Three steps forward, two steps back..... ??

 Well, that's what it felt like at the time ..... let me explain....

Ashton's behavior started spiraling out of control in November and culminated with us having to put him back on an anti-psychotic medication to somewhat control his mood swings, odd behaviors and aggressiveness. Unfortunately, what caused the initial downward spiral was ANOTHER medication that we had started in November to help with some OCD tendencies.

There were some massive all-out tantrums (from a kid who is nearly as big as I am, that's not so fun) in some very public places. He was also basically attacking me at every turn for the smallest things. Aside from the chunks of hair he pulled out of my head, and the bruises he and I both incurred from his "fighting with mommy", things seem to be evening out, behaviorally for him.

What culminated all of this into us weaning him from the problematic medication that I thought was causing the initial issue, was Ashton decided it was a great idea to try and jump out of the car while I was driving down the road. He had been trying to escape the house at that point and one day, I was going to my husband's grandparents house to finish up some laundry and Ashton climbed into the front seat (while I was driving) and then on a side street in a neighborhood, climbed over top of me and tried to climb out the window. At this point, I stopped the car and scrambled to figure out what I should do. In any case, the situation got resolved, we made it back home safely and all was well. This lead me to calling our DAN doctor and he made an "emergency" appointment for us with a psychiatrist at our local children's hospital. That appointment isn't for another week, and it was made back at the beginning of January!

Desperate to help Ashton, we started weaning him off of it and I found out about three weeks into the weaning process that Ashton had been hiding the pills under our napkin holder. Since then (it's been about one and a half weeks now) his behavior has gotten a LOT better and his mood is much improved. I'm glad he seems to be getting back to his normal, happy self.

He's happier, he's more social, he's completely his school work in a much better fashion and as evidenced by all of this, his report card was AWESOME! He had all Ss (satisfactory) in behavior areas and his academic grades stayed at Cs (pretty normal for an ASD kiddo with an IEP and modified curriculum) except one, which he *raised* to a B! Even better ......... he is FINALLY, after being in the educational system since he was two and a half years old, reading **ON GRADE LEVEL**! YAY!!

Anyways, here's a recent pic of the booger. He has a really big adversion to brightness (outside mostly) so he's squinting. Still a cute picture though ...... :)

The only other "bad" thing that has been happening is his sleeping is really out of whack and he's got some really erratic sleep patterns. He'll sleep completely through the night from 8pmish to around 6amish for a few nights in a row. Then, he'll mix it up with waking up at 2, 3, or 4am and staying awake the rest of the night, yikes! *sighs* The biggest worry with this a few weeks ago was that he was trying to escape from the house in the middle of the night, but now it's more of the fact that he just doesn't want to go back to sleep.

The GOOD thing that's happening is .... he's realizing that if he ASKS to go outside and tells me why he wants to go outside, that I'm more likely to let him go. Last night, he asked to go outside to "play in the backyard" and I told him to get his shoes, coat, hat & gloves on (it is.. afterall maxing out in the 30s this week). He did and he and his brother played outside for forty-five minutes, came inside to eat dinner and then they went back outside for another thirty minutes until it was too dark outside to play anymore. I wanted to take pictures but I felt like I would spoil their moment and fun so I'll try to get pictures the next time.

Well, I guess I should do another post on Holden (who is doing really well) so that he gets his own glory :) Keep Ashton in your thoughts as we hope that we're past the regressive phase that he was in and that things can continue to improve and his behavior gets more under control.

Enjoy the day!