follow up on my son

[indigoscot]

wanted to provide an update.

my son's behaviour deteriorated to the point the daycare management started threatening to terminate care.  :(

today we had a behavioural therapist come out to observe his class.

1.  he is very, very, bright (ok, we knew that already but good that a professional is also recognising it.  daycare would not or could not do that).

2.  due to his cognitive growth/issues at daycare/negative feedback/adults calming him rather than him doing it himself he can no longer self-calm.  he is a little hyper but she didn't want to label him as adhd.

3.  daycare needs to provide more positive reinforcement (we knew that too). 

those are the main points.  he needs more time with the behavioural therapist and ot.  we are moving quickly to put all of that in place.  the therapist is very confident we can assist our son to get back on an even keel.  i can see this is going to continue to be a struggle as he gets older. 

anyone else dealing with  / dealt with this?

thanks for your input!

g

[deminc]

I remember when I first came to this board at my wit's ends, one of the many pearls of wisdom I received was that 3-4 seem to be a very difficult age for many of our kids and it gets better with age. There may be issues to tease out and adjustments or OT to be done etc, but with support, they can and will do great as they grow older and we understand better how they work and what they need.

That said, I really don't think many three year olds (or older kids for that matter) are great at self-calming. I am still teaching my soon to be four year old to take deep breaths and think before he lashes out. I remember reading in your other post that the environment is not that great either with other chidren hitting etc; I know if ds2 is in an environment where he is bored and there are hitting/arguments going on, he will hit and he will scratch and he will cry for 2 hours if he is disciplined because in his books, it's just not fair and he would not be calm enough to explain himself to the teachers.   My ds1 was different - he could talk his way out of situations and he had vision issue which would make a more academic setting simply unbearable for him - and for that reason I eventually put him in a playbased kindergarten where he thrived, play-fight (after months of gym and taekwando classes to replace OT), and generally was just happy and got along well with the teachers (who did not pay a lot of attention in the first place). For ds2 however, I have deliberately selected a different preschool for him where the discipline is much tighter and the teachers can see the entire room in one glance. Because he gets up to no good whenever he is bored, it is important to me that the work will be challenging for him. There are proper music classes 3x a week and some computer classes which I think he would love.

There may be other more complicated issues why your child is not thriving, sensory integration seem to often pop up when kids have trouble with a group setting, but sometimes adjusting for the child's temperament may also be  worthwhile experiment when possible.

Edited by deminc - 6/13/11 at 9:51pm

[indigoscot]

another update - we now have more information via an ot assessment.  again, extremely intelligent/gifted, very high functioning but he has delays in emotional and social development.  as of monday he has been suspended from daycare.  we do not want him to go back there, so this week i worked from home and he stayed with me. 

our local county has him in their system and he will be officially assessed by them in October - we couldn't get anything earlier.

i have been talking with a family friend who works in elementary education - she is actually the liason person for special needs in her school - and she recommends we get him into the state pre-k program and then if any further issues happen the county will have to step in to assist.  in the meantime, we are trying to find some short-term care for him - we have a few leads from former daycare employees that we know and trust - so i can go back to work.  i have to call my manager this morning to explain the situation.

g