up to the challenge

A few weeks ago Dave told Calvin that if he could run a mile without stopping at all, in under 10 minutes, he would buy him a new gaming system. I thought that this was a pretty lofty, if not completely impossible goal. Calvin went out running with Dave a couple of times but could only make it a few houses and then he'd stop with cramps completely out of breath. He only tried this a few times and the rest of the days he wouldn't even go out and try. However, he was completely planning on getting the Wii U as evidenced by his hours spent shopping online for the best wii u package! He also told his sisters that they could keep his old wii when he got his new wii u.  I was very concerned that he would have a major let down as weeks and even months passed by and he couldn't get his wii u. He is not good at waiting. We told Calvin that it would take one or more months to train himself to be able to run that far without stopping.


This morning Dave got home from work and offered to take Calvin out to practice running. Dave said, "Let's see how far you can go without stopping." Calvin went with him and low and behold he ran the entire mile without stopping. It was amazing. He was really dragging toward the end but hung in there.  Lexey and I were out on bikes and saw him and Dave coming down the road so we cheered him on as he ran the last 100 yards.

He came straight in the house and sat with the open fridge getting lots of drinks of cold water and telling the girls about his battle "I had cramps but I just kept going" "My mind was telling me I should stop but I just told myself to keep going".  Good for Calvin!

Later this afternoon Dave took him out to get his wii. Christmas will be a real let down after this. 

Today is the biggest college football day of the year so Dave told Calvin he'd have to wait to play until tomorrow. Calvin said that would be fine....but Dave ended up finding another solution, letting Calvin use the computer monitor for the wii while he watches football on the big tv.


I wonder what else Calvin can do ..... sometimes I wonder if we underestimate him.

sports

Since coming to Houston I've tried to get Calvin to sign up for sports. At first we put him in Karate since he was doing so great in Karate at school. Technically it's martial arts, not karate. After just a couple of weeks Calvin decided he didn't like it because it was too hot. I chose martial arts since it is an indoor sport and would have great A/C but  Calvin didn't even like the exercise heating him up!  Once you get warm in this town you can never cool off!

There is a challenger basketball league here probably much like the one we tried at home. I asked Calvin if he wanted to sign up and he said no. When I asked him why he declined to answer several times.   Finally when I asked him one time he told me that he doesn't want to be in basketball with all of the handicapped people. It is interesting that he expressed that. He has been going to school with handicapped people for a few years now, some kind of like him and some much more handicapped. The basketball group was made up of people with more profound disabilities, many being intellectually disabled. It is tough to find a place where Calvin "fits" since he can't keep up with healthy kids his own age and is a little too far advanced to hang with a grouping of handicapped kids. I'd love to help him advance so that he could be with typical kids but I'm not sure he'll ever catch up.   The best solution I've found so far is letting him hang out with patient kids who will help him out, adults who are patient or much younger kids (2-5 years old) who he is basically on par with.  He is happy in his niche as long as his sisters aren't driving him crazy.

cute Calvin

Calvin is doing really well these days. He still has his moments...though his fits aren't as long or as intense or as frequent, which is great.

Lately Calvin has been really into stuffed animals. Lexey was sweet enough to give Calvin one of her stuffed animals "pup" a dog from build a bear that she got a year ago. Calvin talks to pup, takes pup on his bike, to school and to bed. It is very cute.

A few days ago I took Calvin with me to do some errands. I stopped by a thrift store to see if there were tennis rackets. They didn't. But they did have lots of stuffed animals (stuffy's). Calvin looked through each one.  He spent about an hour and found several that he really wanted to take home. Since they ranged in price from $0.75 to $3.99 he had enough money to get a few. He ended up picking 4 very small cheap ones to share with the girls and then one bigger one to give to Jo...a build a bear bunny.  My hands were all greasy from touching all of those disgusting used stuffed animals so we hurried home to wash our hands and wash the stuffies. They came out of the wash looking good as new!  Calvin made name tags for them all and has been taking a couple of them on all of his adventures.

Dave mentioned that perhaps Calvin has matured from toddler (2-3 year old in constant tantrum) to a 4 year old.  Funny and sad at the same time. Glad he is in a sweeter stage.

email

Sometimes Calvin emails me. It is really cute. Today I got this gem:  (Calvin has been reading a lot and has recently been putting lots of books, movies and CD's on hold. Last night we had been talking about this particular book, wondering if the library has it yet)

mom i put on hold diary of a wimpy kid the long haul, and its place in queue number is 149 thanks 



On Halloween Calvin decided not to wear his costume...but then changed his mind and sent this email.

