My Buddy

This little man has been having some trouble lately, and we suspected that he might be having an attention problem. He just has trouble sitting still at all, and doesn't physically seem to be able to sit and do our home school lessons at all. I'm not talking about your normal small child behavior, this goes a bit beyond that. He just doesn't rest well, his body is in constant motion, and he is unable to sit down and listen even to a short story completely.

I'd noticed it mostly with our home school activities, and how different the boys are. Tyler is younger, but able to sit and listen and interact with the story in a much more dynamic way. He does the lessons and is starting to be able to draw circles and things that James isn't quite ready for. Now, I know not to compare the boys beyond some basic generalizations because kids are different and can develop at many different rates. I just knew something was a bit different about James, not in a bad way -- but just wanted to make sure that if we needed to get him some help that we did it at the earliest point possible.

So we decided to take him to be evaluated by a behavioral specialist, which was an interesting process. She spent about 45 minutes with him alone doing various activities to test his abilities, and then another 45 minutes with us talking. She had his teachers from TN fill out a form about their observations as well.

She believes that my little man has ADHD, but he is still young... so we will have to keep an eye on it until he is a little bit older. He has some sure attention issues, and a few things that he is slightly delayed on... and has been referred for speech and occupational therapy sessions twice a week.

From there, we had to get the insurance information sorted out - which is a giant hassle. After getting through that process, we made our appointments with the therapists. He has seen two speech therapists since our initial appointment. They like to split it up so that there are different therapists perspective helping with different areas. So we will be seeing Mrs. Julie, Mrs. Danielle, Mrs. Karen, and Mrs. Jennifer during this next year.

Our speech therapy sessions are 30 minutes, but they will be coupled with an hour and a half of occupational therapy as well. We hope that these sessions will be able to get our little buddy back on track and that our early intervention is a blessing. We love this kiddo, and want him to be the best he can be.

We will also be exploring some diet related options to see if that can help regulate his little system, and the rest of us as well. It's a journey that we are just starting, but I hope that we all are able to change our bodies for the better.