Re: Need Help Urgently
Asked by ReannaBexleiyroseSummerKiarah

Question:
 

I really need help with my 6yr old daughter, made heaps of posts in the past, but whats been happening in the last two weeks is a nightmare. I'll put in point form her

disabiltys/diagnosis and specialist she sees then put what has been happening, so u get a clear picture.

• *6yrs old
• been diagnosed ADD,ODD, SLEEP APNEIA, SEVERE SPEECH AND LEARNING DELAYS
• medicated on ritilin-10mg 3 times a day, by peadetrician
• see's speech therapist, peadritian, physcoligist,
• changed her diet, healthy diet,
• Bexleiy of the past few days has been having epispodes of agreesive and non-responsive behavior and becomes uncontrollable and blank and foccussed on her disobedience.  She become super strengthed unable to be held and very loud and agressive hitting and pinching struggling against any form or attempt at calming her. When opposed or put intoher room begins banging on doors and damaging objects, messing her room and possessions up and acting in defient ways. She also goes into repition of loud noises and words ignoring anyone asking her to clam down or be more quiet and becomes louder when requested to quiten down. This can be triggered by something as simple as being told for the third of fouth time - Bexleiy please go and have a bath! When told more directly and sternly she triggers into an episode of the above behavior and any attempt to tell her is responded with agressive behavior, glazed eyes and blank stares. Her pupils dialate (become enlargered) and her strength is more than a single adult can manage.
• Environmental changes - school, close school friends acting around her in hyperactive ways (very excited and wont listen to requests), feral (out of control), her closest friend has been stealing and lying and whinges at lot complaining (dobbing) other kids in for things they have not done. Bexleiy is the centre stage for focus in her class everyone wants to be her firend. She is social and plays with a central 5 - 6 person group of boys and girls.
• She is doing very well in her class academically. She has on a few occasions been diciplined at school for reported pinching in the play group, being disobedient to a teacher who at the end of recess requested they come into class and 3 - 4 children hid from the teacher and it took 10 minutes to get them into class.Putting glue on a students shirt, scribbling on other childrens work, and flushing hats down the toilet.  This resulted in being sent to the office - the other children said it was Bexleiy who said to run and hide from the teacher (unconfirmed  - Bexleiy says different).  
• We feel that something may have happened at school,or in the past with ex parnters. or a childs house or she may have been bullied  but Bexleiy when asked what is wrong, or has anything happened at school, starts looking away from eye contact and either distracting behavior (diversion of topic), or gets emotional and angry, or cries but still does not say what is going on. Bexleiy has become very obsessed with her closest friend (Ashley) and won't seperate from her at school or in class, and Ashely is also the same back to her. She often rejects other friends because of her desire to be with Ashley and ignore them or walk away. Ashley we feel is not the best influence on Bexleiy as she behaviorally is very hyperactive and at times naughty and disobedient. It is however very difficult to seperate them from playing together and we feel not right to say things such as "we don't want you playing with Ashley".
• She also becomes very softly spoken in class and lacks vocal and ability confidence and the teacher finds it difficult to hear what she is saying at times. Always seeking attention from teacher for acadmic approval. She gets huffy if the teacher gives academic attention to other kids and dismisses her need for approval from the teacher. She often seeks the teachers assistance on things she does not want to do on her own. When the teacher is unable to give this assistance rather than attempt it she will just go sit down and not do the activity  - this may be to aviod failure or doing it wrong or be seen by others doing it wrong. Bexleiy was very anxious starting school on the first few weeks, and at times still display anxiety of separation when mum leaves after drop off.

saturday night-camping,- 5pm-1am

• screaming whole campsite down, swearing , yelling crying very emotional
• wreaking things, trying to destroy tent, throwing large objects and hurting me and mike, hurting mike really badly by throwing things like shoes,cups,keys,torch at his head which with the torch hit him really hard. pinching very hard cause really bad marks and a lot of pain to sister, me and mike.
• Huge fear of toilets, refuses to use public toilets-hates bins in toilet, i remove them, she still freaks. wets herself always, every night wet bed.. wont use public toilet stands still and wets self.
• wont dress herself daily, wont feed her self, gets very emotional screaming, crying for me to feed her..a massive struggle to get her dressed, takes usually 40minutes to dress her as she is so strong and refuses.
• eyes turn black and go watery glazed when she goes destructive, then apolgises 1 hour after, not knowing what she did wrong stealing and hiding car keys, setting alarm off and we could find car keys cause she had hidden them this went on for an hour with car alarm ringing loudly disturbing campsite.