Mom can you come to school with my costume? Because i am now wanting to wear my karate Gi and belt. And please email me back so i can know if you can or not? I U 

medication mistake

Wed nights are always so late because we have scouts/activity days at the church. We don't get home until 8:30 and then have to start bedtime. I went to give Calvin his pills around 845 or 9 and sent him off to bed. A little after 10 Dave went in and Calvin was still awake which is extremely unsual. He asked if I had given Calvin his pills which I had. Dave was paged and had some other things to do and then at 11 Calvin was still awake. Even more extremely unusual.  Dave asked, are you sure you didn't give Calvin his morning meds instead of evening meds? I jumped up to check and sure enough I had given him morning meds, which included a strong stimulant. Poor Calvin, no wonder he couldn't sleep. He was so patient and sweet about it too, just laying in bed, wide awake and talking sweetly to us when we came in repeatedly to see if he was okay. I gave Calvin the evening pills he needed which weren't repeated in the morning dose I had given him and then we tried going to bed. About midnight he got up for a bowl of cereal and then went right to sleep after that. Amazingly enough he still got up and got on the bus today.  As difficult as Calvin is much of the time, little experiences like this remind me of how patient he really is. He goes through a lot and even though he has many tumultuous moments he is a precious and sweet soul.

How was the move for Calvin?

I've had several sweet emails or phone calls with people asking how Calvin is doing for the move.  First, thanks for asking. Second, thanks for acknowledging the fact that it is hard to move a child like Calvin!   So hard, in fact, I almost didn't move. But I'm glad I did.  Thanks to those who kicked me in the right direction.

Leading up to the move: surprisingly no complaints or very few. Calvin did mention one day, I think his last day of school, that his friend was so sad when he learned Calvin was moving that he had to put his head on the desk and take a time out. So cute, love how these sweet kids try to learn coping skills at school.

The move: Calvin did fine in the car. The car is actually a great place for him as long as the girls aren't bugging him. Calvin likes to sit around and play on his tablet so he is pretty content. The fact that we eat tons of fast food is also good for him.  He liked white sands. Took the elevator down to the caverns instead of hiking in.  He enjoyed swimming in the hotel pool. Overall, he did fine.

New home: Calvin did okay in our new house. The first couple of weeks were quite stressful for me going to meetings trying to get him registered for school, get a new dr and getting medications set up here.  The prescriptions I arrived with were not accepted here as an out of state prescription cannot be filled for certain medicines. So, we rushed to find a new dr. with an apt ...sat in the dr office with 4 kids for 3 hours....went to 5 pharmacies and called 10 more trying to get the prescription filled. I was ready to drive back to CA.  Then after a couple of days, Calvin dumped the entire bottle of dextroamphetiamine in water and ruined them.  It was a rough few days after that before we got new pills.

So far, Calvin has written 4 bad words on the walls. H x2, A, F.

New school: Calvin's new school is fine. He has been happy to go to school every day and is in a good mood when he gets home. I don't think they're pushing him very hard academically but I can see some wisdom in getting him comfortable and happy there being the #1 priority. 

New Bus: Not as smooth...we miss our sweet bus aide Jeanneane who we had for 2  years and who Calvin asked if she could move in with us! He is on the bus 1hr 45 min in the morning which is way too long so I don't really blame him for not loving it.  I fully expect this will be a struggle all year. It was at home for a long time too.

New karate: signed him up and he went once and said he was too sweaty. never back again.

New piano teacher: Clare is taking from a man this year and Calvin really liked him so he asked to take from the same teacher.  We'll see how that goes.

Calvin knew - medication continued

- trileptal 750mg twice daily
- tenex 2mg at bedtime
- fluoxetine (Prozac) 15 mg  in the morning
- risperidone 1.5mg at bedtime
- vyvanse 40mg in the morning
- dextroamphetimine 7.5mg at 3pm

We held stead with Calvin's medications for several months, but we still were seeing lots of break through tantrums. Calvin started telling us that he needed more medicine. More of the "blue capsule" (vyvanse) because it wasn't strong enough. We also noticed that his worst behavior was in the afternoon. I thought that it was just because the afternoon is when I have all the 4 kids together so of course it's the most stressful for him. But, it also occurred to us that it might be that the medication from morning is wearing off by then.  We told Calvin he couldn't make excuses for hitting, breaking, tearing, etc. blaming medicine and had to make good choices himself, but he insisted that he needed to take another capsule when he got home from school. So we told him we'd ask the psychiatrist when we saw him next.


We reported to the psychiatrist that we were still having violent tantrums, many of them occurring in the afternoon (or even in the morning before meds were on board).  we also told him that Calvin expressed the desire to take more medication in the afternoon like the vyvanse he was taking in the morning.  The dr. said we could try a booster in the afternoon, a quick acting medicine similar to the slow release medicine in vyvanse. But he also thought we'd get more bang for our buck by increasing the rispridol.  

We tried both, one at at a time of course, actually increasing rispiradol first as the doctor suggested, but it was the addition of the booster pill that made the biggest difference. Dextroamphetamine, given daily at 3pm has been a game changer for us.  I thought it was neat that Calvin had identified which medication needed to be added. Not sure if it was a lucky guess or he is actually that in tune with how he feels. Either way we're happy for him.

Now, he is by no means cured, but it is good to have made a little progress from a year ago. If we hadn't Calvin would probably not be living with us anymore, as he would have been to aggressive, unsafe and harmful. As it is we have bought ourselves a little more time with him in our home, difficult as it may be I still feel it is nice to have the family together.


PS. It is common that the ADHD medications wear off by mid afternoon.  For most ADHD kids it's not a huge deal since by then they are home from school, but where it so significantly changes Calivn's behavior it is a big deal for him.