Well, things have calmed down considerably since my post about this. We went from nightly (and daily) outbursts to almost none!! It's crazy. I have yet to take him to the dr. but plan to. But in the mean time, I've been taking notes and making some changes. I made a few changes all at once...so I really don't know which change has been making the difference. Not that it matters, all of these changes are for the better I am sure.
Since he broke his window we have been having him sleep in our room until we can get it taken care of. So, I've easily been able to keep a closer eye on him during the night. He will whimper here and there, but no major night terrors. For the most part he has been sleeping through the night. When he does wake up, he calmly walks over to the bed and either tries to climb in with us, or tells us what he needs. Usually just a drink and then he goes right back to sleep. I don't know if he's just more comfortable in our room (temperature wise) or if it is something I've changed in his daily routine.
I started feeding him dinner earlier. We typically eat between 6:30 and 7:30pm. It just depends on when Mike gets home and other things I have going on during the day. Usually by the time we eat he has long since hit super cranky mode and the melt downs are coming right and left. So, I make sure he eats no later than 5:30pm. He has been so much more pleasant to deal with in the evenings. Who knew?!
We've been making a point of getting him to bed ON TIME. He doesn't always go to sleep right away, but he at least has down time...if we can get him to stop jumping on his bed, that is. :)
I have eliminated juice from his diet. I don't know if it was just a coincidence or not, but this all started about the time we started trying to use up all the juice we have in the freezer. We got TONS of it from WIC. We rarely drink it. So, Mike started drinking it and we started giving it to the kids. Not a lot mind you. No more than they recommend you give kids. He loves the stuff and chugs it down. Anyhoo...we don't give it to him AT ALL now. It's milk or water for this kid.
Those are the major changes we made. Not only does he wake up not angry, but he actually wakes up CHEERFUL! It's crazy. Again, I don't know what is making the difference, but I don't dare change anything back to find out. It will be interesting to see what happens when we move him back into his own room.
5 comments:
wow glad to hear it. Try and make the change easer for him by getting him excited when you fix the window. And tellig him how great it will be to be in his own room again.
So happy things are changing for the better. I hope the move to NC won't be a hard one!!
That is good news! Horray!
Woohoo!
Jeff went through this around the same age. I eliminated anything from his diet that had alot of added sugars. The juice could have made a huge difference. ADHD runs on the Arnold side, just a thought...Jeff's behavior is still better (at age 15!) when he has less added sugars in his diet :-) Of course, I'm not a doctor...just noticed the similarity of what I did with Jeff that worked.
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