Johnathan's psych visit today

Well, I took in his DIBELs testing, showing his weak areas. I also took in examples of his handwriting and coloring to show his apparent fine motor delays. We talked about his problem areas, his apparent tantrums and overreactions, as well as his empathy and the good stuff too. We talked about his early childhood-infancy and toddlerhood and how he's always been so intense. She used a phrase I use all the time..."so he goes 0 to 60 really fast?" Uh yep-I've said that many times! We went through some checklists. She is not overly concerned about the fits because he calms fairly quickly. She believed that he was within the range of normal, or only slightly above it, even though he's older. She didn't feel like this was a HUGE red light or anything and feels that given the appropriate behavioral plan (and she liked the plan his teacher and I came up with), that she felt this may be something he can overcome and we should work with that like we are. She said in terms of activities, a general guideline is if a child can sit and do an activity for 5 minutes per year of life...so she asked if he could sit and do something for 25 minutes--HA!! I laughed. Yeah RIGHT! Anyway, onto the checklists we went.

There are 9 markers for ADHD that she uses-if a child hits 6 of them, she starts leaning toward that. Johnathan hit ALL NINE. I did not know what the markers were. She asked me questions that were NOT part of ADHD as well as the ones that were, so that I couldn't try to "manipulate" a diagnosis or anything. So I'm glad about that. She also did some one-on-one things with Johnathan. He was incredibly good while we were there. I explained that he usually is-as long as he can kind of do what he wants, when he wants-it's the structured "It's time to do this now" stuff that he freaks out over. She did some fine motor stuff with him, and agreed that he has some delays there. She was surprised the school would not do OT as a stand-alone therapy. She suggested I try to argue ADHD as an OHI (Other Health Impairment) as technically, it is, and we could try to get an IEP/504 based on that (we talked about Christopher and his fine motor delays as well). So, I'll look into that more.

Now, for Johnathan, she was not yet ready to actually give him a diagnosis. The biggest reason was family history. She was very concerned about my bipolar, and how Johnathan kind of goes up and down, but she didn't feel like that's what it was, she just wanted to be very cognizant of its existence-there's also a good bit of other mental health type issues in my family. Also, Rich's behaviors, too, and oddly enough, when I described Rich and how he was, she said, "Does he write very poorly?" I was like YES! His writing looks like a 3rd grader's. She said that was something she really wanted to work with-and that we need to jump on Christopher's and Johnathan's fine motor right now as writing is going to be getting more and more important and ds1 especially would start getting more and more frustrated.

So, ultimately, she said she's leaning toward a classic Combination ADHD situation here, with a few behaviors that may or may not be related to that-the frustration, the tantrumming, these are not things that are really off the wall for ADHD kids depending on their severity. I told her I was just worried because Christopher who has ADHD and has responded very well to treatment didn't exhibit those kinds of behaviors. She said that not all kids do, but it's not outside the range of normal for a child with ADHD to show these behaviors.

She gave me checklists/surveys for both me and his teacher to fill out and we will go back on the 15th to discuss those and look more into a "diagnosis" and treatment plan from there. I was actually very happy though because she reinforced that I'm doing things right with him. She asked how I deal with the tantrums, and I told her I put him in his room and let him cry/scream for a bit and then will go try to talk him down if he seems not to be getting over it. She asked how I deal with his eating and I told her he eats what is made for dinner and if he doesn't eat, he keeps the plate and must eat that before he gets anything else. She said she really likes that approach, and feels that catering too much often ends up with a child with a very restricted diet and nutritional concerns. So, I felt validated in a lot of what I do-there were other things we talked about how I handle, too, but this is getting long, so I won't go into those.

So, that's the initial evaluation by a child psychologist.