So my dd's blood work came back. According to the blood work, she is great in all vitamin levels. She shows allergies to dairy, eggs, and peanuts. Obviously none of these are life-threatening allergies but enough to maybe make her feel bad. The big shock was that she has quite the high range for the Epstein Barr Virus. The doctor told me that she may have had it since before we got her since I don't recall anytime in her life that she was sick for a long period of time. It's not an active virus anyway. This past school year she did have a strep throat infection that was pretty hard to treat. I'm not sure it's related. Anyone know about this?

I will find out Thursday for her full blood panel including allergy testing if she is reacting to anything. My mom guess is that she is not ADHD, but has a trauma brain. Apparently the brain people can help to figure that component out also. Since getting her off all the meds, her teacher has seen the happier/friendlier dd that I know she can be. She is definitely on the hyper end of things though. She has also had ongoing ear issues so the music sensory thing makes sense also. She is constantly asking me if she's talking too loud (usually she is).

I know she has some developmental trauma. She's a little hyper aware. We had her in a school last year where the kids were required to basically police other children and help them behave in the classroom. She came home very stressed every day because of this program. She was monitoring classmates constantly. I have a friend whose adopted child is also in the school. Same issue. I am familiar with the type of program with the music and headphones. My disabled son used it when he was little. It is the most annoying music to listen to! It made my head hurt. I will ask about it on her giant brain appointment.

This is a child who can eat gallons of mac and cheese or pasta with alfredo sauce with no gastro issues. Always has been able to. Her most favorite soup is a creamy wild rice soup heavy on the cream.

She has always seemed to do fine with dairy as long as it has been fermented or has enzymes. I’m thinking cheese, kefir, or sour cream. Straight milk has in the past given her ear infections so she stays away from that. I also knew about that tendency so I watched for it when she was younger.

I am writing down everything from the past six months. The rages, what they looked like, the inattention, the reaction to the medications, the behaviors, ---everything. I have quite the list.

We weaned her off of the SSRI gradually per the doctor's instructions. The ADHD medication is short acting so getting off of it just meant stop taking it the next morning.

It's a uniform school. She can actually get detention for it which she hates but would be someone else giving out the punishment which may help. She would kick and scream all the way to the car if we made her go in her pajamas.

2 1/2 from an orphanage in China with no training on orphan care. Probably dealing with RAD, but almost wanting something that can be medicated to stop.

I am waiting on test results from a full blood workup. The pediatrician did one and per all blood tests for kids now basically tested for high cholesterol levels, pre-diabetes, and thyroid function along with vitamin d levels. This is for a very very thin girl. Stupid. I went somewhere else who did a full panel of all of the above type tests and we'll see what the results are on Thursday. I do keep her away from a lot of sugar and make everything almost from scratch. She is not given food dyes in anything just in case she does react (I don't know since she doesn't eat them). She begs food from other kids I believe (I've seen wrappers in her lunch box) because "my mom doesn't give me fun food" - per her admission. But, everything at home is pretty controlled. So, between the blood work and the psychologist, I should have a better answer? Maybe I just needed to vent.

