Ug! Is it Friday yet? Or better yet, is it time for school to start up again?!?!? Grace has been getting up at 6:30 am, we are trying to teach her to come upstairs to our room when she wakes up instead of screaming for us. Its taken her a while to actually do it, and its great she can get herself up now, the downside is she would stay in bed for up to an hour after waking up, now she is up in my bed! She did great this morning letting me go back to sleep while she watched cartoons in our bed (usually she is kicking me and rolling around and telling me to wake up!). Unfortunately, once we were all up and moving it was just one meltdown after another! We have been putting her in her room when she hits or starts to scream. We are trying to stay consistent with that (she is actually starting to stay in her room!). We also began today taking away toys when she throws them and then she has to earn them back with good behavior. Unfortunately by 11:00 she had had every toy within throwing reach taken away from her! Completely unprovoked hitting, obsessing over the computer, tv, chips and gum! None of which she was allowed to have for one reason or another. We finally managed to get some food for lunch into her happily put her in bed! She screamed and cried for almost an hour before going to sleep ( we never did verify if she actually went to sleep!). She woke up as soon as I was home from work, but the afternoon went much better! She was able to play with her playdoh and pick it up and put it away. The same with her Littlest Pet Shop. She was getting angry at part of her littlest pet shop, but when I pointed it out to her she was willing to give me the piece making her mad! She ate dinner, watched some movies finally and we got her in bed at 7:00 and on time for once! She is calmly in bed with her new sippy cup, paci, and listening to music.
She was definitely much more tired today. We are in that in between stage where she doesn't want to nap, but she still kinda needs one. We do go through spurts like this where she doesn't nap very well. I don't push it like I normally would, because come fall she will have to go without a nap due to her school schedule. Having some more structured play time in the afternoon as opposed to the just hang out schedule in the morning made a big difference with her! I do feel she is being more verbal with some of her wants, but I also feel her aggression has not only NOT decreased, but has actually increased! The same with her temper tantrums and meltdowns (there is a very definite difference between the two! All kids have temper tantrums, NOT all kids have full on meltdowns!). We have the option to increase the medication slightly beginning tomorrow, but we are going to keep her where she is at, I think she needs to have more time to adjust to where she is at with it, before we are willing to consider any changes to it. So far, I don't feel like it is doing what we want it to, but I feel like we need to make sure we give it enough time! I have seen some positives the last 4 days! She is accepting a new sippy cup pretty well, language is increasing, going to bed is becoming easier, and she is able to sit and just chill out. The negatives so far are still increased aggression, meltdowns (there is no change in her ability to "regulate" herself), and still a total inability to accept no (she gets fixated on items and cant let them go). She is also definitely more tired than normal, but it is not excessive. Tomorrow we are going to try having more structure to her entire day and see how that goes!
It sounds like she is really still adjusting. As long as her aggression doesn't increase to the point that you think she is actually more at risk than usual of hurting someone (accidently), I wouldn't worry yet. When we gave it to R, he was actually ransacking the house, so that was bit different (and doing it in the middle of the night) and it did also seem to increase his obsessions. However, those didn't go away when we stopped, so that may not have even been related. If she is going to adapt to the daytime sleepiness, it should happen within 1-2 weeks. As long as it doesn't start giving her insomnia at night or doing wierd things like that I'd say give it a bit more time. Is it a once a day thing? If so then dosing at night might be for the best. I've noticed when we start a new med with R that his behavior is usually a little worse the first few days. We are still adjusting the most recent one. Hang in there! These "journal entries" of yours will be a handy way to know if it's a good or bad effect!
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