e-mail
This is a continuation, of sorts, of my two previous posts about our visit to a behavioral therapist to try to address some of Little J’s more challenging behaviors. The clinical social worker that we saw, Ms. K, listened to our situation and gave us lots of information and parenting tips to apply to our family life. She also said that all was not lost, that Little J was doing well (all things considered – like the fact that he lived in an institution for 8 of his most formative months and may have been prenatally exposed to alcohol) and that given more time we’d see even more improvement in his behavior.
At the end of our visit she drew me a pie chart to represent Little J. Each piece of the pie is a part of Little J’s overall behavioral self (though obviously simplified. If it were complete it would also include snakes and snails and little dog tails…) Anyway, you can see it’s in five parts: stressors, history, ADHD, SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder), and temperament. She explained that each of these parts provides a clue to Little J’s behavior.
Stressors are things like meeting new people or moving. The fact that we moved to a new house about 2 months ago is an obvious trigger to the burst of negative behaviors we saw at that time. We can try to limit stressors as much as possible, although stress is also a part of living in this world and growing older.
ADHD is attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. She said he was too young to diagnose, but that he definitely showed a tendency. She recommended some reading and she also said that even if we weren’t going to medicate him (again, he’s too young right now) that we could help him with strategies to build on the positives of ADHD and minimize the negatives.
Temperament is his basic personality. I said that I didn’t think we could do anything about his basic personality (after all, you’re born with it, right?) but she said that as parents it’s our job to help him build on the great and wonderful parts of his personality and de-emphasize the not-so-great. For example, we can work on encouraging his loving nature and his ability to read others’ emotions in an empathetic way.
SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder) is part of the puzzle, too. How he interprets and experiences the world is determined by his nervous system. If how he processes sensory input is somewhat skewed, how he acts in reponse to input will be skewed as well. We can help Little J with this by taking him to Occupational Therapy and learning more things to do at home.
And his history is his history. Possible prenatal alcohol exposure, his care while he was with his birth family (good or bad), his 8 months in the hospital and orphanage, as well as what we’ve done with him thus far…that is his history. Known or unknown, there’s nothing we can do to change it.
*****************
Just a side note to all of this: Little J got 4, count ‘em, 4 gold stars yesterday for good behavior. He even vacuumed the playroom!
The moral of the story is: everything changes, especially 3 year olds…
