IEP's and hair pulling. Oh my!

We are now on day 4, having given 3 doses of the Abilify. Saturday morning I gave it to Jack around 8:15 (I would have given it to him earlier, since I would have to on week days, however I slept in). I don't know if he had a difficult night's sleep, but he was tired almost right away. At 10:30, he became extremely angry with his sister about asking me where the cookies were. (I think he wanted to sneak them, so he didn't appreciate her meddling). I sent Jack to his room, where he took an hour-long nap. His attitude did improve after that, but there were a total of 3 incidents of that nature throughout the day. They didn't last for very long, but they were there. I can't say they were related to his medication, either. Though I do think him being so tired was.

On Sunday, Jack woke up at 5:30am, and went back to sleep around 7. I think he got up early, knowing that we had some new cable channels on the TV (Nick 2 and Teen Nick), and he wanted to check them out. However, our TV is on lock-down til a certain time, so he probably got bored and decided to head back to bed. He woke up at 7:45, when I came in to give him his medicine. At that point, his only complaint was that he was tired. He took a nap from 11:30-1:30pm. His mood was decent the rest of the day.

Since the doctor recommended giving Jack the med in the evening if he was getting too tired, and we can't afford for him to be sleeping in school, we decided to not give him his med on Monday morning- we gave him his Intuniv a bit early (after school), and then the Abilify at 8pm. Since both meds make him tired- the Intuniv kicking in about 6 hours after he takes it - I opted not to give him his Clonidine. As far as I know, he did sleep through the night. However, I usually don't find out til later in the afternoon how tired he was because "I woke up at 2am!" (like he told me after school yesterday). He did seem tired, though.

The IEP meeting went well, despite getting our first bit of snow for the season. My drive was in the dark, up a two-lane road, with tons of traffic going the opposite direction- headlights blinding me. I had no choice but to drive about 10 miles under the speed limit. It was scary! I did make it in one piece, thank goodness.

I highlighted some of the disappointing things in Jack's IEP- things I knew about, but seeing it in print, as written by someone else, is always sort of difficult...

*Jack continues to have difficulty with dealing with frustration within the classroom environment and often displays inappropriate behavior when asked to do something he does not want to do or if interrupted.

*Jack continues to have difficulty monitoring his emotions, identifying when he needs a sensory break, and implementing behavior-calming strategies to prevent the escalation of his emotions that leads to inappropriate behavior in the classroom settings.

*Jack has exhibited the most difficulty following directions and accepting reminders and redirection. Out of the 49 incidents this school year, where jack has become upset and been asked to leave the classroom due to being disruptive by using negative comments or physical aggression towards teachers, Jack has been upset about directions 31 times or 63% of the time. When given a reminder or redirection, Jack uses negative comments 80% of the time.

*Recently Jack has been having an increasingly more difficult time self-regulating and dealing with daily frustrations... Jack needs on average 35 minutes to process through the situation in order to rejoin the group. Within the last 6 weeks, Jack's physical aggression towards teachers has increased during this time of frustration. Since Sept 30th, Jack has become physically or verbally aggressive 80% of the time he is in a frustrating situation.

This is really the essence of what we're dealing with. There are little bit of sunshine mixed in with the insanity, though. On Friday, I got Jack's weekly Behavior chart. I noticed on there that he had pulled the Intervention Specialist's hair earlier in the week, which was a new behavior. Disappointed (to say the least), I sat Jack down and explained that what he was doing to the IS was considered bullying. He was singling her out to pick on, for no good reason. I know to him he has a reason, but frankly, there is no reason good enough to pull hair, kick, punch, etc. She does nothing but help him, and he does this to her. Much to my surprise, he sat there quietly and listened. He didn't cover his ears, he didn't make noises or give off major attitude through body language. He totally could have, and normally would- but didn't. Then I emailed the IS and said I was upset about what he was doing, and to rest assured that we do talk about his behaviors here at home.. and that I hoped he'd apologized. She told me that out of the blue, he created a coded message just for her, thanking her for helping him. Honestly, that blew me away. That was totally unexpected, uncharacteristic and totally from his own mind. It was a good moment when I heard that.

To top that off, on Friday evening he asked me about "The Incredible 5-Point Scale" book about controlling emotional responses. Normally he wants nothing to do with those books, but he actually asked if he could look at it. He spent some time going through it, which was okay by me!