The meds are the short acting. In and out in 4 hours and usually kick in after about 30 min. She can tell when they are working. On a good day she can get 1.5 hours of effect in before she starts losing it. She loses it more slowly, but she does eventually get out of control and then the second dose doesn't appear to kick in at all. The days where the sensory/sleep issues start off bad neither dose seems to take effect. Every med has been like this. As for me, I had mono in my 20s and never fully recovered from it. I got the flu in September and have just felt off ever since. I have quite a few symptoms of chronic fatigue and/or fibromyalgia, but they are mild. I also have severe allergies to practically everything that saps my energy at times. Seriously, if I don't get that 12 hours, I'll crash hard sometime in the afternoon or early evening. FWIW, I am also sensory and most of my issues affect my ability to get to sleep. Stefanie

The meds work, until the sensory overload kicks in. I get a good 1.5 hours on it. After that, she might as well not even be taking it. Stefanie

Honestly, what I need the most is DH to actually step in or stay out of the way. If he's going to take over and "let me rest" he actually needs to take steps to keep the kids from bothering me and not be too busy playing on his phone. I'd really like a diagnosis or something so we can get some real therapies and not this crappy patchwork. Hopefully after a couple of months OT will start helping. Stefanie

Sleep - No, DH works nights. He likes to stay up later at night, but he doesn't have problems going to sleep. I like to stay up later at night too, but that doesn't work too well for having to be up in the morning for our responsibilities. I don't make them sleep at 8, but I want them in their rooms and quiet from 8 on. Lately, If I don't get 12 hrs I'm not functioning and the screaming means I can't relax enough to get to bed on time. My biggest issue is that DH lets them scream their heads off and run recklessly through the house slamming doors even while I'm trying to wind down for sleep. Because that is what they do from about 4 pm on.....nothing but scream, bicker, fight, make messes and whine at me and generally act like tired toddlers act. Occasionally they'll go outside for more than 2 minutes, but a lot of times they just whine about my suggestions and go on screaming, bickering, fighting, and making messes. Trust me, he isn't identifying with her....he's just being lazy. He has no problem abruptly throwing her into her room and demanding she go to sleep once she starts annoying him enough....but he's perfectly fine with her staying awake all hours and pestering me. Honestly, it makes my life run more smoothly for her to sleep in until 10am, but I really need to be able to get up at 6. In order to do that she has to be quiet and leave me alone so I can actually go to bed. DH won't make them go to bed, but he also won't put his foot down to keep them quiet either. She doesn't have oral texture issues and his are easy enough to address by cooking every veggie separate from the meat. She eats just fine and always has. She's just your typical 10 year old who'd rather have cookies and candy than fruits and veggies combined with a lack of concern for obeying me. She's generally argumentative about everything, so she'll tell you she doesn't want something (anything except the junk), but if I put my foot down at meal time she doesn't have a problem actually eating it. The problem is that I flat out don't want her eating the stuff. I really don't want it in my house right now. My family has horrible allergy and GI issues (I'm starting to suffer the GI issues) so I really want/need us to start addressing diet. Stefanie

Breaks usually result in an argument and then a tantrum. Hours of it. She flat out refuses them until she gets to the point where she breaks down to tears. The more insistent I am, the more she fights. Tried the time out chair at two and three......6 hours before she'd sit the 2 minutes. Usually she'd spend 4 of those hours sassing you. When she was two you had to strap her down in the car seat and drive around for about 2 hours to get her to nap. You would think she was having a seizure by how hard she would buck against the straps. But it was the only way. She would run across the living room and throw herself head first into the couch, repeatedly, if you didn't strap her down and drive her. Even at 9 months she'd have to fight against some kind of restraint before she'd finally break down and go to sleep. Even now she won't sleep until you can some how get her to shut up and be still. She ruins activities not by her behavior per se, but because instead of waiting for instructions she's gone a head and say; tied all the strings together in a knot instead of waiting to use them for how they are supposed to and now there is no more string to use and she can't finish. Or she'll cut something wrong because she won't wait for instruction. Or she'd dumped all the sand out and mixed it all together on the table instead of waiting to fill the jar layer by layer. That kind of thing. She'll just grab and mess with things instead of following instructions. She actually handles group activities pretty well. Stefanie

Would this also be involved in MS? I have a cousin with MS. No idea where it came from. DH has two nephews on the spectrum. Stefanie

I try so hard to do all this stuff. This is the most frustrating because DH sabotages it. He doesn't see it that way, but he does. Between her fighting any of my attempts to help her regulate and his apathy I can't seem to win. Sleep - He doesn't feel she needs a bed time so he won't enforce one and if I put her in bed she's making excuses to come out of her room to stay awake for hours. I'll put her in bed at 8 and every 20 minutes there is some thing that will cause the world to end if she isn't allowed to do it until midnight. It doesn't help that the whole time he's commentating about how I'm being mean putting her to bed "too early". Food - He's already made it clear he won't "deprive" her or himself. He won't keep the junk out the house because he wants it. If I don't buy it, he'll go out and do it himself. Not only will he not agree to not give it to her, he won't even help enforce her not just grabbing it by herself. Both kids already think nothing of just raiding the panty for candy and crap without asking and no respect for meal times. I have to threaten her to get her to take her ADHD pills already (and I'm unconvinced they help). Fidgeting - she doesn't just fidget, she destroys. Not only that, fidgeting doesn't actually seem to help, it seems to make things worse and she can't tell you one thing you just read while she was fidgeting. She really does work best if she isn't allowed to fidget. It's like whatever she is doing ramps her up sensory-wise. Hopefully the OT can help us find things that don't amp her up. Stefanie

