Finding Help

I spent a good chunk of my time yesterday looking for a behavioral therapist.  I don't know if it's a necessity but I'd like to be prepared in case our pediatrician suggests we go that route.  I would love to be able to go easy on medication if possible and if a therapist will help to do that I'm on board.  I hate giving her a pill every day and frankly, I don't even know if it's working.  She sometimes seems like she's calmer but it hasn't been very consistent.  I've been giving it to her at the same time every day so I can watch for a change, but so far I haven't really seen much.  Happily, there also haven't been any side effects.  Boo hasn't complained of dizziness or nausea, she doesn't seem to have lost her appetite, and she doesn't bounce off the walls for 4 hours after she takes her meds.  I really hate being in the dark on this and I wish our appointment was sooner than August 1st.

I watched a friend's kids yesterday for a few hours.  She started a new job recently and hasn't been able to line up permanent child care yet.  She has a daughter and a son and my girls have known them for a long time.  Boo met my friend's daughter in a kids' cooking class they took when they were 4 years old and we've all been friends ever since.  Bean gets along well with my friend's son despite the two year age difference and in all the day went well.  Boo did well with her friend, who is almost 10, and they made some bracelets together and played around with lip gloss.  But later in the day, Boo did some age-inappropriate play by dressing up like a cat and crawling around on all fours meowing.  The behaviors like that always bother me and I wish they didn't.  I think it's because I know nothing will fix them.  She just has to grow up at her own pace, but I'm terrified that she will completely isolate herself from her peers this year in school.  That's another reason I am looking at therapists before the pediatrician even suggests it.  A therapist can help her make more appropriate choices in public places like school and save her "baby" play for time at home with Bean.

I just realized that I haven't mentioned who Bean is yet.  She's my almost 4 year old and is a very typical girl.  She loves dolls and clothes and shoes and is so much like I was when I was little.  It's easy for me to relate to her now, though it wasn't always that way.  But that's a story for another post.  Anyway, she holds her own with Boo and so far seems to not exhibit any symptoms of ADHD.  I am watching closely though.  Bean also had to go to speech therapy but wasn't as defiant or difficult about it as Boo was.  I don't think she has ADHD.  She seems to be able to concentrate on one activity much longer than her sister does.  Bean goes to preschool this fall and I think I will ask her teacher to just keep an eye out to see if she has any behaviors that might show ADHD.  I hope not.  One is difficult enough.

My other worry is that Boo might suffer from ODD, or Oppositional Defiance Disorder.  From early on, Boo always wanted to do things on her terms, even when she was very small.  Before speech therapy, she only had three words, and communicating with her was torture.  If you didn't understand what she wanted, especially at meal times, she would scream and bang her fists on her high chair tray, and most of the time I didn't understand what she wanted.  She could only say "hi", "okay", and "go" at the time, so how could I know that, "grunt grunt hi ughn?" really meant, "Mommy, could I have applesauce instead of grapes today?"  Once I found out she had a speech delay (from an awesome pediatrician who is no longer with our practice, sadly) and that I could teach her sign language, I stayed up half the night learning signs on a website.  I learned 60 signs in about 4 hours and she picked up on them fast.  The screaming and tray-banging days were at an end.  But her temper never changed.  Instead of grunting and screaming, Boo could now tell me in no uncertain terms that SHE WAS NOT GOING TO PICK UP ANY TOYS TODAY.  7 years later, it's no different.  She decided she didn't want to make her bed this morning until I threatened her with no screen time for the rest of the day.  She stomped around and muttered about it, but she did finally do it.  Little does she know I'm going to need to seriously cut her screen time way down in the future anyway.  I don't really know how I'm going to do that yet, but it has to be done.  I wish I had someone I could bounce ideas off of instead of just a computer screen.  It's frustrating.