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Parenting special kids


Ansamcw

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Luckiest,

I'm so glad to hear that your son is doing well and 3 inches is great!!! He must be so excited.

You're a good mother to hang in there and see that your son gets the treatment he needs.

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Thanks, everyone. It's a weight off my mind. I really like this new doctor. He took the time to talk to us about the future, and to explain about transitioning from a child taking the medication, to an adult. It helps with so many other things too, like muscle mass, percentage of fat in the body, cholesterol, and depression, just to name a few. Some adults continue to be treated, as HGH is necessary to the body, even after physical growth stops. Ds seemed quite receptive, which surprised me. Maybe now I can relax! :lilredani:

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Thanks, everyone. It's a weight off my mind. I really like this new doctor. He took the time to talk to us about the future, and to explain about transitioning from a child taking the medication, to an adult. It helps with so many other things too, like muscle mass, percentage of fat in the body, cholesterol, and depression, just to name a few. Some adults continue to be treated, as HGH is necessary to the body, even after physical growth stops. Ds seemed quite receptive, which surprised me. Maybe now I can relax! :lilredani:

Great news, both that your son is doing so well and that you're pleased with this doctor. That unfortunately seems to be such an elusive finding today.

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Isn't that the truth. We still don't have a family doctor, we just use the walk in clinics. But it was luck of the draw with this endocrinologist.......the one we originally saw took a job at Sick Kid's Hospital in Toronto. Can't blame him, I'm sure they paid better!

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Well, when my Mom died, the company I worked for was going to crap and laying off people and ust piling their work on the remaining employes (I had the staffs of 6 people who left to manage in additions to my own staff (100+) people, no raise though) while I was still expected to do analysis and other techincal work and track 10 large projects changing assignments as needed and while learning several new pieces of software, and was very upset about the political atmosphere (and so many of the things I worried about have come to pass), I was put on anti anxiety medication to calm my racing heart and atmospheric blood pressure (270/180) as well as lowering blood pressure medication. I was also put on disablilty for 2 months and mostly slept. That was in 2003, when I got into the Clay crowd and that helped a lot. I am off the medication except on bad days when I have a lot to do. I take one dose of Clay aday though. It soothes me. Sounds like a bad commercial , doesn't it? I guess I am saying with the medications, make sure he does something he enjoys. Still have some tough times when I am in unruly crowds (Spamalot) and when the political depression sets in and I take a pill. So what do you want to know?

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Some way to help him manage it without having to put him back on the meds, I guess. He is still on Concerta (time release Ritalin) because of hyperactivity and inability to focus on tasks. He can't survive in a classroom without it. I am wondering if the heightened anger/frustration is due to him only being on the Concerta, and not the Sertraline. The combination seemed to be what worked for him. Maybe it's all or nothing.

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Some way to help him manage it without having to put him back on the meds, I guess. He is still on Concerta (time release Ritalin) because of hyperactivity and inability to focus on tasks. He can't survive in a classroom without it. I am wondering if the heightened anger/frustration is due to him only being on the Concerta, and not the Sertraline. The combination seemed to be what worked for him. Maybe it's all or nothing.

My mom has anxiety and takes Sertraline, but her situation is complicated by so many other things. She doesn't have a lot of outbursts like she used to when younger, but is still grumpy and depressed all the time. I wonder if, now that he's older and more mature, he would benefit from some kind of training in a mental discipline (meditation, martial arts, anger management, something like that) if he wants to stay off the meds.

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How does one find anger management training classes for teenagers? His psychiatrist isn't very helpful past prescribing the meds. In fact, at our last session, he suggested that we would only need one final session just to verify that he could stay off the meds, and then he would terminate them. He wants Stuart to go back to seeing a regular family doctor to get his Ritalin.

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Different drugs affect each of us different ways and combinations are the worst!

I had to do a lot of experimenting to get where I am and I am still having intestinal problems probably caused by the lethargy the other drugs cause without taking antidepressents. Excercise is my answer to that, I am trying to increase my activity and that does seem to help my insides. Losing weight would be good as well, but I seem to not be able to do that right now. Need a job. I will try for a new job in October just to get going in the morning.

I think activity helps reduce the needs for some types of medication, especially ones that release sertonin. But I am not a medical person, I am just a layman feeling my own way, looking for the signs of my own body.

I was diagnosed as severlly ADHD after my career started its downturn. They put me on all kinds of things like Ritlan and other drugs, but none of them helped me, until they came up with the antianxiety medication, that calmed me down so I could do one task at a time instead of having my mind jump back and forth like a crazy person. How did I have a successful career? It seems I hm a "hyperconcentrator" and if allowed to do one task at a time, i can do it better than anyone else, but when multi tasking, I fall apart, and when multitasking to the extreme (likethe end of my last job, I collapse into blubbering jelly. I looked at all I had to do and did nothing, take the antianxiety and i could prioritize and do one thing at a time until it was all done. I still had problems with my boss bursting in and saying this is more important do this now! I stopped all the ADHD medication, just took the antianxiety, now that I am not working, I only take the antianxiety when I have a rough day. I did have onstant problems such as falling asleep in meetings. just could not stay awake during sing song presentations. The answer is to sit far away from the presentor, maybe no one notices. get a copy of someone else's notes. Daydreaming in school was always a problem, but if you get good enough grades the teachers let it slide back then.

