After a bit of a hiatus, I am back to writing again and hopefully, this time is will last a bit longer.
Things are going well in the Goldwasser household for once. Shayna continues to grow and be a very happy and wonderful 2 ½ year old. She is learning how to be a terrible two at times, but most of the time she is happy, friendly and a wonder to be around.
Noam is also a happy boy, but as always he really suffers from that middle child syndrome. Avi take a lot of our time and Shayna just always seems to be spoiled. We try hard to give him special time, and that usually works. Noam can get very angry when things don’t go his way, but I think that is normal for a 6 year old boy. That’s right, on this coming Saturday, Noam is turning 6! They grow up so fast! We are having a party for him on August 3rd, since there are three other boys in his class with birthdays around now. We just took too long to get the invites out, so we picked the 3rd (as did one of the other boys, so there are two parties that day, yikes!)
That leaves Avi of course. Avi has been going to his new school now for a few weeks. As I explained in an early posting, Avi’s day is split into 10 periods. For each period he can get 0, 1, or 2 points. At the end of the day the points are added up. 16 points or greater means the next day is a green day and 15 points or less and the next day is a red day. Red day means that you lose one privilege that day. Since Avi started he has had only two red days, and in fact since last Monday, he has had only 2 days below the max of 20 points. So far this week he is on track for 20 points each day for the week. We will get his something if he does this.
He is still struggling when he gets home, but we are working on that. First off, he is on different meds. He was moved off the Zyprexa and now takes Abilify which is usually used for bipolar disorder, although they are not giving his that label. We were also asked (again) to consider a stimulant for the ADHD. We told the new psychiatrist about our experiences and he suggested that we try Daytrana. This is Ritalin but it is administered by a patch that we put on his hip each morning. He has been on this for over a week now and so far so good. We are feeling good about his meds now and hopefully we are on the right track.
We have also found other assistance. It seems that there are agencies out there that can help with special needs children. The only problem is that they don’t advertise as they have limited funding. So after going through this for quite some time we were referred to an agency that sends a behavioral specialist to our home once a week to work with Avi and us. We are also looking into other methods of helping us learn how to help Avi.
The only other big news is our Disney trip at the end of August and I will write about that tomorrow.
