It's time for an UPDATE!!!

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Yes ... the update I've been promising for awhile.  Winter season is usually a tough one for us.  There is a lot of sicknesses traveling through the household.  We had stomach viruses, colds, croup, bronchitis, a major outbreak of pink eye, ear infections, more stomach viruses, more colds moving into the chest and lungs... it was a never ending sick fest here ....      Springtime seems to be the time for an influx of doctors appointments.

So let's get updated....

Calahan has started therapy.  He has never had an easy time dealing with his anger.  He isn't an "angry child" but he has angry outbursts.  I can go toe to toe with him, but he is very self damaging when it's said and done cuz he knows he was in the wrong.  Some of this stems from what happened with his biological father, what he witnessed his bio-dad do ... and what may have happened to him - but we'll never know cuz he was really young and may have it blocked if he could remember it at all.  The therapy has been helping him, but sometimes he gets frustrated.  We realized one day when we were discussing school work that he has some major Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder from when he was bullied.

Short version - from 1st grade really onto Jr. High - he was bullied.  It got bad in 3rd grade.  There was one kid who followed him home saying he had a screwdriver in his backpack and he was going to KILL him.    Another day, same kid (I think) followed him home again and yanked on his backpack making him fall.  There were tons of threats.  I addressed all this with the school - they begged me to let them handle it - but each time they did - it was just a matter of .... don't do that, you have detention.... it might stop for a day, then start up ... happens again, I call....  don't do that, you have detention.... vicious cycle.  Jr. High he was chocked, and that was my last straw.  We pulled him out to homeschool him at that point ... then came to WA and he went back into public school ...  the second there was a hint of bullying, it was all over again. Major anxiety and PTSD... even some depression.

He hasn't had an easy life, but he's a smart kid, he's compassionate and he's so loving.

He and his girlfriend have plans for the future, and here they are on Valentine's Day when he met her up at school and gave her a gift.

He also started to see a psychiatrist to deal with his ADHD/ODD meds, and if he should decide he wants to try something for the anxiety and/or depression.

He had a recent eye doc appointment and he continues to need reading glasses.  There are some concerns though, this left optic nerve is bigger than his right by 15%.   This could be a sign that he has glaucoma - but she says it's more probable that it's just the way he's made.  We won't know for sure for awhile.  That's a little scary though.

Noah is doing very well right now.

Dr. M (Noah & Nate's Endocrinologist) says she doesn't need to see Noah anymore unless there are new issues that come into play.  She's really happy with his growth - and especially since he has hit early puberty (she confirmed my suspicion on this) and is having some major growth spurts.  Especially with weight (he has stretch marks - oh dear!)

There is still concern about the growth on his birth mark especially since he's got the new spot on the back of his head.  But we're still keeping an eye on it and going to get him into a dermatologist soon.

So Noah had Physical Therapy evals. I knew that Noah would need it.  The appointment  went good and it was really interesting. The lady who saw them and will continue to ... I like her. She also homeschools. Anyway ... Noah has abnormal tone - a mixture of high and low tone. He has something called Supinated Foot, and he has hyperextensable joints (don’t know what this means?  Think of contortionists… and this is funny cuz he is always so stiff), but not all of his joints are this way - just some. She's thinking of what to do for him, he's perplexing her a bit. (As in if he just needs shoe inserts or what) ... right now she wants him to practice doing five jumping jacks a day - in two steps. Do the jump and hands up motion (rocket ship) pause, and then back down (back together). She says that his ham strings are really bad right now, and his knees have issues.... she says he feels impacts a lot when he walks and stuff.... and a lot of what she's going to do with him is stretches and exercises to just build up his muscles and loosen him up. 

We had his first PT appointment the other day and she said she was still thinking what kind of inserts she thought was going to be best for Noah.   So I guess we'll see.   

Noah also had an eye appointment and he passed with flying colors.  She said that he has a teeny tiny astigmatism but it's not bad at all.  She did agree, though, that he has major allergy eyes.  She prescribed some drops for him.

Nathan is doing okay in growth - he still isn't on the charts - HOWEVER - he is following the RSS growth chart line pretty much right on (which is only on the height chart) ...

