down the long road to Miralax - then to nighttime dryness. He had spent the last 3 months waking up every night, almost 4-5/X to go to the bathroom. He rarely has an accident.
But - what is happening is he is sooo sleep deprived. I got a call from his teacher the other day about him punching other kids?!?!?!? This is not my H2. Everyone that knows him really well, was like - "What?!?!? H2?! So I knew it wasn't a case of just mommy wearing rose color glasses. He has always been my rule follower in school. His preschool teachers just laughed at how toe the tie he was.
Both H and I were coming down on him so hard for this. We were coming down so firmly on his defiance. Then I was going over something that has really helped H1 for another friend who is going through some ADD issues and I was rereading the sleep study issues - and this just jumped out at me
Hello.... of course I knew this - I knew his sleep was affecting this - but somehow to see it in black and white. Needless to say - I will be calling the ped first thing on Monday to make an appt. I already had been on the phone with them a month ago - asking if there was anything I could do and they wanted me to wait it out some more, but nope - I am not going to. I know there is medication that will help with the nighttime urination and I want to give it a try. If anything perhaps just a few weeks on it can reset his clock to not have to pee so much at night and he can get sleep.Recent research has verified that chronic poor sleep results in daytime
tiredness, difficulties with focused attention, low threshold to express
negative emotion (irritability and easy frustration), and difficulty
modulating impulses and emotions
My heart just hurts remembering him, with the daytime stuff. When the dr. got down on his level and said, "H2, look at me, I want you to know this is not your fault." I remember the look on his face, like a weight was lifted from his. I remember him running across the room into my arms. I remember him looking like, 'see mom, it's really OK to love me.'
All the while, we parents, thinking we are doing the right thing by being firm... ugh.... You always read about kids getting away with murder, so we probably toe the line to being firmer, and then this happens and you feel like a failure as a parent. When your child's basic needs are not being meant (sleep - and in the previous situation health related) of course, they cannot behave. Discipline is NOT the answer. Crappy parenting is certainly not the answer. UGH.
This is the note I sent to his teacher today.
Krista -
I have done a lot of thinking regarding the issues that you brought up on Wednesday. I want you to know that I am taking this very seriously. I even went as far as to request a suggestion circle in my ECFE class, where all the parents have older child and the parent educator responds too.
First, let me say, his punching and defiant attitude when "caught" is not OK and never will be OK. I do not expect the behavior to be tolerated. I do, however, want you to be aware of a few things and hopefully it will shed some light on this.
I truly believe the root cause of this behavior is sleep deprivation. As I told you on Wednesday - Hunter is in a not so good place physically and emotionally right now. Most of this, though after taking with him and really going over the last month in detail - I believe is physical. He has not gotten a full night's sleep since prior to August. I will be setting a dr appt to hopefully get the nighttime issues under control with some medication. I don't like to go the medication route; however, we have tried behavior modification, diet changes and other natural approaches to this since August. We both know the following - but it really helped me to see it in black and white.
Recent research has verified that chronic poor sleep results in daytime tiredness, difficulties with focused attention, low threshold to express negative emotion (irritability and easy frustration), and difficulty modulating impulses and emotions
Some background:
You know (per our first conference) that Hunter has gastrointestinal issues. This spring and into summer we dealt with him wetting his pants, every 20 minutes. His behavior was off the wall erratic. Turned out his was so constipated (sorry, I cannot think of a polite way to say it) that he couldn't even feel the pain anymore. He went on Miralax for 3-4 months and was better. I explained at our first conference that he absolutely needed enough water breaks during the day to not have this occur again. We are back to accidents. I have asked him how many water breaks he gets a day and he says 2. This could also be adding to his erratic behavior. This is frustrating to me, because we had this under control, when I was in charge of what and how much he drank during the day.
At the same time that we were able to stop the Miralax, Hunter was "ready" for nighttime dryness. He has been getting himself up 4-5 times a night since before school started (mid July). This has been going on for 3+ months. I called the ped a few weeks ago thinking that this cannot be good for him, he has not gotten 2 straight hours of sleep in 2+ months (at the time of my call). The ped at that time recommended waiting it out a bit longer. With the new information about his classroom issues, I am not going to wait it out any longer.
Where to go from here. This is a list I came up with for us to work together.
Set positive expectations for behavior.
- I will reinforce that each day morning about what behavior to expect
- I would like some type of communication daily from you regarding this. It can be as simple as - he can have a card in his backpack that says it was a green (good) yellow (OK) or red (really bad) day.
- I will work on the positive reinforcement when he has "x" amount of green days. I will speak with him about what went wrong on the red days and have appropriate consequences at home.
Giving Hunter tools and reminding him to use them to deal with his frustration.
- We talked about making the room bigger. (He can go and push on a wall, relax, then push on the wall again.)
- Hunter is a boy, use the shoulder to shoulder method of talking to him if something has gone wrong. Do not take the no eye contact as defiance.
- Giving him lots of large motor movement. Taking away a recess will be counter productive at this point - he is already struggling to deal with out of control emotions, we both know physical activity will help that.
Making sure he is getting adequate water during the day.
- I may have him drink some type of fiber filled drink in addition to his snack.
( I know that juice drinks are not normally OK - but the timing of the Miralax is important, (so that he can make it to the bathroom and have enough time for his system to adjust before bed. In the morning before school would not be ideal for him - that would put him in a bad place at lunch time. Lunch time, I would be concerned that he wouldn't finish it and the school day still has 4 hours, so snack time seems to be the best time. Then he should be home, and have enough time for his system to settle before bed - so we don't exaggerated the already horrendous sleep issues.
I will be setting a dr appt to hopefully get the nighttime urination issues under control with some medication.
- I don't like to go the medication route, but I think the root cause of this behavior is sleep deprivation.
I hope this works for us, but most importantly, I hope we can work together to help Hunter through this. I do not think this is the developmental stage of seeing if he is going to be bad or good. There are much larger issues that need to be dealt with first. Once all those are off the board, then I think we might be able to go down that road. Let's hope that we have no need to.
Once again, thank you for meeting with me on Wednesday. I really appreciate you and all the work that you do with such a large class of kindergarteners. You are such a blessing in Hunter's life. I know that together, we can help him through this.
Don't hesitate to call me on Monday if you need/want to talk more about this. I work until Noon, but I should be home from 1PM on.
Linda
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