He probably does have some sort of ADHD/rigidity issues himself; his family has a tendency towards autism. He's not a narcissist, and usually we don't have this much issue. It probably doesn't help that all three of my step kids have their issues with the youngest being a narcissist/sociopath. Even when we were dealing with all that crap, it didn't feel like this. I really do think some of it for DH is recent grief that he isn't really processing. FWIW, he did come back and apologize. He understood what I was saying when he'd issued that particular punishment after giving me grief about me using it. But we still disagree on if this is a molehill or a mountain. Stefanie

Yes. I see a lot of theory of mind, social thinking, rigidity, anxiety stuff. She *can not* let go of things and she hates being told "no" or attempts to reel in the dysregulation. I personally think the destructive behavior is part exhaustion, part sensory overload, part ADHD (won't wait for help/instruction so she ruins the activity doing the wrong thing with the materials), with a little bit of revenge thrown in. What part it is depends on what time of day it is. She's usually fine in the mornings and destructive in the evenings. We've had 5 family members receiving some version of therapy over the years. Some of it was CBT, some family therapy, one was a residential locked down facility. Sorry, once you've had a kid be allowed to lie and make odd ball derogatory claims and be supported in doing so by the therapist you don't tend to want to go back. The problem with therapy is people lie. It only helps those who are actually open to changing their behavior and does nothing for those who don't see their behavior as a problem, or worse, manipulate the therapy for their own purposes. And sometimes, the therapist just makes things worse. BTDT, not interested in it again. Stefanie

No. He's made it clear he's going to double down and make this a personal vendetta. When I brought up that he's nixed me on this punishment for other things and asked him he could see why I felt a little undermined his only response was "So, you've been mad at me for the last 2 months." He's like this with other things too. We've been having a similar dynamic over one of the cats. She is known to pee on clothes left on the floor. It's like if he puts his dirty clothes in the hamper somehow the cat has won. It doesn't matter how many times I beg him to put his clothes in the hamper because I'm tired of having to spend an hour searching the house for his clothes when it comes time for laundry. He doesn't care about how it would help me, he just feels he's entitled to throw his clothes all over the house and "not have the cat pee on them." Seriously, he's been largely non-supportive, but I don't feel like he's been actively picking fights and undermining until recently. It's been less than a year since his mother died....I've been trying to have some grace and chalking some of it up to that. Stefanie

I'm saying the consequence isn't appropriate, not because it isn't instructive, but that I think 'the crime' wasn't really that bad and it's two days after the fact. She cut off a couple of locks of my grandson's hair and both of them say "he asked her too". I think it's a totally normal "sibling" occurrence for something like this to happen at least once. I'd be okay with making a bigger deal of it if it was an ongoing problem. He's been ranting and raving at her off and on about how she committed some huge crime of violation against his body and identity. We do have this issue of her lack of respect for personal boundaries, but when it's important he never wants to be bothered to actually intervene. Stefanie

I have one WISC from the ADHD person, that is now about 3 years old. According that that person the scores only indicate ADHD, can't indicate anything other than ADHD, and I guess she completely ignored the autism screening that got a check mark for 80% of the question rated at 3 - 5?!? I didn't get the results of that one other than a bar graph that boiled it down to 85% of behaviors for ADHD. According to other autism moms, her scores showed an NVLD profile. I didn't even pursue evals with the other psych because she was clear she'd already decided what hole she wanted DD fit and wasn't going to be open to anything other than that hole. Same problem as the last one. No diagnosis, no treatment. That's how it is. I'm already had to pay for ST out of pocket and now I'm doing OT, but that is mostly limited to addressing handwriting and not much else. She can only write 4 words/minute. I don't have it in the budget to pay OOP for everything. My personal shortlist: Autism, ADHD (but meds don't really touch her attention issues), CAPD, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and potentially Dyscalculia. Family therapy.....HA! Hasn't done crap for anyone in this family yet. And we've done residential placement for one kid. Even I'm not 100% on board with that one. Stefanie

