Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Anxiety and other 'A' Things

Hellooooooo-


Yes, Kingdom Arrows is still alive and not so well. But, we are here and I am making an update. You will see in this post why we have dropped off the face of the blogosphere.


Anxiety
Both Kae-Kae, almost 14 and Joy-Bug, 8 yo, have been fighting this fall with their anxiety. Many times the anxiety has won out, but we have persevered. Kae-Kae has made an A-plus at her 2 day a week school, in spite of her increased anxiety. But, it has been at the expense of everything else in her life- chores, music, friends, sleep, etc. So, we are planning on making the step of reducing her class sehcuelde to 2 days a month. This allows her to return to weekly counseling, ramp up Math and Science to the 8th grade level and have some rest. She will be stopping piano/composing and may be beginning the flute choir- if we can work through the panic attacks she has when she practices the flute! Hopefully increasing her meds last week and counseling will also help with that.


Joy-Bug had about 2 pretty good weeks this entire fall. By pretty good, I mean she was able to do her 4 subjects with serious modifications. Like, spelling five words out loud while she walked in a circle, playing violin for 5 minutes, doing math for 10 minutes and reading a 2 paragraph story and answering 5 reading comprehension questions.  The rest of the fall has been a marathon of never ending whining, crying, and computer games for her.


But, overall, she has not done anything this fall but advance to second level Green Belt in Taekwondo. And, we are SO HAPPY for Taekwondo! Joy-Bug is at the max of her anxiety meds she can take.  She can not continue in such a compromised state and our family can not take the pressure and stress she puts on us.  


Which leads me to the other 'A' Topics.


ADHD and ADD.


Yep- our new psychiatrist feels that Joy-bug has ADHD. Wow! I am so glad someone could figure out a gigantic piece of our puzzle. She answered YES to every single ADHD question (oh, so did Dan and I). I could write pages of specifically how this plays out in Joy-Bug, but I am sure you don't want all the sordid details. But, this leads me to our gigantic ANNOUNCEMENT.


Joy-Bug will be beginning public school in January.


Whew- I said it! I know many of my readers will not believe that God could lead a Christian family to public school, but He is leading us to put Joy-Bug in. We always thought if she went to school, it would be the Christian school, but they use mostly homeschool curriculum that she can not do and keep up with. It is so small that she would struggle with being in two grades together, always feeling behind the fourth graders. Since it so small, it is more individualized like homeschooling, which she is NOT doing well with. After increasing her meds as much as possible and being in weekly counseling all fall, and doing modifications at home, we can not take her any farther. We need to broaden our team that is helping Joy-Bug to health and wellness. The psychiatrist, counselor and us are not enough, so we are now including school for a semester to see what happens. Oh, and for the record, I have been very pleased with all my interactions with our public school. They have not despised me for having homeschooled and have been very supportive. 


Now, we have learned that Kae-Kae has ADD. I kept telling all of the therapists when she was in third grade that she had ADD, but they wanted to label her with all sort of other problems- CAPD, SID, VT, etc. The big puzzle piece seems to be ADD, and that may have led to the anxiety and mental breakdown! Kae-Kae's additional counseling this spring will be helping her develop more ADD coping mechanisms and helping her with her panic attacks- which she thought was asthma all fall.  She answered over 90% of the ADD questions as a yes and is very excited to know that there is something somewhat fixable for her.  I could list a mile of issues about how this shows up, but the most consistently obvious is the fact that she can not remember to do one thing for longer than one minute.  Literally.  Like every night and morning we tell her to immediately go brush her teeth, and she immediately forgets- every time.  And she will be 14 in a month.  She does not even notice when she goes FOUR days without brushing.  This is not normal.  And the 1-2 hours to do 15 math problems EVERY DAY.  I could go on....


Anyway, that is what has been happening here.  Joy-Bug has taken every free brain cell that Dan and I have.  That is why we have that deer in the headlights look ALL THE TIME.  


But, God has been faithfully helping us navigate in His time and with His provision.  We made it to Christmas. We made it to the end of year 2 of the worst years of our lives.  He is still God and we are still His children.  


Amen.


Heather



1 comment:

  1. Hi Heather,

    I'm so sorry to hear that things continue to be difficult for your family. We are praying that God would give your children healing and progress and that He will fill you with His wisdom and peace.

    Our whole family sends their love!

    ReplyDelete

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