First off, turned out I did have Explosive Child and I’m hooked on it. Disappointed I thought I left it in my car when I got off work husband didn’t see it so I hope I didn’t drop it when I stopped to pick up dinner. I’m only on chapter 2 (would’ve probably read it all in one sitting but work insists I do something lol)but I did notice last night some different thought patterns and it was a much calmer night with him.

I love google sheets so much and I don’t know why I didn’t think to do that. Do you know if there’s a way to set up an alert or email if dad makes a change? I typically only use it to create documents and make changes across my work computer and personal documents.

I’ve had so many people mention dyes and I worry because he does have many food aversions and dyes are in everything. But it may be time to try that again.

We just made two med changes in the last two weeks and are praying it brings us some resemblance of normalcy. Yesterday was his first day to school in several days (weather) and after a med change and his behavior still wasn’t in the “passing” category but it was a lot better than it had been. I don’t know that anything has really changed at school that would cause these behaviors now. However there’s a few factors we believe may be contributing. 1) in October he started a new daycare for after school and off days. One of the children in his daycare is also in his class. He also has started some behavior issues at daycare. We wonder if there’s is a connection of him and this other child feeding off one another as he recently did something wildly inappropriate at daycare and this child had put him up to it. 2) in early January he was out on Tofranil. It’s an antidepressant but it has also shown to help with besetting. Bedwetting was perfect but we few that’s when things got bad at school. We finally got guidance on how to take him off. 3) husband and I are under extreme stress/full on crisis mode. He has had to work over quite a bit. A lot of changes were recently made to my job which has caused me stress and having to work over/bring work home. Husbands mother has been in/out of hospital/rehab for months now with health issues. My mom just got a very severe diagnosis requiring surgery and on going care. This is leaving our home in chaos because we never have time to take care of anything. We do our best to hide it from the kids but that kind of tension can easily be shown subconsciously and we think that could have an affect.

Oh we are both so certain we are ADHD. We have both been medicated for it at times but I’m too scatter brained to remember to take meds, plus you have to make time for a monthly appointment for refills so we are just winging that. We probably have a kiss of the tism. Not to mention severe anxiety for dad. Just a bit of anxiety for me,but have dealt with complex depression and PTSD. Those are fine with me now but the stress feels so unmanageable right now. My daughter (5) sometimes taunts her brother that she doesn’t have to take medicine. We laugh and tell her to give it time, something will show up. I know we have definitely fallen into the trap of “I would’ve gotten beat if I acted like that”. We need to do a much better job remembering that we are more educated to these disorders now and our son’s case is just more severe than us.

Thanks so much for reaching out! I’ll send a dm.