Rough Monday :/

Today was a rough one. Had high hopes for Jordan's Christmas concert this afternoon ( I should know better but after this weekend can anyone blame me?) So I have heard very little from the school regarding her behavior, problems etc so I really thought this was going to be a good day. Boy was I wrong! About 30 minutes into the concert I see Jordan beginning to lose it and go into meltdown at the top of the bleachers behind the class and in front of the entire school. I look for her teacher who of course was completely oblivious! I went up to the teacher and asked her to look up at Jordan and she replies " Oh is she crying?" UM WTH DO U THINK? UGH then proceeds " Should I go see if she's ok?" SERIOUSLY? OBVIOUSLY NOT! grrrrr! So after a few mins I hear her beginning to sob off stage and the teacher trying to coach her back on stage. Mammabear took over and I went back there and got her, embraced her in a bear hug and walked her out. Beyond frustrated already I took her to the office in hopes she would get herself together and be able to go back to class. FAIL. With it being towards the end of the day many students were congregating in the hallway only upsetting Jordan more because everyone was seeing her a mess. So, I proceeded to take her down to the quiter more private Special Ed room. Again with a hope that she would regain her composer and get back to class to some point. (me and hope really didn't work well today obviously) She was getting back on track when this witch of a substitute that don't know Jordan at all comes in and starts getting on Jordan about "This is a special ed room and we need to be paying attention to Lucas (classmate with Autism and in mid fit) so you need to stop and go back to class. EXCUSE ME? I BOUT TURNED RED! I wasn't asking them to do jack first of all! I was standing right there and this witch don't know her! She has just as much right to be able to sit and calm down in that room as Lucas or any other Special needs student. GRRRR! Plus she proceeds to tell me that the last few days she has been substituting she has had problems with Jordan every morning getting her into the classroom and in her opinion "misbehaving". Mind you NOBODY had said one word to me about this whatsoever! A few minutes later I was able to walk Jordan back down to her room basically giving up and ready to just bring her home. Well her teacher was able to convince her to stay and try and do CLC (afterschool program). But I was less than convinced. So I sat down in the office (out of eyesight but close enough to go get her if she lost it again basically). Of course Jordan lost in mildly one more time before FINALLY making it to the CLC room and staying for the last hour to do her hw etc. I am soo over this school!

organized chaos

Wow, so alot has happened over the last couple weeks since my last post. First, Thanksgiving threw Jordan for a spin with the change in routine and days off school but we survived and I'm pretty sure we can call it a success amidst a few minor meltdowns and setbacks. Secondly Jordan's Birthday was on the 27th of November and while I couldn't do a whole lot financially it turned out pretty amazing. Cooked her favorite meal, baked a cake, even some cupcakes, and had some close friends over which she was all too excited for (since it doesn't happen often). Again we had the occasional hiccup but we survived and she was one happy little birthday girl. With all this I think the school felt the most of the wrath of her major routine changes throughout all this and gave them a bit of a wakeup call as to what to expect in the future with holidays, changes etc. The good thing is going to be now that they saw how quickly she can go from well behaved to down and straight defiant and upset they can identify these triggers before they escalate too much. Now we have the blessed Christmas holiday approaching along with Chirstmas break, presents and again major change in routine for a while. How fun.. Oh and Jordan had her first appointment with her Psychological therapist over the weekend and boy was that an adventure! lesson learned to bring along her older sister from now on to sit with her in the waiting room while I speak to the therapist for a few minutes before Jordan goes in to do her thing. While Jordan has made a significant improvement social wise by twice last week initializing a conversation with a child she does now know, and introducing herself and I am extremely gratefull for that I can't forget the many many more things she needs work on. But progress is progress right? Let's see am I forgetting anything? OOOHhh! yes! The website/ facebook page I have in my links to the right --> A4cwsn is Amazing! If you haven't checked them out already DO IT!!! I had a couple concerns about my daughters' christmas this year and posted these concerns not directly asking for a handout but advice as to how I could give my girls a good christmas on a small budget this year and have had several very generous angels step up and are doing amazing things that will make this year probably the best one yet! I am so excited! 21 days to keep these secrets and the anticipation of beginning to recieve things and wrapping it all for christmas eve is drivin me bonkers! This has shown me that even in the worst of times when so many are struggling there are still some great people out there that are willing to help those who need it. So after quite the long post and I think what has been a good catchup on what has been going on I will leave you all with a Merry Christmas!

sleepover success!

