GOTTA READ ABOUT ANTHONY

I first noticed something was different with Anthony when he was two. He seemed more hyper than the other kids his age. He also had more severe temper tantrums than the other children. I thought it might just be normal for his age so I left it alone. When he was three I had tried to go back to work and he had a new brother. He was still hyper and accident prone. I asked his school to help fill out an evaluation booklet for adhd. Anthony's then pediatrician agreed that he had adhd and started him on ritalin. It didn't seem to help so we tried other medicines before finally saying that it was not working. I stopped the meds and got a new pediatrician. By this time Anthony was five. Of course she agreed with the first doctor and tried another med. Just like some other meds he tried, it made his behavior worse. He was defiant, violent, destructive, angry, depressed, and happy. I had tried everything to control his behavior.

At first I blamed myself and changed my parenting strategies. I changed the way I punished him. I tried praise and rewards. I tried time outs and even spanking but nothing worked. Then I realized that it wasn't anything that I was doing. I needed to get Anthony's behavior stabilized before I could find a parenting method to work for him. We eventually settled on time outs and praise. He gets a reward for a weeks worth of good behavior. His behavior was so unpredictable. He could be happy one minute and the next he would tell you he wants to kill you. He would hit, kick, scream, bite, throw things, destroy things, threaten himself and others. The violence and threats was a major problem. He once told his preschool teacher that he was going to cut her eyes out with a pair of scissors. He had her in tears. He constantly beat up on his brother mostly because his brother didn't want to play when Anthony wanted to play or for no reason at all. He would tell me that he wanted to kill himself or he wanted everybody to be dead. He said he would watch us from heaven. He has threatened to fire all of us. Which he means to put us on fire. He has said that the car and house would be fired. He has tried to break the TV.

He was referred to a psychiatrist by the new pediatrician. The psych also agreed with the adhd combined diagnosis and also added anxiety and depressive disorder to the mix. He was put on ritalin la and celexa. It seemed to work as far as the adhd but his other behaviors persisted. We switched to zoloft and that really didn't help. I eventually asked the psych about bipolar disorder since it ran in my husbands family. She said that with his symptoms that it could be but it can be hard to tell in such a young child. She started to treat him anyway. She kept him on the ritalin la and added trileptal. He was so much better. Of course he did still have some behavioral issues that were being addressed in therapy but he had improved greatly.

This year Anthony had a growth spurt and was having a great deal of problems in school. He was defiant with his teachers. He started licking himself and hiding under his desk refusing to come out. He was evaluated by the school psychologist to see if he qualified for resource. She said that he did qualify under emotional disability. He is getting two 45 minute resource sessions through his IEP. One in the class and one out of the class. He also has a behavior contract the he has to follow. After his growth spurt his behavior was getting noticeably worse so I took him back to the psych and we increased the trileptal. His behavior was no different with the increase so the psych added abilify to his routine.