JJ has the things he likes to sleep with sometimes. This is the first time he’s slept with this doll. This doll used to be mine when I was a kid, you can tell it’s an older one because the eyes open and shut.
This look of peacefulness comes at the end of a particularly awful day for him behaviour wise. It seems he goes through a bad day or two of being really naughty and rude and then he’s fine for a while and then it all happens again and I’m yanked out of my sense of all’s well.
Yesterday morning I had to put him in time out before he even went to school, then he had time out at school and when I picked him up from after school care yesterday I could tell that his carer had had problems with him as well.
He’s also naughty with the parents at school in the morning who sit down and read with the kids. It’s reached the stage where they won’t read to him any more because he’s so rude to them.
After I brought him home from after school care last night we had a bit of a chat, but these chats I have with him have no effect whatsoever. I shed some tears in sheer frustration because his behaviour is affecting his learning to read. Obviously I read with him but I send him to school to learn more, not to miss out because his behaviour can’t be handled.
This morning I made an appointment with the school principal to have a chat to him. I’m at the stage now where I think we need professional help. Even though I’ve got nothing to compare JJ’s behaviour with, apart from observing my friends’ kids, JJ’s behaviour is a bit out of control and if there’s some sort of problem I’d rather find out what it is and deal with it armed with knowledge.
What kind of behavior is it? Is he blurting things out, not sitting still? I know people tend to think that ADHD is over diagnosed, but we saw behaviors in our kid like this as young as pre-school and waited until he was in 3rd grade to really have him evaluated. I wish we would have done it sooner. We didn’t put him on meds until he was in 7th grade, so that’s not why I wish we had done it sooner, it’s just that if you can understand WHY the behavior, it makes you and the teachers better able to deal with it.