Everything in moderation....

Mary has a tendency to obsess about all different kinds of things. Her obsessions come and go. We tried medication, didn't work. The meds for ocd just made her less "inhibited". Mary expressed those inhibitions by prancing around like she was a trampy teenager. No thank you! I'll deal with the obsessions! I know that if Mary gets too much of something that she likes, she will obsess to a point that she can't live without it. Then I go in like the bad guy and take it away.

Mary loves to think she is a teenager, she has an obsession with cell phones. She owns tons of toy phones. Well, I came up with a plan to get her to stop pulling the hems out of all her clothes. If she can go the day without unraveling her shirt, she gets a smiley face, after 4, she gets the ultimate reward. That being, my Ipod Touch. There is a texting app, and Mary gets to text. It started out with just messaging her sisters, then my niece visited, Mary got her number. My daughter had a friend sleep over, Mary got her number. Before you know it, she's got 4 different conversations going. I read them and realized her sentence structure is improving with each text. Great! I have a teaching tool as well! Not so fast........

I started to notice her freaking out. Battery warning, she charges it, and checks it every other second for a message. If I tell her I need to see it, she freaks, "don't read my texts"! Then we had a setback. I noticed that while Mary was texting 3 different people, she managed to unravel the hem on her skirt. I know it was because she was anxiously waiting for the next message to arrive. Immediately I confiscated the Ipod. There's a Pearl Jam song, "Crazy Mary", wild eyed, crazy Mary. That's what I was looking at. Mary said all kinds of things, "your mean, I can't live here anymore, I'm going to move in with Sarah", etc. The look on her face was, anger, panic, sadness, fear, all in one expression.

Once again, I will scale it back and modify any way I can so she does not become so obsessed. I will admit, there was a part of me that realized it needed to be scaled back. Then, a part of me that says, nah, she's happy, there's peace in the house, let it go. Someone needs to remind me of this the next time the words, "I have a great incentive for Mary" comes out of my mouth!

Time for a new evaluation

It has been 4 years since Mary's last neuropsychological evaluation. After 5 hours of testing, my husband and I get to meet with the psychologist. The evaluation and recommendations are so extensive we need 2 appointments. Our first appt. was this past Tuesday. I was hoping for one diagnosis to explain it all. We were convinced Mary had Asperger's Syndrome because she has many characteristics of AS. Well, we had a list of 9 of the doctors diagnostic impressions. I believe they cover just about every area of learning there is! ADHD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder with OCD traits, Developmental Coordination Disorder, Mixed Receptive and Expressive Language Disorder, Developmental Mathematics Disorder, Learning Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Non- Verbal (What the heck is that!) Possible Sensory Processing Disorder and possible Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Seizure Disorder. Is there no way to narrow all this down to one thing. It's not that I want to put a label on her, it would just be so much easier for me to explain, especially to myself, if I could focus on one thing! I guess I am ADD as well! I can't wait to go to our next appt. on Friday so we can get some direction in dealing with all this. Mary is getting more difficult to handle. I feel like I am caring for a toddler. I have to have my eye on her every minute. She will leave the house without telling anyone, and she has started to destroy her clothing. Mary will pick at the hems of her shirts and shorts until they unravel, and she will rip them. I have string all over my house! Mary's pediatrician put her on medication for her OCD, because she was picking at a spot on her forhead. Well the meds worked, she doesn't pick her head anymore, just her cuticles and her clothing. What now??