Jake is in preschool without any assistance. He used to have an amazing behavioral therapist who spent two hours, three days a week at school with him. That was a wonderful, but expensive luxury. I always knew exactly how he had behaved, and I knew she would stay on top of him if he couldn't make the right choices on his own. You would think I would have been thrilled when I was told he didn't need her anymore, but no, not me. I loved having someone to guide him in the right direction, and report to me just how much guidance he needed (or didn't, as the case may be). So here we are, support free, save for the OT who sees him twice a week for a half hour.
Of course during this transition I also made the mistake of playing with his medicine. I forgot to give him his Liquid Carnosine and Behavior Balance after one long morning, and my husband thought it would be a good time to see if he could go without them and still be ok. He was, for a couple of weeks, but then his jumping and flapping got worse (a symptom I cannot seem to make a dent in, although it is better some days than others, even if there are no changes in anything else). He also started having diarrhea again (an issue he has had since his other symptoms started, but that had gotten much better). Needless to say, he was slowly put back on. I started with just the Behavior Balance Liquid, and a couple of weeks ago added back the Liquid Carnosine at a smaller dose. Then, just as I was doing that, I went out of town for a wedding. It was a six day trip that was a much needed vacation, but couldn't have come at a worse time.
He had already been in school for two weeks and was doing pretty well for the most part. I came back from the wedding in time to take him straight to school for the first day of week three. I knew he hadn't been perfect while I was gone, but I had high hopes that it was just because I was out of town. Well, so much for that. For the past three days he has been a wild animal in class. The teacher makes it sound like he is hyper all the time. Today, apparently, he was running around and throwing things. This may be typical three-year-old behavior, but it sets me into panic mode. I start making myself crazy and second guessing all the medicines and doses. This morning, in response to the first two days of chaos, I put the Liquid Carnosine back up to where it was (two MLs instead of the one and a half MLs I have been giving him for the past couple of weeks). Last night, I brought his Children's Claritin dose down to three MLs as opposed to the three and a half MLs he normally gets. Clearly, since we are on rough day number three, none of it helped. Not only was he still misbehaving in class, but he was ultra-sensitive, and has been rubbing his nose all day. To top it all off, where I thought taking down the Claritin would soothe the jumping and flapping that has been cropping up pretty badly in the afternoons and evenings, today he was doing it when he got home from school! This is where managing this on my own becomes a nightmare. When he has bad days, I feel like it is my fault. I work so hard to make sure he is at his best, that getting a bad report from his teacher is like a punch to the stomach. On the other hand, I know I am responsible for bringing him as far as I have, but sometimes that is hard to keep in mind.
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