So, my daughter is getting evaluated Monday by a psychologist team and I just need to know what I need to bring up because there is so much. She was on medication for ADHD and prozac (to keep her from tics and a skin picking habit) but I have taken her off both because the Prozac made her rage and the ADHD medication made her aggressive and angry. She was irritating other students to the point that 2-3 times a week, someone wanted to beat her up upon which she told them to "bring it on". The school she goes to has smaller class sizes and is fairly quiet and calm. She is adopted with unknown birth parent history. She's 11 and goes to school because I had trauma from raising her to this point. Today, this was the scenario. It's a snapshot of all of her issues in one morning. This does not happen all the time, but separately, all these issues do happen regularly. Upon getting her up, I tell her again (every morning I do this) that she can't lay around in bed again and needs to get up and dressed by 7:40 am. The punishment is an extra chore that is written down on a sheet with her daily routine and what is expected from her. At 7:40, I go up and she's laying on the floor with underwear on. I get her dressed and she gets mad at me for making her get dressed. She sits down to eat breakfast. She tells me she's not hungry and don't I know that if she eats what I've given her, she won't feel well even though she eats the same thing almost every morning and has done fine with it. I have to constantly redirect her to the breakfast sitting in front of her. She has no distractions and is just looking around. After getting her to eat (I think I redirected her at least 5-6 times), she brushes her hair and is told to get her shoes on. My dh brings her to school and it is now getting a little late. She goes and sits on the from rug where the shoes are and starts looking into and cleaning out her backpack. I zip up her backpack, take it away, and redirect her. She gets angry at me. She is told to get her shoes on again. She starts playing with her stuffed animal that she has been told constantly for two years is not allowed downstairs in the morning because she is so distracted by it. DH is now getting fairly angry because it's late and she's so distracted. DH is just trying to get all of his stuff together for work and eat breakfast. Then she remembers her shoes are by the back door after being told to bring them to the front door the previous night --she forgot. DH thinks she's ignoring him (which is common) and gets even more angry. I am taking care of my disabled son. She failed to tell him that her shoes were by the back door. He yells at her. She swears at him (kid swear) and calls him a dirty name. Just fyi, we are not a swearing family--I know she picks it up at school, but we can't discipline it because she will rage which gets us close to an inpatient mental health facility. Also, disciplining her for the name she called dh will also bring chaos. She's had 8 hour rage episodes. At this point, dh is showing signs of a trauma reaction himself and I step in to try to redirect her to get her shoes on. She growls at me and then proceeds to sit on the floor refusing to do anything in a pout. I see her having a trauma reaction herself (breathing hard - angry look). I tell her that if I have to bring her to school, I will tell them to give her a detention and tell them it was her choice to refuse to go to school on time. At this point, she decides to go. As she leaves, she mentions that she's ready to blow up and hurt something. She will calm down at school because she's away from us. She already goes to after school care because I couldn't deal with her alone. I have had therapy for PTSD and trauma from raising her that was aggravated by an unknown childhood trauma. My dh is showing signs of similar PTSD and trauma since he decided to be "bad cop" and give me a break from having to deal with situations like the above. We have a disabled 20 year old so adjusting schedules to accommodate her chaos is hard. What am I looking at? I'm thinking RAD, but is this also bi-polar? I know she has ADHD, but medication also keeps her awake which makes things worse.

When we bought a trampoline, we purposely bought a smaller diameter. We limited it to two people at a time. Really, it became not as fun with more than two. It also limited kids from doing crazy flips because there just wasn’t enough room for bigger kids to do stupid things. I think it’s 8 feet wide. My neighbors have part of their yard unfinished. Their boys just dig in dirt with their toy trucks. One time, they had a whole army scene set up with tanks and foxholes. They are out there for hours just digging dirt.

I have a daughter much like that also but she’s been distractible since she was young. I had her on a stimulant medication that made her irritable, angry, and a little “mean girl” to other girls. Taking her off of it means she’s back to her motor running at high speed. I’m taking her to a psychiatrist to get the right medicine for her. There are several options and the first one you try may not work the best if you go down that road.

I saw her clipboard and hat advertising a solar panel company. Me: "I don't buy anything or sign any petitions from door to door people." Her(really chipper): I'm not selling anything! Me: I'm assuming your selling solar power panels and we choose not to go into debt to buy anything and don't have the money to pay upfront. Her: I'm not selling anything! Eventually, I kept the conversation going to just get her to admit she was selling solar panels. Apparently, me saving $100 a month on electricity to pay for the solar panels is me not actually buying anything. It's the same as if I bought an electric car and my gas savings was paying for the electric car. She kept insisting that I was not buying the solar panels while out of the other side of her mouth telling me I could get free installation for the solar panels that would cost me nothing and how the remainder of the balance (of the solar panels that would cost me nothing apparently) could be transferred to the next owners. I tried and tried to get her to tell me that I would essentially be buying solar panels. She couldn't do it. Then she told me I would be saving 21 trees every day. WHICH MAKES NO SENSE! The carbon footprint is reduced thereby making it seem like I'm planting trees every day, but I'm not saving trees already planted. What?!? Are we burning trees for fuel now?!?! This is why children must learn basic logic. This is all.

