You know those time periods where you are hit with stressors from all directions, serious family health issues and deaths and child issues and worry and this and that and general instability? I'm in the middle of one of those intense times. I am barely getting any sleep at night, having insomnia. It's making me drop the ball on normal stuff because I have so much on my mind. My physical health is deteriorating. Please send your peace and prayers this way. Please don't quote, for privacy.

Maybe it would help him if you gave him statistics on the percentage of adult Americans on medications... it is OVER 70% on at least one medication!! (OK, i'm pretty sure that study must be flawed or the media misinterpreted it, but anyway, it's very high regardless, i'm sure over 20%) Right now it sounds like he doesn't want to stand out as some kind of loser who has to take meds. Maybe if he realized that the majority of people take meds it would be easier for him. In fact, in college, a huge proportion of kids (especially in selective schools I think it's over 20%) take ADHD meds even when they aren't prescribed by a doctor, just to help them focus and do better academically. He doesn't stand out by taking meds. He stands out by refusing meds...

My son hates weighted vests, always has, so I kind of figured he doesn't need deep sensory input (even though he's a crasher...). Anyway, I was way off, he totally craves deep pressure squeezes. He just doesn't like the heavy weight of weighted items! In fact, he's coming up with ideas himself. "What if you buried me?" Etc. Made me sit on an air mattress as he squeezed between it on the side and pillows. Actually our whole lives he keeps wedging between us or our butts or whatever, i shoudl have realized it was a sensory thing. So I was thinking, watching the air mattress... and I was imagining that the best solution would be a vest that can be INFLATED with air. That way it would squeeze him nice and tight, without actual weight. So I searched online and found some that arne't quite right or are way too expensive. Another idea would be a kind of super tight sleeping bag, like something that i could pull thick velcro straps tight to secure. I guess I could make this... but I don't have much time these days so I would prefer to buy a product. (But nothing that costs too much...) Just rolling him as tight as i can in a heavy blanket is not good enough, he finds it too loose especially since he pushes against it to make hte pressure stronger (which loosens it a bit). There has got to be a solution out there for full deep pressure without weight... please help me out, experienced ladies!

Wow really? Can I come over for dinner at your houses? There is lots of home cooked healthy goodness going on around this board. We have fast food several times a week. Usually skip the fries, though, as that is the hit of trans fats. Otherwise I consider it basically healthy? Well, three times lately I slipped and got us cookies too, so that is my confession. My tricky child will only eat mcdonalds cheeseburgers right now. He literally will skip all other dinners and lunches and survive on a late afternoon snack of a couple cheeseburgers. Won't eat any other brand, either. And because I made eggs a tiny bit runny a few weeks ago (literally just a tad soft), he won't eat eggs anymore and will only eat crap cereal for breakfast. My diet is a hundred times worse than my kids. I'll make something healthy for them, then sneak off and eat junk food for me. I know I'm getting too old for a teenager diet....

By the way, OhE, sorry if my questions seem very repetitive...I am just not getting it!! I read all this wisdom on here but then when I try to implement I must be missing something fundamental.

Thanks so much. The problem I am having with structure is that he does not transition well and he does not like to do activities that he is not in the mood for at that moment. So I don't really understand how I can initiate and say "it's art time". Whenever I force him to do art, here just scribbles something and moves on. But when he is in the mood to do art, he will do it for hours.

It seems the root of my son's behavior issues is boredom. He seems to get more and more hyperactive and annoying people when he is bored. Yesterday we spent in an empty home and he was just being extremely wild and totally unresponsive to going back and forth to time out, and then suddenly outside he found some sewer thing with slugs on it and instantly settled down and calmly observed it for quite some time. I even remember when he was a baby he just got so bored so quickly. I came into this motherhood with ideas like "boredom is so good for kids" and "I will be a minimalist with toys" but I ended up having tons of toys and using an elaborate rotation system just to try to keep him engaged. How can I stay on top off this boredom thing? I run out of ideas on a regular basis. I waste money on a regular basis getting new stuff for him (because new stuff always settles him down as it is interesting! So it has become an addiction for me and we now have a clutter problem), but I am on a super strict budget now. Pushing the responsibility onto him doesn't work. TV helps some but is limited in how much I can use it on one day, and anyway only very rarely inspires him past the show to get involved in some activity. I always envisioned my kids doing chores with me but he finds them extremely burdensome (that is, after there initial interesting trial). I guess if I sat and did science experiments with him all day it would solve it, but I need a more hands off approach. Yet he is not independent because he cannot read and cannot be trusted with a lot of things due to too much curiosity and impulsivity.

