library are huge highlights in his life. I just think if I show him the order form, his eyes are going to glaze over and he won't be able to limit his list of wants to what I consider reasonable.

It used to drive me nuts when my parents would say things like "I'm not made of money" or "Money doesn't grow on trees". I guess repeating the things your parents did and said once you have kids of your own is pretty much inevitable. I'm sure the day will come when Justin and Tyler get involved in scouting, or sports, or the performing arts, and there will be additional "opportunities" to spend and donate money. I just hope I can keep my "Money doesn't grow on trees" comments to a minimum.

Necessary details

I'm a little short on words tonight.....the last few days in kindergarten have been rough ones. However, I'm sure people wonder, "What on earth do they do in all day kindergarten? Why, when I went to school, kindergarten was only a half day." One of the things they do is eat lunch! I have found school lunches to be pretty reasonably priced. I think they might even be cheaper than what I paid for lunch when I was in high school many moons ago (back in the 80s). There's been a lot in the press about how school lunches are under a lot of scrutiny, and there have been calls to make them healthier. I thought I'd share what's been on the menu the first month of school.



Justin loves buying his lunch, which is good for me -- packing lunches is one of my least favorite things to do. It's hard enough to decide what I want to eat for lunch, let alone decide for someone else! I'd say the jury is still out on the healthfulness aspect, however.


This week, Justin's teacher sent home a copy of the daily class schedule. Their days are jam packed. It's actually sort of funny, because when we ask Justin what he did at school that day, he invariably says, "I don't remember." Looking at his schedule, I kind of understand. His days are so full, it would be hard to pick one thing out and talk about it. He'd rather talk about Mario. So for your pleasure, here's what his schedule looks like. It's pretty daunting, not at all like the kindergarten of yore in my hazy memories.




And finally, I decided to throw in a copy of the school calendar for the year. I'd heard over the years that Catholic/parochial schools got more days off, because of the religious days that they take. I've found that to not really be the case. I'll admit, I don't know what the calendar looks like for the public school, but the only date that jumps out at me is November 1, All Saints Day, that public school students do not get. That being said, who can blame school administrators for not wanting to have school with a bunch of kids hopped up on sugar from Trick or Treat the night before? ;)