Nathan also had a PT evaluation …  I wasn’t sure he really would need it, turns out he does.  One of the reasons why the appointments (for Noah and Nate) were so interesting was because of how opposite Noah and Nathan are.  With Nathan .... he also has abnormal tone (a mixture of high and low tone in different areas) ... He has flat feet (which I knew) ... but he has functioning flat feet - which means the arches are there (at least right now) ... they just collapse. I guess it's called Pronation - from what I've read. It's the opposite problem that Noah has ... she says he definitely has Sensory Integration Disorder - she talked about getting him an SPIO (Stabilizing Pressure Input Orthosis) - she's going to put him through a trail with one to see if it helps him calm down. And she says she definitely feels he needs some Sure Steps (which is the name of the shoe inserts) - which is a thing that will go around his foot to help correct his issue. Other than that - she didn't have much to say about him - she says she's just going to monitor him over the next few weeks.

He had his first PT appointment and she realized she hadn't seen him do some stuff that she needed to - like walk, run and do steps.  She had just been observing him in the room while we talked.  So she did that - and worked on some stuff with him and he did really well.

He had to go through some allergy testing.  He got these spots all over his back and such, and I thought it was Chicken Pox.  But alas, it wasn't.  Noah, Nate & Kaed all got the shots, and Calahan had Chicken Pox when he was 3 years old.  So it's been a long time since I had seen them ... but ....  turns out they were hives.  So Nathan has started a allergy med regiment too.  He went through testing and the only thing he reacted to -really badly - was grass.

The spot on his spine is the "control" spot.   The one on the left side - middle of - his back is the grass spot.

Nathan also had an eye appointment ...  he has trouble focusing on things, so she wants him to get some +1 glasses to read with.  She hopes it'll help him focus better.

Nathan has 3 appointments coming up next week.  Craniofacial Clinic on Monday, Neurology on Wednesday and Urology on Saturday (yes - Saturday!)

The following week he had an appt with the Autism doc and Cardio... and he needs to have labs done.

Not too much going on with Kaedyn.  Just managing his eczema and his allergies.

He also had an eye doctor appointment....  he has something called Amblyopia.  One of his eyes is lazier than the other.  Usually this corrects in infancy and toddler years but with Kaedyn it hasn't completely.  We did notice it when he was a baby ....

 Of course it wasn't always that bad, this was a picture taken a few days later .....

Regardless - this is something he's obviously been struggling with.  She said that glasses are the first step, then there is eye patch therapy - and after that it's surgery.  SO ... let's hope the glasses take care of it.

His eyesight is really bad in his left eye.  It's a little bad in his right.  But his prescription for glasses is worse then Dennis' and imagine what's going to happen as years go by and it continues to decrease.  It kinda scares me.

Here he was in the middle of March - trying on glasses to order them.  He wasn't happy ....

But his glasses came the other day and after a little bit of inital fighting over it - and us telling him a thousand times how HANDSOME he looks with glasses on ... and the fact that he realized he can see better... we really haven't had to fight with him much to wear them.  And he is ABSOLUTELY HANDSOME with them.  He reminds me of a little Jonathan Lipnicki  (Stuart Little) and a little Harry Potter all mixed into one...

The bottom three pictures are of when we were at the eye clinic trying them on so they could be adjusted - he hated them at that moment.   The top picture is about an hour - hour and a half later ....  he's starting to get use to them!   He wore them until about 6-7 o'clock the first night (Tuesday) ...  and said he could see and didn't need them anymore (I think he was hurting) ... and so I put them on my dresser and I told him "you got to put them back on right away tomorrow" and he said "okay" and ran out of my room.  The following day (Wednesday - yesterday) he wasn't up when we had to leave for appointments ... so I put them on the entertainment center infront of the tv and told Cal that's where they were - and according to Cal he put them on without a fight and wore them all day.  He took them off about 7 last night and told me he couldn't wear them to watch Noah and he was watching Noah ... ha ha ....  and tonight - it's 8 o'clock and he still has them on :)  Of course he's taken little breaks here and there through out the day ...

So that's the update I have so far :)  More to come ....  for Nathan ... anyway ....  

PTSD .... due to Bullying

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I take my teenager to therapy on a weekly basis.  He has ADHD ... mild ODD ... and it began for medication monitoring .... and because he needs it.  He has been through a lot - including being a witness to or being molested at the age of 6 or younger.   It's hard to see my smart, compassionate, loving kid have issues like he does.   Through therapy we've discovered that he is depressed, he has severe anxiety....  and just recently, realized, he has PTSD.