So, with complicated kiddos sleepovers are rare and usually end up in fights, tears, arguements, and a house destroyed by the next day. But, I guess I am hard-headed and stubborn because I keep trying to have Jordan's friends over and sleeping over in the hope eventually we will have a successful one without the aboves. Well, being the night before Thanksgiving my friend wanted to go out and her little ones wanted to hang out with Jordan anyway for a sleepover. Her kids are neurotypical or "normies" as we sometimes say in the house of alphabet soup diagnosies lol. So this was geared to be quite interesting! Her son just turned 4, and her daughter just turned 3 so youngins at that! All in all everything went surprisingly calm (if you consider 3 hyper kids in a small living rm calm haha), no arguments or fighting, no major tears or meltdowns, they all shared the toys and even took turns playing on Jordan's games on the Wii! Now come bedtime and they were all getting tired we had a couple hiccups but bedtime is rarely perfect in my house with only my two so i wasn't really complaining. :) This morning went pretty good too! I got up and Jordan was eating some breakfast with the little girl, the boy was still sleep (not for long), and when they were done they all helped clean up the heck of a mess from yesterday! I got their things reorganized and setup up for when their mom picked them up, shoes on, coats ready and they played until she came. :) In the mean time I was able to get some of the Thanksgiving food started which I will especially love later when we are all hungry and stuff if finished already! They didn't even want to leave when their mom came but I was done patience wise, had food to cook, homework to catch up on, and it is Thanksgiving and time for them to go be with family. :) Plan is to take all 4 kiddos downtown to watch santa and the city mayor light the city's Christmas Tree tomorrow night! This should be quite the adventure but if we can do it and avoid any major setbacks or meltdowns then it will be a great experience I believe. :) Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Pre- Thanksgiving madness

Wow, well where to start Lol. First the school week is of course shortened because of thanksgiving on Thursday, her therapy appts rescheduled for the beginning of the week just to name a couple routine changes. So let's discuss how yesterday went with her last day of school for the week shall we? First the morning was crazy because she was thrown off but gets to school on time. I get stuff done around the house and within 90 minutes get a phone call from the school.. joys. Still not 100% sure what exactly happened but from what the office lady and Jordan said I guess her and the teacher got into some sort of argument over something very petty n Jordan was extremely upset. They call me and I advise them to adhere to her behavior plan and she needed to spend some time in Mrs white's room (special ed classroom). This irritates me because we have a plan in place for a reason and it is either ignored or not shared with necessary teachers etc like it should be. But she made it the rest of the day ok and when she came home shortly left to my friend's house to play for a little while. When she came home she gave me this garbage intervention plan the school finally printed up (meeting was a month ago btw) n the "plan" is so far from what Jordan needed I myself am pissed and taking this to the next step legally. Today was surprisingly calm! Jordan has even been playing the Wii Sports Resort game by herself this morning! She is in her Speech Therapy appt right now! I am actually babysitting my friend's two munchkins later this evening so that will be very interesting I'm sure ;)