I see what you mean-- that he would be resistant if it is something he cannot do. But I cannot break it down any more. I mean I have already backed up so much to the level that everyone says is the starting point for remediation for kids wiht weaknesses in XYZ. We are doing LiPS for instance, the very basic first step of dyslexia remediation, and I'm not even pushing his edge (well, sometimes i do, but i back off quickly). He can definitely do this work, but he does find it utterly exhausting. He shouldn't need anything MORE FUNDAMENTAL than this work, because after all, he can read at a first grade level (after ***intense*** work together since last spring) (now i am backing up to this because i realize that it should not take so much work for the progress we made-- so i want to strengthen his more core skills). I'm also having him do some handwriting where he just makes regular smooth shapes on a paper to a metronome. He can do this but it does take a lot of his mental effort to form the letters decently (and by decent i mean the very bottom of the legibility curve). We do some spelling play on a whiteboard where he basically writes different words I give him for a single vowel pattern (such as-- I show him "ow" then dictate words "how" "down" "ouch") which he does extremely well with and only occasionally has a struggle that i guide him on (for example, in the previous example, he might start spelling down as "da..." as he sounds it out, but i prod him to pronounce the full vowel to notice it's a slider, and remind him that every single word uses the "ow" he wrote at the top of the board). And then, I try doing basic Ronit Bird games with him-- he SEEMS to have fun while we are doing them, he SEEMS motivated to beat me, and it is all in good fun, and he actually WINS-- yet...... he never wants to play another game (and never wants to play the initial round, either), he figures he'd rather play a game where he doesn't have to think and calculate about all these number rods. We also work out of his CLE book which, yes, is a stretch for him-- and to motivate him there i switch it up by offering to write for him, or shortening his assignment, etc. We also do work from a visual processing book, which he actually finds fun and enjoys. We do basic reading practice out of a controlled reader. And that's pretty much it-- it's just terrible, we spend all our time on this boring stuff and i'm so exhausted getting him to do it that by the end i have no energy left for fun stuff that use his strengths. So is it that I am making him do stuff that is not appropriate for his abilities? Or is it that he simply does not like applying mental effort? And we will necessarily do stuff that HURTS his brain, that's the only way we can remediate. I mean he doesn't even like doing chores (except the first time, since it is still exciting for a new chore) and that is like pulling teeth trying to get him into a chore routine. Of course he isn't going to like doing his academic work too which is not only boring but requires mental effort with very little reward.

Actually, this is our Tuesday. I could not get him to do any work until yesterday :( Regardless,I see this problem all the time, with or without fatigue.

When a child cannot keep in mind a concept...for example, gets confused about whether they are doing addition or subtraction, cannot remember that the entire row is addition. Like they don't have that "switch" in their brain to get into a conceptual mode. For every subject, like if they are supposed to do something simple to each word they get confused and forget and randomly do the wrong instructions. I would assume working memory, but it must be more nuanced than that because said child has a spectacular working memory for digit spans. So is this procedural memory? Or...?

But there is a version for classrooms...Can't you use the classroom version?