 Sunday night:5pm-12am

•  throwing plates, pots, shoes, large objects , smashing them, and being very voilent towards mike,nearly causing mike to call police because of the strength and types of voilence she was doing to him
• swearing "your a dumb arse bitch head" Loser" always says these daily
• stealing keys which were way out of reach, she climbed on top of cupboards to grab them , unlocked car, jumped in, whilst we were trying to pull her out she was punching screaming and yelling, kicking throwing things being very voilent, we could not control her her strength was to strong, me mike, and a male neighbour couldnt even get her out of car, she blasted horn for 2hours, locked herself in car with keys we had no way of getting her out, she reversed car which nearly knocked down her 4yr old sister, thowing thing at the car windows whilst inside, alerted most of the neighbourhood which looked on in complete shock, no one could help , they even tryed and she was so voilent. She was going crazy in the car jumping franticly from each seat screaming, blasting horn. She finally unlocked car after a 2hour ordeal, and i managed with mike to get her out of car.
• She then bolted out onto the street and ran down to the end of the street screaming and swaying arms, jumping, crying and laughing. Onlookers were shocked. finally grabbed her and held her hand and she walked back with me crying. When i thought all was good , she then bolted again the other direction pressing peoples door bells, banging on there doors at like 10pm at night. coaxed her back home, she then ran and jumped and climbed on to the top of our car, which is a nissen xtrail (big car), and started jumping and screaming on the roof,bending the window screen wipers laughing uncontrolably., neighbours were furious, telling us over the fence to control her, that they were trying to sleep, we did not know what to do, we tryed everything...we got so close to calling the police. after all this ordeal she casually walked in side sat down at television and watched tv (total different child) saying love you mummy and daddy. cuddling us and saying sorry. She was asking why we were tired and angry and why neighbours came over, we explained what happeened and she saidd i did nothing mummy and daddy, me being a good girl. She couldnt remeber a thing...We then had about an hour of trying to get her to go to sleep, which was a bit difficult, but she finally crashed

 Monday:

• 7-30, tryed getting her up for school, was to tired, finally got her up at 8.30am, with 10minutes to get her ready, she put on a performance trying to get dresses which happens every morning. refused to eat breakfast, which happens everymorning. then took to school. ran off at school, wouldnt come back. got her class and shes an angel..

sorry that its really long, but i really dont know what to do, do i call police on my own daughter (i feel horrible to even have to say that) she's only 6 but its really bad what she is doing, or do i take her to the hosp[ital..or does anyone have any other suggestion.

 
My Advice:

First things first... the ritalin. Ritalin and dexamphetamine is prescribed for ADHD and ADD, which is caused by a physical/chemical problem with the brain. If someone is misdiagnosed and given these drugs when they don't have ADHD or ADD, then instead of calming the person down and making them behave more normally, it will react with them like speed (an illegal amphetamine that causes hyperactivity, tension, increased adrenaline, and various other side effects). If your girl has gotten worse since being on the ritalin or hasn't gotten any better, then I'd strongly recommend that you have her re-assessed.

Autism, aspergers, ADD, ADHD, ODD, OCD, and a number of other conditions all have very similar traits, but are indeed all different conditions which need to be treated differently. They are similar enough that in young children particularly, they can very easily be mistaken for each other and be misdiagnosed. If your daughter is not responding to the treatment and therapy for a condition for which she has been diagnosed, see about getting her reassessed until something does work.