company visits equal meltdowns/ tantrums :(

Today a friend of mine gave us a ride to get Jordan to her speech therapy and Occupational therapy and for that I was extremely grateful. During the ride there and back Jordan as usual was a chatterbox to the max of course but we are pretty used to that. She did very well according to both therapists today btw! Well we get back to my house and my friend and her 3 year old daughter wanted to hangout here for a little bit and the kids would play while we have some girl talk time.While I know how quickly Jordan can go from smiles to meltdown I also know how much she enjoys having kids over and needs practice in these type of social situations. At first things went well, I even got a little bit of cleaning up done while the kids played. Unfortunately it didn't last too long. My friend's daughter does not like my cats at all so I had told Jordan specifically not to put the cats by her especially purposely. This obviously went in one ear and out the other and picked up my older cat "Pumpkin" and carried him over to where the little girl was and as expected the little girl starts crying and climbed on her mom. I told Jordan to put Pumpkin down at least 3 times and she completely ignores me until I have no choice but to say it quite a bit louder. She has a fit screaming at the top of her lungs, throwing things so I told her playtime was over and she needed to spend some time in her room until she calmed down and could listen. After about 10 mins she calmed down a little enough to come in the living room to help clean up the mess of toys and things they had been playing with. Then, not sure what set off the 2nd fit but it happened and once again she had to be sent to her room. By this time both me and my friend were over it and they were getting ready to go home. I walked them out and we ended up standing outside talking for a bit. It was during this time that Jordan i guess realized nobody was going to feed into her fit and calmed herself down and came outside. After after minutes of goodbyes and some begging to go to my friend's house tomorrow (oye vey lol) we all came in. At this point it was dinner time and what I thought would be a little time to relax before bedtime.. Boy was I wrong. :\ I think she watched one short tv show and otherwise was clingy to me, ate some dinner, and began having a headache and wanted to go to bed. No complaints here but hopes of a good day tomorrow!

ODD is the enemy of bedtime :/

I have come to the realization that nothing (or very close to nothing) will ever be easy with Jordan and I am learning to accept that.. slowly :\ What gets me frustrated is the fight and arguments over the smallest, stupidest things! Tonight she wanted to watch tv and play with her sister.. OK that's awesome in itself; except that it is a Sunday night and there is school bright and early tomorrow morning. Which means she still needs a bath/ shower, pajamas, bedtime meds (plus time for those to kick in n work), bedtime snack, back rubbing, strawberry milk, and making sure she has uniforms clean and ready for the 3 days of school she has this week. This sounds like a lot but with Jordan and her sensory/ behavioral issues if we skip even one step it will be midnight/ 1 am before she passes out. Guaranteed. OK so i give her the choice between bath and shower.. big mistake I swear :( She chooses bath, takes waaay too long to get her playing out of the way and by the time it was time/ she was ready to wash up the water was cold and dirty from her soaking in it... fun times  So I'm getting frustrated and she stands up to wash up under the shower which again cannot be no easy task for this child. Either water is too hot, water is too cold, she wants a specific sponge thing or soap.. ok SPD is a close runner up at this point to ODD! Finally get her to the point of washing up and she does OK. Until it is time for her hair... GRRRRR! Here we go all over again. If you saw her pic she has a headfull of hair which is a whole other issue alone.. Lord help me finish tonight's bedtime routine and until she passes out for the night?

Procrastination

So I saw this today and since I have been procrastinating on getting homework done, housework done, among other things and accomplished next to nothing.. seemed this was quite fitting lol :-D

When things go wrong.. by Anonymous

"When things go wrong as they sometimes will,

When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit,

Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a failure turns about

When he might have won had he stuck it out;

Don't give up though the pace seems slow--

You may succeed with another blow,

Success is failure turned inside out--

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems so far;

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit."

commonly discussed terms/ diagnosis for children

• ADHD: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
• ADD: Attention Deficit Disorder (without hyperactivity)
• BP: Bipolar Disorder
• SPD: Sensory processing Disorder
• DID:  Dissociative identity disorder/multiple personality disorder
• ODD: Oppositional Defiance Disorder
• "Aspie": Asperger's Syndrome/ Disorder (on the Autism Spectrum)
• FAS: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• ASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder
• PDD: pervasive developmental disorder
• OCD: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder *associated with anxiety disorders*
• CDD: Childhood disintegrative disorder
• PDD-NOS: Persuasive Developmental Disorder (Not otherwise specified)
• BPD: Borderline Personality Disorder
• Rett's Disorder (Rett Syndrome) *on Autism Spectrum*
• GAD: Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• SAD: Seperation Anxiety Disorder
• NVLD: Non Verbal Learning Disability
• PSTD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• SPD: Sensory Processing Disorder
• RAD: Reactive Attachment Disorder
• NOS: Many disorders can have this acronym given which is "Not Otherwise Specified" i.e. GAD NOS (general anxiety but we cannot further diagnose)
• DX: used in place of the word Diagnosis
• XXY: just means an xtra X chromosome- mimics a lot of autism symptoms
• fragile X: 
• SAD (2 of them) Seasonal affective disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder
• IED - Intermittent Explosive Disorder
• CD - Conduct Disorder

