January 2010 misc. observations

It never ceases to amaze me how powerful simple crawling can be. I guess my irregular schedule of exercises has proven to be somewhat of a good thing. Since the only therapy we are doing is NR at this point, I can easily identify behaviors and changes due to following the program. I am so confused and frustrated at this point, something that is hard to admit. While my life is filled with things to worry about, if I compare myself to the average person, I am quite fortunate. I live each day as if it were my last, and I am grateful for every moment I'm given. I wish I had some clear cut answers when it comes to solving my daughter's issues. What is the cause of her problems, sensory processing disorder, RAD, prematurity, or a non fully integrated neurological system? Do I treat all at the same time? Do I experiment with different therapies until I find something that works? I know most people who do NR do several therapies at once and the practitioners encourage that. I will use more than one if I need to, but for now I'd like to do one at a time. We are going to explore attachment therapy, I think that is crucial at this point. I guess I keep hoping for a magic solution or the light bulb moment when something specific is pinpointed and a magic solution revealed.

I had one of those knock the wind out of your sails moment yesterday when I heard a 9 year old girl describe S as 'very energetic' and a few other descriptive words that stabbed me right in the heart. S can have very calm moments, but they aren't frequent. She can play with something she likes for very long periods of time, but other times she buzzing around the room. Her little stages she goes through are relatively short lived. Just when I start getting worried about them, they disappear. The latest is a little throat clearing sound. I remember reading something about it on the Neuro group, but I doubt I'll get time to go back and investigate it. Time seems to be the biggest issue. If only I had time to do it all, I'm sure everyone feels this way. I hate the time it takes to type all of this out, but it is actually theraputic for me to get it out. I don't want to forget where we've come from in this journey and how far we've made it. My intention is for this to help others through it all. I plan to be able to post when we've graduated, I hope that's not too far away. It will probably be another year, especially at my pace. I'd like to think that more people are like me and aren't perfect in getting 100% in every day. This way they can be encouraged that they can still get to the end by going a little slower, and won't give up because they've had to take a break. I think the program is bringing up things that S can't verbalize, and it's causing the things we are seeing now. She is very scared of a lot of things. We carry her a lot, which I don't mind because it's great for attachment. The newest thing that has come up is that she lets out this little utterance of panic, like she just saw somthing that startled her. It seems to be connected to the throat clearing thing. It almost sounds like the grumting sort of sounds that autistic kids sometimes make. Yes, this scares the heck out of me. Are we dealing with autism? I don't think so, I highly doubt it would just show up now. I've thought back to anything that might have changes in our lives and I thought of something very disturbing. She's had some pretty big bumps on her forehead from bumping her head. She didn't have any significant falls, but she's still had a couple of sizable lumps on her head in the past month. I think if she had some type of damage that we would see it in other areas. The poor thing seems to be prone to injury on her head. It doesn't help that she head bangs when she is frustrated.

I guess the last thing is that there is no one person who is going through the same exact thing. It doesn't mean that no one can help, but I still feel alone. I have a couple of good friends who are good listeners, and that is priceless. Friends come and go, but all you need is one or two who you can be there for and they do the same for you. I've had other friends who are adoptive parents also, but just like any other situation, if your child is making more progress than theirs, they tend to dump you. Same thing happens if they get beyond the bad stuff before you do, they don't want to be in that category anymore, so you get dumped again. Such is life.