Met with the Pediatrician

Daddio and I had a long meeting with the pediatrician this morning.  We brought Little Man under the instruction of an administrator in the office, but turns out Dr. didn't need to see him so he hung out with a nurse and ate his lunch the whole time.

Dr. said that after reviewing all the materials we sent her, including the report from the psychologist in Roanoke, she would not medicate him at this time.  She said that ADHD is not our biggest problem.  It may wind up being a factor for him as he gets older, but the outbursts that he has aren't typical of a child with ADHD.  It's a separate problem.

She also figuratively patted us on the back a few times saying she feels that discipline isn't the problem in this case.

She said that after reading the documentation we sent, she is leaning towards 2 things.  One is Oppositional Defiant Disorder.  I said, "I've heard of that, but I understood that it's usually present with another thing like ADHD or an Autism Spectrum Disorder.  She said, "Well, not necessarily, but you've hit on the second thing I was thinking, which is Autism Spectrum Disorder."  We're a bit skeptical of that one, but she was saying how a high functioning individual on the Spectrum may be social and enjoy people and not have the typical autism stim, etc.  He may just be socially awkward, getting people's attention in inappropriate ways.

The long and the short of it is that we left the pediatrician's office with a referral to a speech therapist re. the Nonverbal Learning Disorder that was previously diagnosed.  Dr. is also going to have her front desk work on getting us in to a pediatric psychiatrist; they're going to try someone local and someone in Roanoke.  She warned us, however, that the average wait in this area is 6 months.  And even then, the required first step is to meet with their psychOLOGIST before they'll make a referral to the psychIATRIST.  And we'll get a referral to a counselor for the behavioral therapy part of the equation.

New Policy

I'm going to start documenting our adventures raising Little Man, our fun, intense, challenging, smart, impulsive boy.  I'll get you caught up eventually, but for now I'm just going to start with today.

On Friday we got a call from the daycare that going forward, if he hurts someone, we will get a call and he will need to be picked up immediately.  I knew we wouldn't get far into this week.  Day 1 of the new policy he made it until 3:30.  He punched a friend in the face after a skirmish over a book.

He was still a bit aggravated when I got there and gave me attitude because he'd been warned on Friday that he was going to have to work for me if he was sent home early.  The policy is that he has to work until Daddio and Sprout get home from school.  By the time we got home he'd decided upon a healthy snack (string cheese and whole grain toast).  He's currently scrubbing the kitchen table and chairs.  I'm not sure what I'm going to have him scrub after that - he's going a little faster than I would like but the attention to detail of a 4-year-old is not the best.  So basically it's a full-time job for me to think of jobs for him to do and manage him.

I might need to get a small vacuum cleaner.