Oh and I also don't make friends easily, mainly because I expect friendship to be an equal exchange and most of the "friendships" I've experienced in my life to date have been very one sided, mostly with the heavy lifting residing on my shoulders.
Don't mistake me either, I don't say all these things then turn around and expect others to behave the same, or even differently. I realise life isn't black and white, it's many shades of grey, but in saying that I won't let myself be used, put down or disrespected. I will cut ties completely with someone who treats me that way, without a backward glance no matter how invested I once thought I was. I feel that this attitude is the only way for me to tackle my life, it makes my life simpler for me and that's all I ask for, simplicity. Especially seeing as my life as a mother is less than simple.
My son, Kaleb, was born to myself and my, now ex, partner Shannon on a lovely Autumn morning in late April of 2001. He was 11 days overdue, weighing in at 9lb 1oz (4.1kg) and 55cm long. From the get go he was a fuss free baby. He slept A LOT! He pretty much slept his way through the first 2 months of his life, causing us to have to wake him to feed him or do anything with him. As soon as he was settled again he'd be right back off to sleep again. Every parent's dream right?
Kaleb, 1 month old.
By 3.5months of age he was army crawling everywhere, I mean if I left him for 2 mins on a baby blanket on the floor, he'd be half way to the front door by the time I got back. Leaving him 4 mins and he'd be at the door, bashing on it as if he wanted out! He also started solids by 3.5 months, having doubled his birth weight in that time to weigh a massive 8.2kg.
Kaleb, 4 months old
When we got to the 8 month mark he was almost 12kg and up walking around furniture at his leisure, not to mention his napping had decreased to once daily, usually in the morning. He's always slept well at night, never had more than a few nights with him waking and crying, even now.
Kaleb, 9 months old
When his first birthday came around he was up and walking, even running, weighed 15kg and thriving from what the health professionals told me.
Family Photo, Kaleb 1 year old
At the age of 2 I started trying to toilet train him, but no matter how hard we tried, no matter what strategies we implemented he just didn't seem to get the hang of it, so after a solid 7 months of trying I gave up and decided he would let me know when he was ready and I wouldn't push him any longer. This was also around the time that I became really concerned with his speech. By 2.5yrs you should reasonably expect to get a sentence or two out of your child but Kaleb barely strung 2 or 3 words together. He usually indicated what he wanted by pointing and grunting. I would tell him the word and try to get him to parrot it back to me, 80% of the time that worked, but he still wouldn't come up to me and use the words again. At the age of 3 he had a vocabulary of maybe 20 words and was still only putting two or three together at a time. For eg Happy Birthday Nanny would come out as 'Happy Nanny'. 'Nappy's wet' was popular as was 'hungy-mum, food'. He also couldn't carry out simple instructions. Well he could if it was only a one part instruction such as 'pass Mummy the remote'. But if I said 'Kaleb, go to your room and bring me your bag for daycare so I can pack it' he'd get to his room and come wandering back out 15 minutes later empty handed, having completely forgotten what I asked or been side tracked by playing with toys.He'd also stopped having naps during the day so from 6am when he woke up until 7 pm when he went to bed it was go-go-go. He also didn't like to look you in the eye. He'd always look away after a few seconds.
I still didn't know what was wrong, not having any other children I had no point of reference as to what he should or should not be doing. I was concerned that he seemed behind other children of the same age, and I was constantly called by his day-care provider's telling me to come get him or asking me to come and calm him down because they didn't know how to handle him.
By the time he was 4 he was full on. He'd managed to toilet train himself by that stage, but only a month or so before his 4th birthday. It was also around this time that we started having trouble getting him to sleep. Once he was asleep though I'd rarely see him again until morning, it was just the getting him to settle down long enough to actually drift off that was the problem. It would take anywhere from 30 mins to 4 hours to get him to sleep, some nights he didn't get to sleep until well after 11pm. I really think I went a little crazy during those years. I remember sitting on the floor, my head in my hand, crying. I cried a lot during those years of trying to get him down.
Kaleb, showing how old he is on his fingers - 4yrs
I avoided going anywhere that required me to take him with me. It was a nightmare, he'd run off on me constantly or I'd have to strap him into a trolly and deal with him screaming at the top of his lungs to get out!
It also didn't help that I didn't have a car, so anywhere we needed to go involved a bus ride and Kaleb on a bus was torture. He could never sit down for long, always had to be up and running, fidgeting and playing some made up game to entertain himself. I can't even count the number of times I was told by bus drivers to 'control that kid or you'll have to get off'. Controlling a child that can't control himself, piece of cake right? NOT.