I've actually tried to do two evals.....one's thing was ADHD and they basically ignored anything that couldn't be twisted to fit ADHD. The other one psych did the same thing. Her thing was brain trauma in extreme premies. Lucky us....DD was a 28 weaker.....but she also wanted to twist everything to "brain trauma" and ignore anything else.... DH hasn't ever stopped me....but he hasn't been supportive. He's made it very clear that even if I got a dx he'd consider it a kind of Munchausen by proxy; me doc shopping until I got what I wanted. I'm just really pissed off at this particular blow up from him. He's grounding her from a specific activity (it's one night a week) for 4 weeks. Which is fine...for what it's worth. The reason I'm mad is because if I tell her that she can't go to this particular activity if she can't settle down and stop being destructive/picking on us/calm down and he'll (in her hearing) liken it to cruel and unusual punishment because he doesn't think it's appropriate to not let her go to her "primary socialization activity". I think autism. She's got the genetic background for it. Stefanie

So, DD10 "cut" GS's hair. DH is flipping out over it. It'll be easily fixed with a few quick snips and GS is still young enough that he isn't particularly aware of it. I personally think Dh is making a mountain out of a molehill of this one issue...but whatever. Although he's finally pissed off enough at her behavior to see the lack of social thinking behind it. Yay?! For at least two YEARS I've been telling him something is off and I suspect autism and he's blown me off. He isn't interested in helping me discipline, bedtimes, routine etc. because he doesn't want to have them affect him or have to put out the effort to enforce it. If she isn't supervised DD is just plain destructive. If she's mad at you, she's destructive. If she's not being "entertained" she's destructive. You really have to go to a 9 and be in her face before she seems to recognize you seriously mean what you are saying.....and then she just tries to argue that "she was going to do it, you just wouldn't let finish doing what she was doing to avoid doing what you wanted"....*sigh* The man who wouldn't even let me go to the public school for LD testing is now suddenly deciding maybe we need to rethink public school. Yes, she's spoiled rotten, because half the time he is undermining my attempts at structure, routine, and discipline. That is half the problem, the other half is I think she's just plain old exhausted. She refuses to sleep. But of course, I can't send her to bed early even though she's climbing the walls because that is "cruel". Sorry, just venting. Stefanie

Please come over and tell my kitty that. I can get my boys to eat canned....but my girl; well, she's a tough nut to crack. She won't even eat tuna...... I did raw for my dog crew for a while and they did great on it, but I've gotten lazy about it and switched to kibble. Stefanie

We always do it last minute. We have to wait for the accountant to do the taxes from some inheritance entities and my aunt always stalls on those because she doesn’t want to give us the annual distribution. Stefanie

Ottakee, We are looking for a confidence builder and not much more right now. Something safe and gentle that she can canter around an arena or trail. She has processing issues that probably limit showing to local fun stuff, if even that. She has a lot of anxiety so she probably wouldn’t want to show anyway. She currently rides English but my instructor and I want to gear her more western. She has more opportunity to advance there if she chooses to than she probably would with English disciplines. ETA: I have a 19-20 y/o mare for me that is similar. She has an jumping background so I’m learning low level dressage on her. Stefanie

Yes, she’s been seen by a farrier. Her navicular is pretty bad. She has a huge hole in the bone of her right front. She could make it through training, but will still probably never be suitable for my DD. The mare is a tester and my DD is very timid. As it stands right now, the pony scares DD, even on the ground. Stefanie

No, I'm pretty sure he's already gone. The guy wasn't bluffing that he'd be at the auction today. Stefanie

Yes, it was a total bait and switch in some ways. The original contact was the finance telling a friend of a friend that it was a "financial crisis" rehoming to a local children's home and when we went and talked to them it was a "can't be bothered" rehoming. But again, the horse was obviously well trained, well muscled and appeared reasonably sound. Stefanie

An old shoulder injury that made him short on one side. Doesn't really explain why he wouldn't pass a PPE though. Stefanie

If you were willing to ship her, we might be able to work something out. We really are about 6 - 8 months away from having enough grazing though. We have to knock down mesquite, burn, till and re-seed. Stefanie

No. They had already dumped him off sort of as a donation to the local uni's horse program. Since the person using him failed out, they were told to come get him. Instead of taking him home and finding a home they were taking him to the auction. They were very frank about not being interested in anything that meant dealing with him past today. That is what is messing with me the most I think. Stefanie

So, my DD's pony was diagnosed with navicular. The vet and her trainer don't think she'll stay sound enough through the training to get her suitable for DD to ride, or anyone to ride. We are all okay to give her the opportunity to try though. In the mean time, we are keeping our eyes open on for a replacement pony for DD. So the trainer heard of a cheap, very well trained western pony. My riding instructor, my daughter and I went and tried him, liked him, and were going to move towards trying to get a pre-purchase set up.....until the seller that he was a late geld and he had never been turned out with mares. So, we passed on him. I currently can't manage to maintain a mare and gelding paddock. It may have been he wouldn't pass the PPE. The guy was really trying to get me to forgo one and said several times he wouldn't pass one. I'm not sure how he could be convinced that what appeared to be a reasonably sound 18 y/o horse couldn't pass a PPE for a kid that only wanted to do some weekly lessons and trail ride around in a pasture unless he knew something he wasn't advertising. I'm having such a hard time with it because the guy said if he didn't find a home; today he would going to the auction. They only gave him a week. Stefanie Update: Just heard through my contact that he was bought by a local riding academy.