What’s best for each child is different from family to family, child to child, but one thing for sure I know is that each parent fights for what they feel is best for their child. For me, it’s all about trying to figure out how to properly medicate my six year old son. From age two we have fought and fought to figure out why this child was pretty much born angry. Back in the day his Dad and I always said that Aj had one mood and emotion only, that was anger. Maybe you could call it irritability but anger was his most common emotion. There were no signs of compassion, sadness or anything else, just anger.

After seeking many consults with various specialists for testing and going through therapy for assistance in parenting techniques to work with our usually angry child, we ended up in the hands of a pediatric psychiatrist for diagnosis for a medication choice. The various medications Aj had tried; one being something for sleep after natural remedies didn’t work and another for ADHD, had just never worked fully. No matter what was tried on Aj he would have results for a short period of time and then go back to hello angry, irritable little man.

That is where we are at again. The switching from Risperidone to Abilify has seemed to only worsen his side effects of being irritable and argumentative to boot. Aj is back to arguing over the simplest of things such as a word he feels is not a real word and in turn getting mad at his book for the word appearing over and over in the book.  For instance, the other day I was helping him with sounding out a word in a book he was reading, the word to him was suppose to be home but in all reality it was cottage. Based on context Aj knew the book wanted to reference the home of the lady in the book and yet felt cottage was not a real word. No matter how many times I broke the word down, showed him how home or house looks {two words he does know how to read and spell}, he just would not believe me.  Aj was convinced I was lying to him and proceeded to even yell at the book each time the word cottage would show up. My daughter was frustrated too because she was trying to help him sound out the word and explaining it is a real word to no avail.

Little instances like that with the word cottage are typical of Aj when medication is not right or he is not on any medication at all. I am at the point of tears nearly every day because Aj isn’t sleeping and I just don’t know what to do. The only thing I can think to do is write this all down and put it out there for someone somewhere to read… and in the meantime I put a call into his old therapist/counselor as well as his psychiatrist because I am at my wits end of knowing what to do. Sure, I can deal with no sleep for short periods of time but to combine no sleep with Aj’s change in behavior and moods? That is really testing what I can indeed handle.

After all, I obviously have other things going on in my life that need tending to as well, basically I am back to having my world revolve 100% around Aj. I am not complaining, I love my son, but what happens is this downward spiral of family disconnect. My daughter understands but is hurt because Aj is like he used to be {as she put it the other day} and misses out on time with me alone and my youngest takes full advantage of the change in Mommy having to pay the most attention to Aj. It’s such a difficult time and I honestly in all reality feel like Aj has gone back to what he was like without medication even though he is on medication.

I swear I will be fighting this battle for what is best for Aj all of his life, I just wish something would stick with him so that we can stop having these roller coaster rides of moods and emotions. It’s so hard for me, I can only imagine how Aj feels inside.