Genetic Gift or DUH!

Trajan earned a double parent-teacher conference for the last trimester of the year.  In my mind it was two because it was split into half-he's doing awesome academically and half-behavior is more of an issue.  His report card had a similar theme with mostly E's (excellent) with the occasional S (satisfactory) in the academic things with a mix of S's and P's (in progress) for behavior.  He was promoted to the next grade, but we were left wanting to help him to make it easier anyway we could.

While the school didn't make any sort of treatment necessary, we were of the opinion that if there was anything we could do to make life easier on him, we should look into doing it.  Yes, it is highly likely that he would work through most of these issues in the next few months on his own anyway.  Yes, they are all within the realm of normal development.  But no, I don't like my kid being hurt.  He's sensitive.  He knows that there are some kids who won't sit next to him because they say he's a fighter.  He knows he exasperates his teachers and parents and relatives at times.  He's smart, he knows these things.

So, we saw the pediatrician who referred us to a psychologist (i think that's the right one) for some play therapy.  Get this, the doctor's name? Dr. Suess. Can't make that up! 

We went in for the first discussion/evaluation session yesterday. 

Trajan seemed to like her and enjoyed talking to her (hanging on the side of her chair when he came to talk to her like he'd known her for ages).  She had legos and scissors, so he's pretty convinced she's good. 

45 minutes into the discussion she'd tied together the things we were saying to conclude that while we were seeing his problems as impulse control, they were really more based on language/communication or lack thereof.  When she said this, it made complete sense.  He really doesn't verbalize emotions very often.  In fact, I can only think of one time.  We were talking about that and some possible approaches to take when I happened to say something in passing about how I'm not medicated right now because of the whole breastfeeding. 

You could almost see her mind race across her face and she declared, "oh, you have ADHD.  Everything clicks! This isn't a developmental problem or anything more than some early signs of ADHD." 

She laughed and commented on how this made my understanding of Trajan more than Paul does make complete sense and also cleared up why some events had happened.  He's not even four yet, so it's not really a diagnosis of ADD, with or without the H, but it does give some insight into thinking about how to handle him.

We are going back next week and she's going to do more of a session with him and then we are going to discuss whether we want to continue doing sessions to work on improving coping mechanisms or if we are going to take more of a hands-off approach for now but with an open mind towards ADD kind of things.

She recommended that we add more rewards-based things into his life and we started this last night with bed time.  He goes to bed pretty well, but there's some yelling or crying that normally goes down.  For this first week, each day he can earn a truck if he's good with bedtime ritual and going to sleep. He pulled it off last night.  Then we can either drop the reward frequency or add more behaviors (like getting himself dressed in the morning). 

So, duh!