We soldiered on, finding somewhat of a routine. He went to day-care 3 days a week until he started pre-school where he'd go to pre-school 5 days a fortnight and day care the other 5.
It wasn't until midway through his first year at school that the possibility of something being 'wrong' was brought to my attention. They had an Occupational Therapist come to the school and do free assessments on the children. The OT picked up that Kaleb had fine and gross motor skill issues and especially a severe lack of concentration and focus. I already knew all this, but I didn't know it was a problem. I spoke to my GP and she referred me to a Paediatrician. We had to wait 3 months for an appointment so Kaleb wasn't seen until 2 weeks before the end of the school year.
Year 1 school photo, 6 years old.
I went home feeling let down. All I'd gotten from Dr Cherry was a diagnosis. No help, no advice and no hope. He didn't say 'Sure, your son has ADHD but he can still be a completely normal, functioning member of society so don't worry'. I felt relieved that we finally had a name to give all my concerns , or rather a label, but I didn't know what to expect. I wasn't given any ideas on how to deal with him, not strategies on coping, nothing. I cried myself to sleep that night, not knowing what I could expect from the future or how Kaleb would turn out.
I read through the leaflets he had given me, even the one about ADHD in adults and recognised that it was describing Shannon almost down to a tee. A few days later I mentioned that to him and he said 'I never denied it' and I was like 'WHAT?' never denied having ADHD? Sure, but he'd never mentioned having it either! Maybe if he had, I may have gotten Kaleb tested earlier. But at least we had our diagnosis, and some explanation as to why he has ADHD (apparently it's more often passed from father to son and only 4% of girls get it)
Shannon was still very against medication and started researching food additives and their side effects on children with ADHD. It was actually the first time I'd seen him use the computer for more than downloading movies, music and playing games lol. He was fierce though in his search , he bookmarked pages to show me, sent me links for me to read etc. I was quite shocked, happy and proud.
For 2 weeks we tried adjusting Kaleb's diet. We took notice when he had what we called an 'attack' - basically an instance of extreme hyperactive behaviour and inability to moderate or control himself - and what he'd eaten shortly before these attacks. We then waited a day or two until he was calm again and gave him the same food, to see if it indeed set off another attack. We even deliberately gave him foods with the additives that have shown to cause reactions in children with ADHD. After 2 weeks of Kaleb having no repeat reaction to certain foods Shannon conceded that we couldn't control his ADHD behaviours with diet and that we should try medication and, reluctantly, agreed to give medication a go. Dr Cherry had mentioned that going on the medication didn't have to be forever, we could try it and stop it at any time. So in the end I think that's what helped convince Shannon to give it a try.
I made another appointment with Dr Cherry and managed to see him the day before the end of the school term.. We got a prescription for Ritalin and I filled it that afternoon, starting him immediately on them.
We were to increase his dose gradually over the space of 3 weeks. He started out having 1/2 tablet 3 times per day for a week. Then it went up to 1 whole tablet in the morning then 1/2 twice a day and so on until he was on 3 whole tablets a day.
His last day of school, he was medicated for the first time and his teacher said the change in him was amazing. He sat down and focused at story time, didn't get up off his chair and walk around the room nearly as often and it wasn't as difficult to get him to do something when asked.
I also noticed a major difference in him. He was so much calmer and more attentive, the hyperactive behaviours were still there, just not as unmanageable. He also had an afternoon nap for the first time in years, I actually remember crying when that happened. Silly thing to make me cry but I remember other mothers saying they'd go insane if their child didn't have an afternoon nap. Yes, I think I was going insane!
Even Shannon had to admit that Kaleb was doing great on the medication, he has said to me since that putting him on medication was the best thing I ever did. The difference was that noticeable. He was still very behind his peers in a lot of ways, mainly academically but also emotionally. Where some parents were trusting their kids to walk along side the trolly while shopping I still had to strap him into the child seat, by this stage he'd grown taller and lost his baby fat and was actually a little on the lean side - he has his Dad's lanky body type and height as well as his metabolism, the man couldn't put on weight to save his life. Some have all the luck right?
Kaleb, year 2 school photo.