All people are different, but it would be good if people could give you non-medication solutions to some problems, like organization excercises or just excecise to remove some excess energy or what ever he needs. Fear's son went to organization tutoring rather than take medication and it helped a lot. Again - this is a disclaimer, just my personal experience and I had survived a life time of not being diagnosed with anything until it was too late. It would have been nice to receive help earlier.

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Combinations may be bad for some people but they are indicated for children with pervasive development disorders, in certain cases. That is not Stuart's official diagnosis but he exhibits very similar symptoms. I agree, every situation is unique and potentially complicated. Stuart comes by his anxiety disorder and ADHD genetically, but then of course we have to throw the growth hormone deficiency and subsequent treatment into the mix! LOL

I am hoping his dad will step up to the plate and help us with this. He suffers from anxiety/ADHD as well, and uses various self-help tapes and techniques to deal with it, as opposed to medication. The problem is that Stuart is just not that self-disciplined. Hopefully that will come with more maturity. As it is, I get the calls that usually start out "Mom, I have a big problem" 2 or 3 times a day. Generally, the "big problem" turns out to be something quite small that he has blown all out of proportion. I just try to keep a calm demeanor and talk him down. It's not as though these feelings are new, he has always had them, but I think he feels that they are intensifying since he stopped taking the Sertraline.

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You do need professional help for this for sure. Right now, I am taking 6 different drugs, so that is why I wanted to cut out the others, I don't find the pharmacy good at looking at drug interactions, althought they are supposed to do that so the less I can get away with the better I feel. I even stopped taking calcium for now because it is one more drug.

I hve to get Fear here. She did get that tutor for her son, just to help him organize and it made a big difference. It might help your son, if insurance will pay for it.

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Oh boy--my mom was calling me 2 or 3 times a day in a panic over nothing for awhile. Not fun trying to calm her down and solve her problem. I sympathize.

Anger management--usually those classes are for people who have acted out in some way already, so I'm not sure that would be best for Stuart. Here's an anger management centre, but I don't know if there's a branch close to you: http://www.angermanagementcentre.ca/services.html. You can find others by googling your location + anger management. It appears that there are numerous places that fulfill court mandated requirements but maybe one of them might be helpful beyond this.

Tibetan meditation seems to appeal to young people--could be a possibility. Or maybe something like Akido or Judo? These are not aggressive martial arts, and are based on learning to yield rather than attack. I think that martial arts classes are good for helping kids to learn discipline and self-control. Also, a sense of accomplishment is very helpful with self-confidence, and that can come pretty quickly with martial arts. If you do this, make sure you check out the teacher (just get a sense of whether you feel good about him or her) and get some recommendations if possible. Taiji (t'ai chi) might be good, but usually is too intense for kids. Here's a taiji site with a list of all the schools and some information about each one--http://www.canadiantaijiquanfederation.ca/. I couldn't find a comprehensive list for the other disciplines.

I found this by googling: http://www.artofliving.ca/media_articles/YES%20Article.pdf, which was linked to this organization: http://www.artofliving.ca/index.aspx. I'm always a little leery of gurus but they aren't all bad. Don't know about this one.

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Thanks, I will check those links out. Thankfully, we have managed over the years to get him in the habit of walking away from a situation when he gets angry, anxious or frustrated, rather than to act out agressively. Sometimes people misunderstand when he does this, but it is the "fight or flight" repsonse, and 99% of the time he flees. Happened recently on a hospital visit, when he had a session with a dietician. She made some reference to a high incidence of diabetes in kids with GHD and he somehow misunderstood it as he had diabetes. He was gone so fast it made her head spin. Hee, took me a while to calm her down, but I realized immediately what had happened. He came back after she left.

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Thanks. He's a good kid, just has a lot of issues and is misunderstood by many. The only time he acts out is when he is angry with himself. He used to bang his head into the wall before the meds. Now he will sometimes take it out on inanimate objects but he is rarely aggressive to people (ok, well maybe his brother once in a while, but that's typical LOL).

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I hope you're able to find something that works. A couple years ago I was going through some major stress with work and ended up taking Sertraline for a while to help ease the anxiety. I ended up terribly frustrated with our insurance because they seem to support long term, even permanent, use of medications for depression, anxiety, etc., but coverage for therapy absolutely stinks. I would hope it's better for minors.

Good luck to you & Stuart. :friends:

ETA: Clarification on my rant about meds/therapy above - I totally understand the importance of meds when it comes to these situations. I'm not against long term or perm use if that's what turns out to help someone. I just hate the attitude I've experienced (and have seen others) with insurance not fully supporting finding alternate ways to learn to deal with these issues.

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My 36 YO son has almost crippling anxiety issues, and would literally live in his roon if he didn't have Clonopin. Zoloft added to the clonopin works best for him, but since he doesn't have insurance and can't count on having the Zoloft, he prefers not taking it at all, since the withdrawal is horrible. Clonopin is fairly easily and inexpensively available from overseas sources. I love the internet.

His son, my grandson, has/had a roaring case of ADHD, and goes to a charter school that specifically deals with that. He was on Adderall, then Adderal Rx, then Strattera, and now has had no meds for a year or so - he is 13. He seems to be doing much better, and then of course, we are used to him.

He is already 5'9" or 5'10" tall, he weighs about 190, which is worrisome, but I think his eating is anxiety-related (his mother still has very little to do with him), and he does not get enough exercise.

Good luck to everyone. Sometimes it seems to me that as far as my own little family is concerned, we have spent more time and energy and money working at being able to live a normal life - instead of just living!

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