Label it how ever you want: challenging, spirited, difficult....Shane is that kiddo. He has varying degrees of his "challengingness" and depending on the setting you see him in, you would have no idea he was a "difficult" child.
He has been labeled as a kiddo with Sensory Processing Disorder and has been seeing an Occupational Therapist for about 10 months now. That label fits him well and we were super excited to get help for him. There has been a lot of improvement in his behaviors outside of our home. He now climbs and enjoys going to parks and playing on play structures and has confidence in his skills. He happily heads down a slide on his own with out fear and terror in his eyes. He has interest in handwriting and learning how to write. Going into loud public locations has gotten easier for him and drop off at preschool continues to improve. Playing on a baseball team isn't 100% terrifying to him and transitioning away from Mom and Dad isn't impossible now.
These improvements are awesome. Yet, we continue to struggle at home with him. No behavior plan, no incentive, no consequence, no time out or break away in his room has helped him inside the walls of our home. Not my background in education or my Master's degree in Guidance and Counseling can reign him in during his ugliness. No book out there or numerous doctor visits have yielded continuous behavior improvements at our house.
And that challenging behavior has started to seep outside of the home. Into the grocery store, Target, in the car, places where we never had issues before. His almost 2 year old sister has started to pick up on a thing or two from her big brother in a negative way.
The past couple month things got so bad there was aggression and hitting, yelling and screaming, ugly tantrums and fit throwing from our 5 year old over the tiniest things. "Shane, it is time to get dressed for the day. Please, go put your clothes on." This would elicit over the top behavior from him. All the above over just getting dressed in the morning. Something that wasn't a problem a couple months ago. This ensued all. day. long!
More days then not I was in tears by the time Kenny came home. Overwhelmed with what to do with him, frustrated that nothing I did helped, angry that I had no idea what to do next.
I made one more frantic call to our Pediatrician. What do we do now!?!
She gave me one more referral. After researching that referral I was so excited. We had found something...Dinosaur School + Parent Training using a program called The Incredible Years. Sadly, that excitement was brief when we found out it wasn't currently running and wouldn't be until maybe January. I still had my sights set on this program called The Incredible Years. It really sounded like something that will target those "challenging" kiddos. I was able to set up one-on-one parent sessions with Dr. Driver. Fingers crossed this program is all I hope it will be!
Friday evening is my first session. I can't wait to get started!
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