Hello Heather, he actually was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Not a full neuro-psych eval, though-- that has to wait until we have some income. ************* Well, I came back to this thread to report that thanks to some tough love from this thread (and thanks to grace) I went a full day today without yelling (and mostly being at ease without agitation/aggression in my voice either-- I did slip a little at bedtime when the kids were chatting for twenty minutes while they were dreadfully slowly changing into pajamas and I was staring at the clock worrying). This is HUGE! It's been my goal for awhile now and I went radical in order to achieve this, every day trying new things including wearing a ton of jewelry (as a reminder, when I see or hear the jewelery I was supposed to have centered myself and reminded myself that there is no emergency) and setting my phone to ring every five minutes (another reminder-- but these things didn't work!! :)). I also did a lot of crying instead of getting angry, which is a shift for me-- I think this is how I was finally able to get to a place today where I was not angry. I finally allowed myself to grieve the difficulty with the kids, I allowed the heartbreak to surface, instead of burying it with anger. I must admit I had to let go of most schoolwork to achieve this no-yelling today, because ds7's attention shifted to zero as we were about to start math and I have enough experience by now to know that pushing the schoolwork would only be beating a dead horse. It's funny, when I was caught up in emotion and anger and frustration, I couldn't "see" that it was fruitless to push schoolwork when he was in that state. When I looked at the situation from a place of calm, it was clear that there was no way I would be able to force the schoolwork without resorting to allowing violence into my heart (anger). So I just had him do a bunch of chores instead, which he was happy to do in exchange for getting out of schoolwork (a happy surprise-- he usually resists chores to the point where I've given up due to exhaustion). Indeed, from this place of calm I was also able to see clearly that perhaps my son really could benefit from a trial with ADHD meds, which before I was too worried about to consider seriously. I kind of want to send him to do heavy labor at a farm for a couple years instead to help him develop and mature, but that option doesn't actually exist in real life.

I am now leaning towards a med trial for my ADHD ds7. But the one thing I can't wrap my head around is-- what happens when he's a teen? I've heard that most kids go off of the meds in their teens. So I'm wondering what happens then. Presumably he still won't be able to focus on schoolwork without the help of meds. Is that when it's sink or swim time? What happens in adulthood? Do most of kids diagnosed with ADHD end up taking meds for the rest of their lives? Or do most people learn to compensate for their weaknesses, like our generation pretty much did? (Granted, I'm talking about "successful" outcomes, not the unfortunate outcomes.) I'm beginning to think that the majority of people in america are on some sort of mental health medication. So maybe I just need to accept that there is a good chance my kids will be medicated for life, and it's not a big deal (!). I've noticed that whenever I got to a dentist or anything like that, the doctor always almost ASSUMES that I must be on some kind of medication. It's like they cannot believe I'm not on anything. I suppose this could mean I just have a medicated vibe.

I've noticed some moms just like to talk in a negative way about what they are doing for their kids. Some weird kind of anti-competition. This could be part of what you are experiencing. When she says "I'm too busy to teach them" it could just be competitive talk. Where she is trying to uphold some kind of image when she talks to you. The mom has a philosophy about her kids education. What is it? There's a reason she is hesitant about these online programs and isn't pushing the academics, there's a reason she's homeschooling and not schooling. Does she want them to learn independence skills above all else? Did she push academics with her older children and saw how it backfired so wants to be hands off with the rest of the kids? Does she want to give her kids the gift of space and time instead of pushing them to grow up too soon? Does she want them to discover their interests and not have to do anything they are not drawn to? Or is she just mentally ill and unstable and really unable to see what she is doing? If you don't know any of this, don't call CPS. You need to talk to the mom. Get real with her, be confrontational, let her know you don't find it acceptable and see how she justifies it. Bring it up in front of her AND the kids and see what she says in front of them.

I forgot to mention-- he gave a hint for this puzzle. He said that in those moments, he is bored. That bugging his sister is a cure for his boredom. So I'm thinking it's an ADHD thing where his brain is so desperate for stimulation that he gets "stuck" when he finds that stimulation he was lacking. Perhaps this means I need to be pro-active to prevent his boredom by checking in with him and having him check in with *himself* to start to notice when he feels he needs more stimulation and solve it in a positive way before it gets so bad that he resorts to annoying others. It's kind of confusing, because there aren't all that many positive outlets I can think of, and there will always be plenty of boring periods of the day that we can't spice up because I need his focus.