5 Year Old with Behaviorial Issues

[Shauna530]

My son was born as an emergency C-Section.  He had swallowed meconium at birth which the doctors believed was the cause of him having two massive seizures.  He was in intensive care for 2 weeks.  He was on oxygen and fenabarb to control the seizures.  He had multitudes of tests done on him as a newborn and nothing came of a result of any of them.  He was on medication for the first year of his life to control Acid Reflux and special formula to maintain his lactose issues.  
At birth, the doctors were unable to tell me what outcome of all this would have on his life.  They simple put, he could be fine, or he might have issues.  We don’t know.

Since the age of one, my son has successfully not been on any medications.  However at this time is when the behaviour issues started to come.  He repeatedly was asks to leave a multitude of dayhomes and daycare facilities for biting, hitting, not listening, and temper tantrums.  At the age of three I was able to find him a dayhome that worked with his special needs.  He also started going to a school that was designed for children with “behavioural issues” After spending 1 year at this school, he had a Teacher, Speech Pathologist, Occupational Therapist and 2 Psychologists that worked very closely with my son.  All which said....they have no diagnosis.  They don’t know what is “wrong” with him other then he has uncontrollable behaviour.    The school then found a different school that offered more attention to his type of behavioural concerns as they tended to a variety of mental health issues and the new school was strictly for behaviour.

My son is now 5.  He has been attending this new school for 5 months and he has learned some new skills to help stabilize himself when he starts getting worked up.  However, with that being said I have also consulted with a child Psychiatrist to medically assist with my sons progression.  The Psychiatrist has not been able to successfully diagnosis my son either.  The psychiatrist feels however Autisim and ADHD are not the root cause.  My son has been on Clonidine which was effective for only a short 2 months.  He then tried Addrell which made him extremely aggressive, almost psychotic like.  He has now been on Risperidone for the past 3 months and it is now starting to lose its “calming” effect on him.  He is resorting back to his old ways.  He screams beyond belief, hits, punches, says awful things and doesn’t listen to authority at all.

I am beside myself with what to do.  The doctors are unable to diagnosis him as they see a little of everything in him however not enough of anything.  If that makes any sense?    The medication doesn’t seem to have any lasting effect and school in which he attends is great, however is just simply not enough.

I am at the point where life in our household is coming to a screaming halt.  Everything is suffering because of this.  My son is unable to participate in regular activities because I don’t know how he is going to respond.  We don’t go to birthday parties, throw birthday parties, have friends over and I can’t leave him with anyone else as his behaviour scares people and their children.    Unfortunately there is not a lot of support out there for parents in this situation as we really are the exception to the “norm”.
What do I try?  What do I do?  Do I consider institutionalising my son?  (I kills me inside to even consider it.  I feel like I am giving up on him...cause really...isn’t that what it is)

Suggestions, comments or thoughts are very welcome.

[cdnskmom]

Another option might be to test him for food allergies. My 6 year old son is extremely allergic to dairy, but it manifests itself more in the brain... behaviour, anxiety and emotional reasoning and coping problems. His physical symptoms were not "classic" allergy reactions so it took us a long time to do allergy testing. We did the autism panel of tests at the Great Plains Laboratory and his dairy allergy came back almost off the chart. His behaviour changes completely if he has any dairy at all, and otherwise he is a cheerful little boy. Good luck

[specialmom]

I am very sorry for the tough time your son and you are going through.  I've always wondered myself if a traumatic birth can result in some of the things we see in our kids.  My son had a traumatic birth as well and was diagnosed at 4 with sensory integration disorder.  That diagnosis was so crucial to his success.  It pointed us in the right direction.  He turned 6 today and is doing really great.  He's in mainstream school with no IEP currently and functioning so well.  He has his moments, don't get me wrong------  but overall, we found the path for him to thrive.

I wish that same thing for all parents.  I can only imagine how upsetting it is to have so many professionals working with your son and still not have a diagnosis.  On the plus side of that, perhaps if he does have a delay, it is very mild . . .  the first time my son was evalauted by an occupational therapist for sensory, it was inconclusive.  It got more and more obvious as time went on.  His hallmark sign----- meltdowns over things that didn't make sense to us or his preschool teachers.

I'm going to ask you to try some things to see if they help.  They certainly wouldn't hurt and what do you have to lose?   They are things we do with my son that help  maintain his behavior/functioning.  We do excess amounts of physical activity.  He runs, climbs, jumps on a trampoline, rolls down things or across the room, does wheel barrow walks, carries bags of books across the room, crazy animal walks (especially crab, bear, snake, and leap frog), skipping, and swimming.  We live in winter wonderland----  so when it is cold, we move our "games" inside.  A pile of pillows from the couch plus whatever others we can find can provide lots of 'heavy work" that calms my boy.  He crawls under and through them, we hide things and he finds them, we make a sandwhich out of him with the pillows and provide gentle pressure by pressing on it.  I am a stay at home mom and only have one other child that is 15 months younger than my sensory kid----  so he just does all the same stuff his brother does-----  but we do lots of this stuff each and every day and the more of it the better.

So, I was wondering if you took a weekend and made a valient effort to do LOTS of this stuff if afterwards and for a day or two after, you'd see a calming affect.  We sure do.  If it does have an effect, then you could just change that schedule after school and make sure he has lots of that stuff in his routine. . . . I know it is not that simple.  But if it helps a little it is better than nothing.  Sensory integration disorder does not respond to medication at all-----  it is all occupational therapy and this heavy work stuff.  But my son has really responded to it.

Also, our occupational therapist (bless her) helped us with meltdowns a lot.  Have they given you and your son strategies for this?  A thermometer scale works really well, for example.

Lastly, this isn't to make you feel guilty, I promise.  But the rest of the world will judge your son even more harshly than you do.  You must stay strong and continue to be his advocate.  And as a former mental health professional, you can't instutionalize someone without a diagnosis.  Good luck to you-----  I sincerely mean that.