Mornings how I hate thee

So today Jordan woke up way too early before sunrise whining about something or another (like 5:30am early lol) and climbed in my bed. After only a short while she had maneuvered her way into taking over my bed so I sent her back to her room. Took me a little bit to go back to sleep but when I did of course it didn't last very long. Her sister Jennifer had plans to go paint balling with her boyfriend and his dad this morning and from what I got from all the yelling and arguing she woke Jordan in the process of getting ready. Usually I would get up and get involved but this morning I was totally not up for it. I listened to make sure they didn't get out of hand and while they fussed at each other in the process Jennifer left and Jordan watched tv until I got up so no one got hurt! Jordan does go to a local church on Sunday mornings who pick her up as long as she is ready when they come so I had to get up, get her hair done, make sure she took her morning meds and was dressed decently and appropriately in time. We accomplished this and even got her to clean up a little the mess she had made of my living room which she constantly think is her playroom. While I am not sure how much she ate this morning or if she ate, considering she had been up for awhile and did not complain for or ask for cereal/ breakfast I am still going to consider the fact that she is is off to church in one piece, dressed and hair combed a morning victory for this cold Sunday morning! Now if I could manage some motivation to get some homework done before the girls come home in a few hours it would be awesome.. :-D

Twas The Night Before Christmas is now free!

Go check this out! It's super cute and both of my daughter's have read it and loved it! :)Twas-Night-Before-Christmas

