Lack of structure?

Today Jill went shopping and was gone most of the day. Liam for the most part was the same as he's been all week. Controlled by his impulses. It has gotten to the point where you must check on him very often, more often than you would for any other 2 or 3 year old. Today was more of the same, walk in a room, make a total mess of it, leave. While Jill and Seamus went to church, I noticed Liam and Brendan (who seems to often be an accomplice) were up in Aidan's room. I went up to find all of Aidan's blankets and pillows thrown all over, and the blinds pulled all the way up for the thousandth time. We have reprimanded Liam for handling the blinds the way he has, he has already mangled the ones in Seamus's room to the point Jill had to fix each slat one by one. The toys in the playroom were all scattered around as well. After Jill returned from church, then went out to the store, the boys went to wave bye in the living room. I cleaned up some toys in the family room then went into the living room and saw Liam moved the trampoline next to the window and was climbing on the window sill and holding onto the window. I simply removed Liam and the trampoline from the area. They all had lunch and Liam ate quite well and was not too messy. They all then appeared tired so I sat with Liam and Brendan who each fell asleep for about 2.5 hours, ahhh. Aidan fell asleep an hour later after playing by himself and doing his own thing in peace. Upon Liam and Brendan waking up they went in the dining room and just started removing the toys from the bins and just making a mess. I insisted repeatedly they clean up for over an hour. Finally, I told them no pizza if they did not get it cleaned up. I left it at that. A short time later I noticed Liam quiet. To my surprise he was cleaning up all the toys! He did a great job and I gave him positive reinforcement and encouragement to do it next time.

Throughout the day Liam has continued to put his fingers, blankets, toys, or any other object at hand in his mouth and pick at his gums. We are continuosly having to watch him with this so he does not damage his gums any worse. Jill washed his blankets today since 2 of them had several blood stains on them from him doing this. Believing that this behavior is a sensory related issue, Jill is going to get one of those gumming type brushes for babies that are teething. Hopefully that will give him the sensory input he is looking for before he does any serious damage to his teeth and gums.

When Jill got home and was putting some groceries away, we watched Liam climb on the edge of the couch and dive onto the cushions. He was told not to do it repeatedly and it continued until I went up to him and spoke directly in his face to not do it. That behavior stopped. Seamus had come home from Eli's (2 houses away) and all 4 started acting all silly with each other. It was quite funny at times to watch all 4 chasing each other around the house and end up in a pile on the floor or couch.

We gave Liam the melatonin and 1/2 capsule of anafranil for the first time. He was in bed by 9:15 since he did have a 2.5 hour nap. We will see how this goes.

Now overall Liam was not as bad as he has been at times this week. I believe a reason for that is I found myself checking on him very often, find him, see what he was doing, and redirect him. This is all fine, but it left me very little time to do anything else or work on any project while they played. Jill deals with this every day. I give her all the credit in the world for coping with this, it truly makes every hour of every day a challenge. I am really hoping that once this new medication schedule is set that Liam becomes more manageable. One other possible reason for his behavior is the schedule change he has had in the past week. He has gone from 4 days of school, 2.5 hours per day, to nothing. Changes like this could also be a factor as Liam has had more time without structure this past week than since Christmas. We will see how he does at school this week and report back what we hear from his teachers.

As always, tomorrow is a new day, full of new hopes and oppurtunities for us and Liam. We continue to hope for the best.