My ds was diagnosed at 13 years old. He went into therapy for depression (which turned out to be a computer addiction --he'd stay up all night) and it was suggested he get evaluated. Turns out he is considered to be on the spectrum. It also explains quite a bit. I just thought he was an introvert to the extreme. He could have gone his whole life without a diagnosis if not for the counselor.

I think they were out of their price range, but it was an accessible home, the husband was in a wheelchair, and homes for sale like ours didn’t exist. We had compassion for them but also needed to buy a new home and spend money to adapt it. We couldn’t give it away. I think with any home, people want to see how desperate you are to sell.

We had a horrible offer on our last house. They wanted a much lower price, most of our furniture, us to pay their property taxes for the next year and to pay their closing costs. We figured with all of the above, they lowballed us by $50k. We came back full price, no taxes that we didn’t owe already, no furniture except the kitchen barstools that we had no use for and did pay their closing costs. They accepted.

You can drink fish oil. In the refeigerated vitamin section of health food stores, there are some. I can’t remember the brand name, but there’s a lemon smoothie flavor that’s pretty good. Get the flavored variety.

Mine didn’t work that great. I have found that a Kefir and Kimbucha thing along with a hgh gel thing that my friends sells (mlm thing) have been working better. The way I know is that my sleep is improved with leaps,I had almost zero pms symptoms, and my crazy perimenopause short cycle was the longest it has been in a few years. I was not getting that with the bioidentical hormones.

The broadmore hotel in Colorado Springs. It’s fancy, it’s expensive, and it will ruin you for any other hotel...it was the most relaxed I’ve been in a looonnnnggg time.

I really liked Crossfit. I liked getting stronger. I liked being able to do something that showed I was progressing and mastering moves that I always called "the bane of my existence". But, after I broke my foot (unrelated to crossfit), the trainer said to give it until March because there were some moves I wasn't supposed to do and when I got back full mobility, I fell and hurt my wrist. Then two months after that, I dropped a bar on my back that left a nasty bruise but could have been way worse. I cannot compromise me being able to take care of my disabled son by an optional activity. I got tired of lifting heavy things after a lot of physical exertion and am leaving that sport to younger people or people who have consistently lifted weight for years and/ or people who have excercised at that level for years before hitting my age. I have got to have something less prone to injury. Everything exercise is prone to injury, but at least with some, if I listen to my body, I can avoid it because I'm not lifting heavy weights or doing stuff off a bar three feet over my head.

I too have a son like yours. I need community. Zumba was too much -- Bellydancing? I don't know...I'll just have to look around and see what is available. Barre classes look interesting.

I've tried zumba. I'm horrible. So.very.horrible. It makes me feel like an awkward 13 year old. 😜

I also need a community. I need to get out of my house. I stopped doing crossfit because I felt like it was too much stress on my body. They thrive on short intense workouts. I've gotten mild injuries in the past two months because I was lifting weights tired. The community they had was great and I did like that, but have been considering for months if I should leave. Then I dropped a 50+ barbell onto my back (I had just finished an intense circuit and lifting was next on the list) and got a nice bruise but it could have been a lot worse. I have to make sure I can take care of my disabled son and can't have an injury that may compromise that. My backup right now is Peloton classes online. I can do a bike ride that gets me all sweaty and burns calories but doesn't make me tired for the rest of the day.

For various personal reasons, I won't do yoga, but need a yoga like exercise. I need an exercise that helps with trauma. So, something calming and focusing on mind/body. I've thought about barre exercise, but the expense is pretty high for that. Suggestions on what I should look for?