My story & Jordan's story *INTRODUCTION*

My name is Judith and I am a single, stay at home mom of Jennifer (14yrs/ Adhd "mild"), and Jordan Alexis (7/ almost 8, ADHD "severe", Bipolar "severe", ODD "moderate", OCD "tendencies", Generalized anxiety NOS "moderate", and I suspect that is not all that is going on. I suspect either Aspergers or PDD-NOS and in the process of getting those answers soon. But, let me give you a little history behind my girls and how we got to where we are today. :) Well Jennifer was a very active baby from the time she turned one through kindergarten but being I was VERY young when I had her and no experience with ADHD I could not understand why she would NEVER sit and do ANYTHING for more than what seemed like 2 second at a time. The wake up call came when she was in either kindergarten or beginning 1st grade and the school recommended that she be evaluated for ADHD just to see if that could explain her never ending energy and growing inability to focus. So we saw a Neurologist and it was a big oh yes and she was soon started on a low dose stimulant to help with school and homework mostly. Over the next couple years I worked with her school and kept her teachers up to date with IE P's with little major incident. At about 6 and a half, I had her little sister Jordan and since Jennifer had been diagnosed but not been a major problem I was pretty hopeful about Jordan as well. As a matter of fact I was pretty relieved when she started walking and talking by about 9 months old and again was hopeful  By about the time she was about 18 mos I began losing that hope and growing concern when I saw her falling behind with her speech development. (one symptom of Aspergers btw) I contacted a local agency, expressed my concerns and they enrolled her in a birth to three program pretty quickly where a trained teacher/ worker came to the home and specifically worked with her about 3 times a week on various skills to try and see if we could get caught up that way or if there was another reason. after about a year of that we saw minor improvements in other areas like social, gross motor, fine motor, but not what we had hoped for in speech. She had a speech therapist come out once a week in addition to her visits (now we're up to 4 days a week). It was about this time we began seeing the first signs of possible ADHD! Since I already had a Psychiatrist for my older daughter i chose to start bringing Jordan with me to her appointments and see what his opinion was first since she was only 36 mos old (2 and a half). He observed her playing in the waiting room, (more like bouncing all over everywhere, the furniture, taking off out the door, and soo much more) as well as how difficult it was getting to control her in the office itself. He suggested we try her on a very low dose to see if there was any improvement as a test run. Basically, if it didn't help at all we would look for other reasons her energy was off the charts. It did help some which was good because we were then able to make some more progress in her development and speech. We were now meeting with the speech therapist for the next six months and still no significant improvement only mild progress in where she should be at that age. AND she was about to age out of the program and we were looking for other options. This was not all either! She still had not been able to successfully be potty trained, give up her pacifier, and was very clingy to me and her sister all the time. After some phone calls we were able to get her an evaluation with the early childhood department in the local school district. The woman who did the evaluation saw where she was behind and recommended her begin an Early Head start program within a couple months that specifically had an emphasis in speech therapy and encouraging speech/ language skill development. So, now she was starting to calm down a little, making improvements with potty training, gave up her pacifier, and now starting school 4 days a week working on her speech. My older daughter was doing well in school, and Jordan started the new school and loved her class and her teachers and the fact she was getting to ride a school bus everyday. Well, we did this for about a year without too many major incidents and then things spiraled into what they are today. At about four yrs old began the mood swings, violent outbursts  insomnia, having to double and triple lock the door due to her running off and taking off down the street. change in meds weren't having much if any effect and she was quickly losing control and becoming a danger to herself and anyone around her. Including kicking a friend of mine at the time who was about 6 months pregnant directly in the stomach and laughing after the friend has told her to calm down and not talk back to me or something. This was my breaking point and I was certain she needed more help than she was getting at that point. I had heard of a local specialty hospital that worked with kids with behavior/ emotional/ psych issues so nervously I called them and told them what had been going on. At first they were a little skeptical due to how young she was but during one phone call Jordan completely flipped out and instead of hanging up I just set the phone down and handled Jordan and got her calmed down before picking up the phone. She was basically like wow! so she scheduled us to come in and have a formal eval/ intake done and we went from there. Eval went as expected and Jordan told them where to go, how to get there and run through the room like a pissed off Tasmanian devil which led them to recommend her being admitted into the inpatient hospital for professional eval, medication stabilization, psych stabilization, and therapy while there. It took a couple days but having to admit my 4 year old daughter into a kids psych hospital was the hardest thing i EVER had to do and absolutely killed me. For the five days she was there I cried A LOT, visited her everyday, they let her call me once besides that, and the first couple days were the best because she was able to fake them and act like an innocent angel but that didn't last long. They soon saw the kid underneath and the level of manipulation she had been using at only four years old. This included intentionally peeing on herself so that they would get mad and send her home. Didn't work and that pissed her off even more. When it was time for her to come home, we started her immediately in their outpatient day treatment program 5 days a week which lasted pretty much her whole summer before she was to start kindergarten. During this time, she was seeing their Psychiatrist and specialists, having groups and being monitored and learned alot in coping skills etc. Finally I was starting to my daughter again and the smiling, happy side of her I knew was still there. So, we did the 3 months of intensive treatment, she started kindergarten in a normal class, and now I had a couple more diagnosis that better explained what had been going on. So at five she had ADHD, "mood disorder" NOS, Anxiety NOS. Meds seemed to be helping enough where she could go to school, be fairly behaved with her good days and bad but overall I wasn't extremely concerned at that point. I had a couple different programs/ workers working with us in the home helping with different techniques to use at home, setting up different doctors, therapists, etc. Finished with those about a year ago and since have been with her current dr for a yr or so and have a little more clarity so far on her diagnoses. As I stated in the beginning, it was confirmed that it is severe Bipolar Disorder, GAD, additional dx of ODD (i hate this one i think the most), plus her severe ADHD. Her Psychiatrist cannot evaluate for Aspergers, PDD, PDD-NOS, or anything along those lines so that is where I am now. My biggest concern is her continuing social awkwardness (leading to being a target of bullies), constant tics and how they change every few months, the excessive obsession over anything and everything and the length of time she can/ will obsess on something. So at a month away from 8 years old I think I have some answers, but not all, yet!

      As of 11/2012; Starting this month I had Jordan evaluated from a Speech pathologist as well as an Occupational Therapist and she is now in speech therapy twice weekly as well as believed to have SPD to some level (not yet fully determined as of yet) and is working with her OT once a week. Also, I got her into play therapy\ behavioral therapy once a week starting next month which she will go to once a week as well. Once that starts and we get into a routine I will also be requesting a full Psych/ Neurological re-evaluation by another PHD Dr to see how she is doing with her current DX's as well as find out if she is on the spectrum of either Aspergers or PDD.   :) Ty for your time to read our story!