One Year Later: Childhood Anxiety and ADHD

It's been one year since we started down the road of diagnosis and treatment for Carson's anxiety and ADHD. I can't believe how far we have come. (If you are new, or don't remember what we went through, you can read about it here.)  Fro struggling and violent outbursts, to the best reader in his class! He loves to learn and especially loves reading, plus, the kid is a math whiz! It is such a change from last year. I really think I owe a lot of it to his teacher.

Mrs. J is amazing with Carson. She has the structure he needs, but allows the kids to have fun in her class as well. By December she figured out that if you let Carson "work for you" he will do his work too. By that I mean, he gets his schoolwork done, he gets to complete a special task to "help" her. Things like clean the white board, wipe down desks, or organize the books are his "rewards" for good behavior.

Life at home has improved too. There are far fewer fights in the home. The amount of love and affection that now flows from Carson is so heartwarming. He loves his brother and family so much. He has even made himself physically sick worrying about his brother having surgery to put tubes in his ears! He likes to snuggle and have family reading time at bed almost every night, which is something for a 6 1/2 year old!

Carson is still on medication for ADHD and for the anxiety, but he seems to be doing very well. Our only concern is his weight. He's very skinny, to the point his bones stick out everywhere. We have a follow up appointment next week to address that with his doctor.

Friday Free for All!

Today I am one week post surgery. I am finally able to wipe my own butt and put my own socks on! I still can only wear pajama pants though, so going to tomorrow's 1st grade basketball game may be entertaining!

Carson got a purple card this week. A purple card is given out for exceptional behavior. This was something that never happened last year! He's got several this year, but it had been a couple weeks since he last got one. Mama was very happy about it!

JP is still at mom and dads, but tonight we are bringing him home for the weekend since Chris will be here to help with him.

It's a little over a week until Valentine's day, I have no clue what I am getting Chris or the boys.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Don't freeze out there!

I'm back!!!

Hello all! I'm currently on a two week medical leave for work, so I'm going to attempt to write a bunch of posts to get back on track and catch you all up on life here in the Midwest.  Currently it's 5 degrees and we have 2 inches of snow on the ground, so I'm ok with being stuck at home.

Last Friday I had an abdominal hernia repair. Let me tell you, that is no walk in the park! I still am very limited on what I can do. I am not allowed to lift anything more than a gallon of milk for 6-8 weeks! This means that JP is staying with my parents since I can't get him in and out of bed or anything like that. Carson is home with us and we go visit JP every evening until bedtime. I miss him so much, but know that it is for the best.

I'll write a more in depth update about each of us and what's been going on over the next week or two. I don't want to overwhelm everyone with a bunch of posts all at once, haha!