{"id":698,"date":"2009-10-01T10:33:52","date_gmt":"2009-10-01T17:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/?p=698"},"modified":"2009-09-28T15:41:30","modified_gmt":"2009-09-28T22:41:30","slug":"struggling-in-an-upward-forward-motion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/struggling-in-an-upward-forward-motion\/","title":{"rendered":"Struggling in an Upward, Forward Motion"},"content":{"rendered":"

With all this talk of weight loss, meal planning, and food – I thought it about time for something entirely off that topic.<\/p>\n

Things have been hard recently.<\/p>\n

Things with Jeremy have been hard recently….and yet….they’ve been AMAZING.<\/p>\n

I’m seeing things this year that have me almost crying with excitement and relief.<\/p>\n

He is LOVING this new chance at this new school in this new year with new friends and new teachers. It’s been amazing. In the morning, He is so excited to go to school. In the afternoon, he comes home from school so excited by the events of the day. He has the most amazing teachers and after our first meeting with them – they had NO IDEA that Jeremy was anything other than one of the other “normal” kids. <\/p>\n

This move was a GREAT move for us. We are really seeing that now. We believed that it would be, but we are REALLY seeing that is the case now.<\/p>\n

He is still struggling with his reading and his spelling is atrocious. His organizational skills are not amazing, heck, they are almost non-exsistent BUT…..compared to last year – it is staggering how far he has come.<\/p>\n

And, there is even classwork, that the teacher is expecting the kids to have to finish at home (not enough class time given) that Jeremy is finishing within the time allotted during class.<\/p>\n

Having talked about how great this year at school is going so far is just one aspect of where we are at.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

This summer was brutal. Jeremy needed the extra chemical help over the summer more often than I would have liked. And to be honest, we “dealt” with his atrocious behavior more often than we should have because 1) We are trying to get him to be self aware to to monitor when he thinks he needs the meds and 2) the meds make him feel sick to him tummy and 3) he sleeps even worse ON the meds than he already sleeps without the meds and 4) we were trying desperately to fatten him up over the summer as (see number 2) he really doesn’t eat when on the meds during the school year.<\/p>\n

So, we “STUCK IT OUT” and really, it sucked….it was a rough, ROUGH summer.<\/p>\n

And, he didn’t gain the weight that we’d hoped for after all. Talk about a bummer all around. All that struggle and effort for NOTHING. AAAARRRRGGGHH! This is where you’d see me banging my head against the wall.<\/p>\n

We had an appt with the pediatrician on Monday afternoon and we talked about two main points of struggle. Eating and sleeping. The fact that the teachers had no clue that Jer was on meds or that he struggled with ADD is a pretty good indication that the meds that he is currently on are working really well for him. So, based on that, we are not going to mess with his meds because why mess with a working thing? <\/p>\n

We are hoping that the other areas that he’s struggling with will be helped by 1) actually getting him to eat something….lots of somethings….and 2) we’ve got a prescription for Clonidine<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It’s the Dr’s hopes (and ours too<\/em>) that after a month on this med and some pretty scheduled bedtime routines that he will fall into a regular sleep routine. Also, getting a month of sleep can’t hurt and we’re seriously hoping that it’ll really help. After discussion of his sleep behavior, it’s unlikely that he’s TRULY sleeping at nights and this would\/could account for the inability to wake up in the mornings and the brutal, BRUTAL dark circles under his eyes, and the waking to come to our bed multiple times at night, and a host of other issues all sleep related.<\/p>\n

It’s so hard to see him struggling……to see him upset at himself…….to see him recognizing that what he is doing is not appropriate and to see that he feels powerless to make appropriate changes (not true, but it’s how he feels from time to time<\/em>).<\/p>\n

“I” know he’s not powerless and “I” can see the times that he makes good choices, and we try to make a BIG deal when he does make great choices and to not FOCUS or HARP on him when he makes not so great choices, but to still let him learn from the consequences……but in his mind..<\/p>\n

……the negative outweighs the positive. And that’s so SO hard to see.<\/p>\n

But, we continue to have hope and to see the negative while holding onto the positive and believing for the best. We continue to put one foot in front of the other in an upward and forward motion knowing that we are walking this road for a reason and knowing that we are not alone and that there are BIGGER “plans for hope and a future” and that we will all come through this situation more loving, more compassionate, more understanding of others who are struggling down their own life’s paths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With all this talk of weight loss, meal planning, and food – I thought it about time for something entirely off that topic. Things have been hard recently. Things with Jeremy have been hard recently….and yet….they’ve been AMAZING. I’m seeing things this year that have me almost crying with excitement and relief. He is LOVING … Continue reading “Struggling in an Upward, Forward Motion”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-addadhd","category-jeremy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":701,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions\/701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}