Joshua

So when I started this I was going to write about each one of my kids individually so I need to get back to that. Joshua Robert Dunn is my 9 year old he is a very energectic kid to say the least. His birthday is November 14, 1996 he was due January 6, 1997, Obviously he was early. He had a rough start but only had to stay in the hospital for 3 weeks in the NICU fortunately he did pretty well he did have some breathing difficulty in the first week with his breathing and required cpap to help him breath he was also tube fed for that week as I was still admitted to the hospital due to complications that caused his early birth. I had a full placenta previa and placenta increta and hemoraghed badly they didn't know at the time if I would make it myself and had to transfer him to a different hospital with a level 3 NICU. He did well though but was a very high needs baby and reacted to his environment a lot he did not like large crowds, noisy places or bright lights and had to be on a schedule for a couple of years for everything otherwise it was like caose for him he couldn't handle it as a baby he would just cry then as he got older he just acted out in groups, now unfortunately he likes crowds and feeds off of the energy. Also when he was born he had really bad jaundice and spent a couple of weeks in a biliblanket to get his bilirubin levels down to exceptable levels. When we were able to take him home he had to pass a car seat challenge where basically they put him in his carseat attached to his O2 monitor and heart monitor to see how he handled it and what adjustments need to be made so he could his heart was fine but he was having apnea spells and his O2 would drop a bit so they had to figure out a way to prop him in his carseat with things underneath him and behind his neck to help him breath better, we did that for about another month after he got out and I have to say we didn't really go out much because of it. After the preemie experience he did pretty well other then occasional apnea spells at night till he was about 2 months old he was healthy which was great because they told us in the hospital to expect him to have problems due to being early. The only thing that happened to him was when he was 6 months Kellys dad (his grandpa) fell on the stairs while holding him and broke his left leg in 2 places just above the knee and just below the knee and had to where a cast in the middle of the summer from the waist down with a wooden bar between his knees, let me tell you carrying a 6 month old with a 15 pound cast is not fun especially with that bar in the way. So anyway the rest of his being a baby was good till he hit his toddler stages and his temper really kicked in, boy can he throw a fit this is partly where we started seeing the signs of him having ADHD or some other issue as he was very volitile with his tempers if he was upset he was very upset and could be very destructive, we couldn't figure this out since his brother was always so much more mellow even when upset he didn't break things the other thing was Joshua had no sense of fear of injuring himself he would do all kinds of things that you would be convinced he was going to seriously injure himself. When he was happy he has always been really happy and overly excited literally bouncing off the walls and anything else he could bounce off of. When he was 8 and towards the middle of the second grade we started discussing seriously having him tested for ADHD as we really felt something at this point needed to be done to help him relax a little bit both for his rages and his over excited times when he was bouncing and his attention span for things such as school work. After Kindergarten and first grade and the talks with the teacher and yes even the principal about some of the things he would do we decided it was time to make that decision and he saw a dr who diagnosed him with ADHD and started him on Adderal, now don't jump down my throat about that as I have heard many opinions on the medicating debate and I think really has to be a personal decision between the parents and childs dr, now Joshua was really getting into some distructive behaviors and his lack of fear was scaring me as it didn't scare him one bit to jump from the rood of our house, I still have no idea how he managed to not hurt himself so many times but I was truely convinced he was going to do something really bad sometime and if the meds could help that and other issues as well I was willing to try it. We don't medicate him to strongly he is in no way a zombie as I used to hear people say about kids on those drugs he is still my lovable energetic Joshua but he thinks a little more before he does things and his teachers can help him with his schoolwork and I only get occasional calls now from the school instead of a minimum of weekly calls as before. Before meds we tried everything we could think of and were suggested to us he was always on a strick schedule as far as sleeping and eating, etc. otherwise we would completely lose him we tried different diets, during his rages I would sit him down and try to hold him still with my arms like hugging him from behind but sometime this would end up with me being hurt by him (which I know he really didn't mean to do) I would do that anywhere it happened even getting looks from strangers who didn't understand that holding him like that was the only way to eventually get him to calm down, I used to get people walking by who would comment with things like "that boy needs a good spanking" how do you give a kid a spanking when even when you have tried that it doesn't faze him.
Anyways this post makes him sound kind of bad all in all he is a very sweet little boy who would do anything for his little sisters. Putting him on the medication though a hard decision has helped him though and he agrees to this also. If at any time he felt he didn't like how it made him feel or just didn't want to have it any more I would take him off of it as long as he felt he could control himself so it would be in the future I suppose. Joshuas only other issue is his eyes cross and he has a lazy eye on his left eye, so he wears bifocal glasses when I can get him to keep them on he thinks they get in the way to much so we are constantly battling to have him keep his glasses on. Joshua does great in school though educationally speaking he is ahead in his reading and when we started him on his meds his handwritting improved drastically as he actually cared what it looked like. He loves to draw and is very good at that also he will draw most things but loves to draw monster trucks mostly these days. I can't imagine what I would do without my sweet Joshua and his antics he is at camp right now and the house seems awfully quiet without him and the girls aren't quite sure what to do and they are used to having Joshua to entertain him.