With regards to her need for speech therapy, be very aware that her frustration at not being able to understand things and in not being able to express herself is going to be extreme. You will find that if you can work on overcoming that frustration for her she will be easier to manage. If she decides that she wants to go to visit someone and she can't communicate it, she will give you no end of hell because she can't understand why she can't do it, and it's going to be hard for you to explain it in a way that she will understand. This goes for everything. Having a bath, eating a meal, not being allowed to play with matches, even going to the toilet. If she has some sort of fear, mistrust, or misunderstanding about toilets, she can't express that and you can't ease her mind, because you don't know what is going on in her head, she can't tell you, and nothing much that you can say will help her because she can't understand you.

One thing that may work is picture cards. For my second son we took photos of things and put them in thick trading card protector sleeves and he was able to then give us a card to express his basic needs. Eg: food, drink, toilet, people, places, etc. Then through as much body language as anything (pointing, gestures, etc) we could narrow down the choices until we understood each other. It's like trying to communicate with a child that doesn't speak any English. When talking fails, body language, gestures, and pictures need to rule the conversation for anything to be communicated. Once that communication gets through both ways it gets a lot easier.

Keep word use to a very basic minimum until she starts to get a grasp on the language. You didn't describe how limited her language use is, so I'm shooting into the wind here, but let's assume she only has the vocabulary of a 2 year old for the sake of those reading this that need to start from scratch. You will need to forget about everything except basic nouns, verbs, and adjectives for the time being when talking to her. The names of basic colours, the names of objects, places and people, and simple actions is all you need say. Any extra words will just confuse her at this stage. Never mind run, running and ran, just use run. Big, long, tall, large, huge, over-sized, extravagant, forget it for now, just use big. Once she has a good grip on these basic words, then start adding others. As her vocabulary expands, start speaking to her normally a bit at a time, but put emphasis on the words that she knows. This will give her a sense of sentence structure. She will realise that "mat, sat, hat, cat" actually has a structure, that being "the cat in the hat sat on the mat". She will notice there are other words in between and will start to copy them in her speach in time as well.

Routine is vital with kids like this. If she knows that when the clock says 1pm that it's time to sit and eat lunch, she will be more willing to do so. If she knows that on Saturday at 10am she will be visiting Grandma, she's more likely to be willing to do so. This is because she can learn to understand routine and can predict what is going to happen because of it. If a strict routine has to be changed for any reason (eg: you can't go shopping at the normal time cause it's a public holiday that day) you will need to explain it to her as best you can as soon as you can, and keep reminding her that the change in her routine is about to occur. Routines like this may need to be extreme. I had to feed my kids not only at the same time each day, but on the same coloured plate, they had to have the same food, cut the same way, it had to look and taste the same, if anything was out of place it became a huge drama for all of us.

If she can't tell the time, then an order of events should occur. For example with bedtime, give her a half hour notice that it's almost time for bed. Tell her when there is 10 minutes left before bed time. Then let her know when it is bed time. This gives her a chance to anticipate it and wind down her activity in her own mind ready for the next event. Then it's time to have her bath, after which she brushes her teeth, etc; and then it's a story (which may have to be the same one every night depending on the severity of her condition) and then the light goes off and it's time for her to go to sleep. It's boring, repetitive, monotonous, and tiresome for us, but it's necessary for kids like this.

As for her extreme strength when she goes off like she does, there is one hold that will keep her immobilised and you don't need to be overly strong to do it, and it won't hurt her if done right. The position is to get on the floor with her, sitting behind her with your front to her back, you need to cross her arms over (like as if she was in a straight jacket) and hold one wrist in each of your hands to keep them there, and curl your legs around her and over her legs. Keep your chin up so she can't throw her head back and hit you in the face, and she can then try to wiggle and fight and carry on as much as she likes and she won't get out of it. It may take a while for her to calm down, but it's worth trying. The hard part is getting her into the position in the first place - do you know judo by any chance?

Whether her diagnosis is correct or not, learn all you can about the conditions she gets diagnosed with as she get each one, and learn how to deal with them and things will get a little bit easier. If in your own research you find something that doesn't seem to quite describe her correctly, double check it with another resource and if you're still sure it doesn't fit, take her to get reassessed agian until it's properly figured out.

Lastly, get involved in support groups for parents with kids with these conditions, get counselling for yourself in how to cope with all this, apply for respite care, and if you can get her into behavioural therapies do so.