Over the years we've changed his medication a few times to find the right fit for him and ended up changing from Ritalin to Dexamphetamine. He's been on the Dexy's, as we call them, for almost 2 years now and the only change to his medication has been to decrease it a little. He was on 1 tablet at 8am, 1 at 11am and 1/2 at 3pm 7 days a week. Now he's on 1 at 8am, 1 at 11 and nothing in the afternoon, also he doesn't have any on weekend or school holidays (unless I need to take him somewhere that he needs to be focused, eg to the movies).
He still had a lot of behaviours that couldn't be explained by the ADHD and I just got on with being his Mum and helping him the best way I knew how. After 3 years of bedtime torture In did finally work out that he needed a strict bedtime routine, which included me reading to him. All I had to do was send him for a shower, turn the tv off while he was in the shower, get him dressed for bed and sit with him and read to him for half an hour to calm his brain down before bed and I'd be able to put him into his bed and not see him again until morning! That in itself was a massive break-through.
I changed his school at the beginning of year 3 as we'd moved away from his other school and there was one not a 5 minute walk away. I did the change at the beginning of the school year because I know how much he hates change. Whenever I moved something around, eg furniture, it'd take him weeks to get used to it and stop complaining for me to move it back. Even something as simple as moving the rubbish bin, I'd find he'd put it back in the old place for week after I'd move it.
I also decided that it was time for him to have a little more responsibility, so I walked him to school for the first 2 weeks then let him start walking on his own. There was only one street to cross and a crossing guard there for the children so I felt I could trust him. I still wouldn't trust him to cross a main road, even at the lights though.
I've intuitively known since he was a baby that he needs to be pushed ahead with life lessons etc earlier than most kids. I had him off his bottle at 14 months, dummy was gone by 2yrs and he was catching the school bus (with me taking him to the bus and meeting him in the afternoon) at the end of 2nd grade. He needs to learn these life lessons early on so they can take root in his brain and become everyday occurrence. He has a hard enough time remembering things as it is, so the more things I make 'normal routine' the better he can adapt to them.
At his new school there was talk of him having Asperger Syndrome, his teachers knew he had ADHD but said that didn't explain all his odd behaviours and suggested we do an ASD (Autism Spectrim Disorder) check-list on him. Basically it was a list of traits that are generally exhibited by children with ASD. I did one and so did his teacher. She ticked every box except 4, I ticked every box except 2. That was a pretty definitive answer in my mind, that he had some form of ASD. By this time we were seeing a Psychologist through a government centre so it wasn't too difficult to access the testing needed to get a diagnosis. We'd started seeing the psychologist because I wasn't coping with him well. I needed some help or I was going to go really insane and probably surrender his care to his Dad. I got to the point where I was talking to Shannon about taking on custody of him because I just didn't know what to do anymore, nothing I tried worked and I had no help. Shannon's favourite saying is 'when he's with you, he's you're responsibility. When he's with me he's mine' so he was no help. I felt totally alone, didn't know why he was so difficult and was at a loss as to what to do to help him and myself have a more calm home life.
After doing a very long test, it took 6 hours all up, we got our diagnosis. Kaleb has ADHD and something called PDD-NOS. PDD-NOS stands for Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not otherwise specified. It falls in the Autism Spectrum Disorder category along with Autism, Asperger Syndrome, Rhett's Syndrome and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. PDD basically means that he displays many traits across all the ASD categories, but not enough of any one to place him into that category. He displays aversion to eye contact, difficulty understanding tone of voice and body language as a way of expressing sarcasm, humour, irony, etc and an inability to take another's perspective (to imagine oneself in someone else's shoes) like Autistic children but also impairment in social interaction and restricted and/or repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests and activities like Asperger kid. I remember our psychologist, Nyomi, also mentioning at girls with Rhetts syndrome like to twirl, so does Kaleb. He has little bits and pieces from all the ASD categories, which is why he was placed in the PDD-NOS category. And, as it says, he has pervasive developmental issues. He finds all aspects of learning difficult, not because he's retarded or of below average intelligence, but because he can't focus long enough to have things explained and having to learn things bores him. He's actually quite intelligent, has an excellent vocabulary for his age and does learn things well when he's motivated to. He just has problems expressing himself and his feelings, understanding how others think or feel and sometimes what they mean when they refer to emotional things or use sarcasm a lot. For eg if I say 'pull your socks up', meaning for him to do better he says 'but I'm not wearing any socks'.
Ok I think I've rambled on long enough for one blog post. It seems like I'm trying to make this into a book doesn't it lol.
I'll write more another time about how Kaleb is I'm sure. For now, here's one last photo.
On a recent holiday we took down south. Jan 2010
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