A Wasted Morning

Today was James' second visit with Dr. Rehnberg. He's a diagnostician that is trying to see what, if any, help James may need. This year James became very violent and anti social after he began Head Start. He was attacking his siblings for no reason, he would deliberately hurt himself when he was upset, he learned the phrase "I hate", he was hitting teachers and his speech therapist, and the list goes on and on. The day he slammed his brothers head into the pavement screaming "I hate school" and "school makes me sad" was just too much so we yanked him from the program. Within a week there was a marked difference; he was much calmer and more cooperative. Even his speech therapist noticed and remarked upon it. We still aren't sure why he didn't like the program. There were a lot of other children so perhaps the child/teacher ratio was just too large. He does have a speech delay and although he has made huge progress in the last year, he is still behind his peers so maybe that was part of it. He was also receiving a lot of stimulation, every day something was going on, so maybe it was too much for him. Who knows. However, although he has calmed down a lot, it still worried enough family members that we decided it would be a good idea if he was evaluated, so Carey's father chose Dr. Rehnberg.

I like him a lot but we aren't sure if James is going to settle down with him. The last meeting went pretty well considering James is very shy and can take a long time to warm up to people. He finally cooperated and did as the doctor asked him. However, today, he refused to do anything. He was being asked to name different pictures and he refused to talk above a very low whisper. So the doctor gave up on that and thought maybe just having him point at something might help. It was a simple task, looking at four shapes and choosing which was different; it could be color, size or shape. James fixated on color and refused to do anything else and I know darn well he knew what to do. He was just being hardheaded. A typical four year old that would rather play with his new pirate set than talk to a boring old doctor. Sigh....... The doctor finally had Carey and I leave the room to see if perhaps that would help. James had no problems talking with the doctor and didn't freak out like we thought he would. But he still wouldn't cooperate with the projects that he'd been set. We're going to try two more sessions with Dr. Rehnberg and if James till won't settle down with him, we'll seek out someone else to see if James will accept them better.