March 2, 2010.

We had a busy weekend with friends over, this is why I have not input anything within a couple of days. Trying to reel myself back in from a bad February.

Nickolas:
Nickolas has struggled this weekend. He is quick to be aggravated and quick to display his emotions without thinking. A friend brought her 6 year old daughter over, which Nickolas is older than and of course she is a girl. He does his best to play with her and her younger sister, who is almost 3 years old.
However, he is quick to display his anger and raise his voice at the little girls or adults trying to correct/help him in the situation. He does not think before he acts, he says hateful things even in front of the other children without any regard for their feelings. Such as, can I come downstairs and play, they are annoying me? Or things of this nature. Granted, younger children can be annoying at times, but yelling at someone else's child is not acceptable.

~I worry about Nickolas. He has been getting decent notes home lately with only two incidents since he started the medication. But, seeing his reactions to other children besides just his brother does trouble me. He does not have the mindset that many of us had as children of his age. He does not form the bonds with kids and quickly results in anger. Which, he did get in a lot of trouble for when other kids at school feed on this type of behavior. Nickolas is quick to anger without thinking and c an drag a small situation into a larger one. Often, bringing all the punishment on himself, rather than just the kids that had got him in trouble. Then, he does not understand 'why' he got in trouble. Any situation can be blown out of proportion when he gets mad.
He later acknowledges the fact that he shouldn't have done that, but I have been trying to help Nick with this behavior since he was 5. I can talk to him about it until I am blue in the face, which then he gets bored and fidgets and stops listening, only for the pattern to continue to repeat itself.
I worry because I want him to display bonds between himself and his friends, but if he acts out the way he does, the chances of him forming bonds with other children may be minimal or strained depending upon him controlling himself.

March 1, 2010.
For Nickolas this was a struggle. His medication was off for 5 days while we waited for the DR to give him another prescription and he was off from Thu, Feb 18 to Wed, Feb 24. He started back on the medications that evening and has been taking them every morning. I think when he goes back we may or may not have to up the dose from 15mg extended release to a slightly higher dose until we find what he can control.
For a while, he was doing good even not on the medication, acceptable. However, once he got the medication he has backed off trying to control it and instead is relying on the medication to do everything.

Nickolas offers often to help me, even with his brother. Sometimes I do let him play a big brother role and help out. He likes to help give Sebastian a bath because they play games together and he makes bath-time fun for Sebastian (which has not always been the case.) they play with action figures or other little games to keep Sebastian getting clean. However, I had a incident last night, which happens pretty often. This is a example of what goes on between the two of them.

Sebastian refers to a shower as rain or a bath as a river. Sebastian wanted rain, but Nickolas keeps trying to give Sebastian a river. Sebastian is standing in the shower having a meltdown because Nickolas is trying to do it his way and Sebastian is acting 'hurt' as if he is not being heard in the situation.
Sebastian breaks down and is crying and screaming that he wants rain, not a river. Nick in turn starts yelling back at Sebastian and this is when I step in. I have to calm Sebastian down, he will get rain and not a river. Nickolas is completely in yelling/frustrated mode.

Sebastian is contained that I addressed him in rain, not river.

Nickolas is still ready to scream, he is not heard what is being said to him. He starts to yell at me about the situation between him and his brother and I have to remind him of his brothers sensory issues, that if he feels like he is not being heard, or is in fact being ignored, he is going to get frustrated. He needs to take the additional time to listen and understand what Sebastian is saying rather than just wanting to do things his way, with Sebastian it is a compromise and you cannot always talk him down out of what he has his mind set on.

Nick eventually calms down.

Sebastian:
Not much to report on Sebastian, but as I stated earlier we had company, friends come in this weekend. He played some, downstairs, but would not play with the kids upstairs. You have to make up many fun things to keep his attention, but for the most part he is more content downstairs with the adults, or off in his own world with his toys.

He looked forward all week to playing with the 6 year old and was even ready when they left for us to go visit their hour, they live nearly a hour away and we do not get to see them as often as he would like. But, he plays better with the almost 3 year old than the 6 year old. At one point him and the 3 year old were sitting on the stairs throwing a ball down the stairs and Sebastian would get it and keep bringing it back to the baby.

He is very gentle with the 3 year old, (she is actually 2 1/2, her birthday is in September) but he will take his toys away from her if they are his favorites. Sharing is a difficulty for Sebastian, Nickolas understands this for the most part, but other children do not, so much.

Sebastian for the most part will be with me throughout the day. I understand what he says/wants or needs for the most part and can help him the best. I work from home, on the computer in the living room so I can still work and pay attention to what I need to do. I can multi-task due to my 'work' being non-schedule work, just work when I can.

So, in the past two years of doing my work I have learned to work and keep a eye on the boys, Sebastian is in the room with me and Nick is at the top of open concept stairs, so I can hear what goes on from any direction.

Another thing I have noticed in the past 2 weeks is Sebastian's reaction to the cat we have now had since September 2009. At first, he was not gentle with Slick (the cat.) He is often very bouncy and full of energy, which scares the now 6 year old cat. We got a cat to lower stress levels between the boys and have done reading about animals and children with autism. I as a child had ADD and almost always had a cat, finding them very relaxing, we thought this would be a wonderful option for both of the kids.

When we first brought Slick home, Sebastian is not cautious and just bounce into the cat or he would get close enough to the cat, the cat would get spooked and run off, but in the process of running off, Sebastian would pull his tail to keep him near. Slick is front de-clawed, but not back de-clawed. So, the normal reaction will not hurt Sebastian.

They did not get along for a while, but cats are very forgiving. I noticed within the past 2 weeks that Slick does give both Nickolas and Sebastian more attention, Sebastian does not pull his tail. However, if the cat is bothering me, Sebastian will chase him off.


That is all for this particular entry at this time. Many other things have happened within the past few days, but these are good starting points to what has happened in the past couple of days since I last made a entry.