Show Us Your Life - Special Needs

From the time Peyton was about 6 months we knew that he was a little different than most children but he was our first so we just thought ok this is normal. He was always so aggressive with other children. He needed to be held very tightly before he would sleep. He played with his toys differently. Like took the tires off his trucks and would line them up or would break them. He was very destructive with his things. I remember family members telling us how independent he is because he always wanted to be by himself instead of playing with other children.

Well when he started an early PreK program, he hated it. Hated to be around the other children, hated me for making him go. Other children would be learning colors, abc's, and numbers but Peyton couldnt remember what he had for lunch. He teachers thought we should have him evaluated by his doctor. So we did. In the beginning she suspected autism because of his social play and other things  but basically tested him for ADHD. We thought and thought about and waited and waited, but ultimately decided to put him on medicine to help him to control his tantrums and to help him consentrate on learning.

We had to play around with the medicine a few times to get him the one that worked best for him. The only down side for him with this medicine is that lack of appetite and the distruption of sleep at night. So we then needed to put him on a medicine to help him sleep. He has now  been on this regimen for about 2 years and its helping. Its not a miracle drug and he does still have outburst but he is able to function in the classroom and he seems like a regular 7 year old.

Something else that troubles our Peyton is that he has a few learning disablities. When he started Kindergarten his teachers noticed that he had trouble remembering short poems, songs, things that are repetitous that children his age can learn. He has trouble writing, counting, and remembering how to write a letter. They score the students and it just evalutates how they are progressing. Peyton's scores were always really low. His teacher finally sat me down at a parent teacher conference and politely told me that we needed to get him evaluated for learning disabilities. Well she was right. We had him evaluted by a Speech and Language Pathologist. She tested him for everything that they could at his age. She determined that his main problem was that he has Auditory Processing Disorder and also Visual Processing Disorders as well as Receptive Language Disorder, and Dysgraphia. Finally we had a reason for the trouble he was having and we knew ways to teach him so that he could progress. We ultimately decided it was best to retain him in Kindergarten. Boy were we right. He has improved so much this past year in kindy. He is also going to Speech and Language therapy every week.

It may seem on here that Peyton has a lot of issues but their not major. We can get through them. Lots of parents are dealing with things far worse than our issues and I cant imagine how they get through it. We are so blessed to be his parents. He has really thought us alot. We couldnt be more proud of him!!!!