We pulled him out of school to homeschool him due to his severe anxiety (and now realizing he has PTSD a lot of things make more sense.) ...   It all started when he was in grade school and his dad did something stupid.  Parents apparently picked up on his Dad's case, and apparently the child needs to pay for what the parent does.

How fair is that?

It wasn't my son's fault, he was practically a baby!

We moved to get him away from the shadow of what his Dad did.  He had been bullied relentlessly in grade school.  Every day.  Making him miserable.  Kids would follow him home and taunt him, call him names, threaten him.  One day - one kid followed him home and kept telling him that he had a screw driver in his backpack and he was going to kill him.

It got worse in Jr. High and my breaking point was when he got pushed against a wall and choked.  This happened in the stairs at the end of the school day and there were countless students walking by ... and a kid who was suppose to be my son's "friend" pushed him up against a wall, and choked him, then ripped his necklace from his neck.

And when I informed the school I was pulling him out to homeschool him - all they cared about was the bottom line.  Everytime I called the school to complain and to report this abuse, I would get the same line ...  either it was "this happened off school property and there isn't much we can do." .... and continued to the whole "we'll deal with it" and so they call all the students involved into the office, and not only punish THEM but my SON also.  I didn't find this out until just recently.   This punishment was a vicious cycle.... they would do it, the bullying would stop for a minute ... and then start right back up again with in a day or two.

Hindsight - I should have done more, I should have called the cops.  We went to the school, we went to the parents.  It just didn't seem to stop.

And when I got a call one day that he had almost gotten into a physical altercation during class one day - I think the teacher was mighty shocked when I told her it was their own fault.   She calls me up - all bitchy - no kidding - and is telling me how he almost punched a kid in class.  But before he did, he walked out of class.  I asked who it was with - and she told me.  I said "do you realize that this kid has bullied my son relentlessly since the 3rd grad (if not sooner)....   she didn't seem to care or have any compassion - and she said she was fully aware.  So then I said "and apparently when I was told that he wouldn't have classes with these kids, that wasn't true."  So then I go on and ask the teacher what she thinks would happen, how much can one kid take before they snap.  I also told her, he did the right thing by walking out of class and removing himself from the situation instead of going through and punching the kid.  She didn't appreciate my tone and I didn't appreciate hers.  I told her, I will not punish him for this, because I am proud of him for walking away instead of giving the kid a black eye like he deserves.  I told her he has been taught to walk away from situations like this and if she plans on punishing my child, she better be sure to punish the other one too.  She wasn't very happy - and I was pissed.

So we thought things would get better when we moved.  I gave the kids a choice, they could try public school or we could continue to homeschool - and they both decided that they wanted to try out the public school system.  I was so happy - he was making friends, doing okay in school - sure there were issues.  We learned about his learning disability (Dysgraphia) and he wasn't doing great - but he wasn't failing.  Then it started to happen - and I saw this dive in his grades.  He started to complain about kids picking on him.  It was NOTHING like he had been through - but even the crumb of teasing was causing him major issues.  To the point where he was getting physically sick.  We knew something was wrong.

I pulled him out again and we decided to homeschool him.  His needs weren't getting met at school.  Because he couldn't find the voice to speak up and ask for help, he didn't get help.  I know you can't force a kid and he was refusing - I don't blame the teachers for that.  But they would call and expect me to have some magic answers for punishment at home because he wasn't doing his work.  He was lying about not having homework and when we set up a system where I would have the teachers write in a notebook his work, it never got followed through on....  he had an I.E.P and due to his learning disabilities - he was suppose to be pulled out of the classroom for testing and allowed to take it in another room where he could verbalize it and get it done, it wasn't followed through on.  When I addressed it with the school - the response I got was "Well, he should remind his teachers."   .....  Okay, I understand teachers have it tough and they have a lot of students to take care of - but it is not MY SON'S job to remind his teachers of accommodations he's suppose to get - and make himself a target for teasing in front of his class ... When I asked them to make sure that this was going on - it didn't happen.  It was not followed through on.

So not only does my son have severe anxiety due to the years of bullying ....  and have depression ....  but now, after his last therapy session - we realize he has PTSD.

This breaks my heart....