Science experiements and hippie rants

I know what you're thinking.  WTH is that?  I was at work a few Sunday's ago and Brian sends me this picture in a text message and tells me he found it in Brady's room.  I was so disgusted by this picture that I gagged several times and then was unable to eat lunch or really anything for the rest of the day.  I'm having a hard time now just typing this post without gagging because the picture is currently above this type.  Maybe I should have uploaded the picture after I typed everything up....So back to the big question you've been asking--WTH is that?  Well that my friends is what Brady calls an "experiment."  It's cereal and water.  He said he was trying to extract the iron from the cereal.  Then he was going to sell the iron on ebay.  *insert eye roll here*  I have no clue what the strawberry candy wrapper is for.  Speaking of the strawberry candy wrapper, those were my candies that I had hidden away in the back of the cabinet where the plates are.  He found them....and then proceeded to eat them all.

This past weekend we found an empty honey bear in Brady's room.  Knowing that there had been 2 honey bears in the pantry (one full and one half full), we made Brady tell us where the second honey bear was.  He finally fessed up that he had hidden it in the linen closet.

This morning we go downstairs to an empty container of little meringue cookies....so we watched the video footage from during the night.  Apparently the kid was up from about midnight until around 4 am....

(the above was written about 2 weeks ago or so.  Everything from here on out was written 3/31)

So this brings me to a picture I saw on Facebook today that a friend of mine "liked."  (nothing against my friend.  I love this person dearly)  This picture really peeved me off and I feel the need to rant about it. 

So I was reading the comments that went along with this picture and just really wanted to give the hippy naturalist people a piece of my mind.  Now don't get me wrong.  I'm all for being healthy and organic, etc.   However, maybe it's because I'm a nurse so my job is giving people medications that help whatever problem they have that ails them.  If you have diabetes, you take a medication for it.  High blood pressure--you take a medication.  I feel that it is the same way with children with ADHD.  They need a medication.  Trust me, I have tried everything in order to help with this kids attention and hyperactivity.  Diet modifications, schedules, militant structure.  Nothing works.  I had a kid that was FAILING the first grade.  All because he could not focus on his work.  His teacher couldn't sit beside him all day and re-focus him.  I couldn't go to school with him and sit there all day and re-focus him to get his work done.  You would think that it would be pretty hard to be failing first grade.  It's actually not.  :)  So after lots and lots of discussions with therapists and peds, we started a medication.  Within a week the kid was bringing home A's on his school work.  He ended the school year being on the A/B honor roll. 

We haven't really adjusted his medication dosage since he was in first grade either and he's now in the 4th grade.  However, this past Monday we went to a follow up appointment with his developmental pediatrician at the local children's hospital here in KC.  After an hour and a half of discussing all of the issues I post about on here and then tons more, they decided to increase his ADD medication on a trial.  We were on the verge of sending this kid to concentration camp or something because we were at the point we could no longer deal with him.  He was such an overwhelming force in our house that was making our house a miserable place to be.  The FIRST day we noticed a dramatic improvement.  He was almost like a normal kid.  We have only had ONE incidence of food sneaking in the past week.  He has been able to focus and has not been chewing on everything he can get his mouth on.  He hasn't been hyper.  He has been respectful.  He hasn't been eating us out of house and home.  He is like a totally different kid. 

So back to the hippie naturalists that think I'm an evil, lazy, uninvolved parent because I give my kid ADHD medication.  I will gladly send them my unmedicated kid for a month and see if they can "fix" him naturally.  If so, I will totally eat my words and bow down to their graces and kiss their hippie, sandal covered feet. 



Oh--here is what Brian does at the end of the day to relieve some stress:

"You ARE the weakest link! Goodbye!"

Remember that game show?  For some reason I believe that the contestant fell through a hole in the floor once they were deemed to be the weakest link.  Brian Romick tells me it did not happen that way, that they just walked off stage left or something.  I like my version better.  This totally describes how this week and basically my entire parenting life has felt to me.  I feel like I am the weakest link of parenting.   I have never really felt like a great parent. I guess I feel that as long as I feed them, clothe them, keep them fed, give them shelter and do not abuse them that I do at least have a leg up above some people. 

So as you all know, Lily is our resident hisser, growler, and just plain don't want to do what the teacher says to do, child.  She has been to the behavioral therapist a few times and Monday, Brian and I started what I like to call "Parent Training Classes."  So it's Brian, Lily and myself in a room with her therapist.  Future sessions down the road, the therapist will be on the other side of a window thing listening to us and will have bugs in our ear telling us what we should say instead of what we are saying.  This is a very hard task for me to grasp hold of.  My brain keeps telling me it's a bunch of hippie BS.  However, I guess that since I apparently suck as a parent, I will follow the hippie BS.  So we took 5 minute turns in our "play interaction" time with Lily and the therapist kept a score of how many times we gave Lily a labeled (specific) praise, neutral comments, unlabeled praise, imitation of her actions, reflections back to her, commands and questions.  Commands and questions are a no-no.  We are not to do those.  So when Lily wants to start mixing colors of Play-Doh together, how am I supposed to tell her that we cannot do that without giving her a command?  This was my moment of panic.  The therapist is watching me....grading me....making little check marks on her paper!  The timer is ticking down.....how the heck am I going to handle this?  I start sweating....Lily is reaching for the 2nd color of Play-Doh....I'm telling myself, "You can do this!  Think!" It boiled down to me failing that task. I straight up just said, "You can not mix the two colors of Play-Doh together.  They do not belong to us."  I gave a command.  FAIL!  You never really realize how hard it is to give labeled praises such as, "I love how well you made that horse out of Play-Doh." until you have someone watching you do it.  The therapist takes a turn to show me and Brian how it's done (she totally showed us up).  She was all, "Lily, I love how you're sitting nicely in your chair.  Lily, I love how you're using your indoor voice.  Lily, I love how you put those two puzzle pieces together.  Etc....etc...etc."  The whole time I'm sitting there going, "Why couldn't I think of those when it was my turn?"  Needless to say, we have lots more parent training ahead of us.....

This brings us to the male child.  Brady mentioned to his therapist that he wanted to start taking his showers in the morning before school instead of at night before bed.  I'm all fine and cool with that....until he wakes me up at 3:30 am (this morning) going, "Can I take my shower now?"  Parenting training goes out the window at 3:30 am.  There was no, "Brady, I love how you're using your nighttime voice.  Brady, I love how you're taking the initiative to take a shower. Etc."  None of that.  It was more like "Get your butt back to bed." He comes back in at 4 am "can I get in the shower now?"  Heck no kid!  Get in the bed!! He comes back in at 4:30 am.  Third time was a true parenting failure moment....no nice words were said.....needless to say the kid did not come back in our room again asking if he could get in the shower. 

Lots and lots of parenting training ahead for us.....I kinda don't know that you can teach an old dog new tricks though.