Anxiety....

For most of his life, as long as I can remember anyways, we have struggled to manage Logan's anxiety. He was the child that found every transition difficult. He'd cling to us for dear life whenever a new situation would arise. Even the arrival of family members would set him off. As he got older, it got a little easier. Daycare really helped him adjust to new scenarios and people, but one element that never subsided was his sleep habits. His anxiety would keep him up at night. From the time he was a toddler, we would struggle with getting him to sleep and keeping him asleep. If you ever visit, it's apparent from my vast library of children sleep books that it's always been a huge disruption in our lives.

Like every parent, we expected our sleep habits to change and the amount of sleep we actually got to decrease, but we didn't expect our 8-year-old to be sleeping on our floor each and every night. Not only is his sleeplessness disrupting his life, but it's deeply affecting ours.

We had a major setback last year. Logan had to endure huge amounts of life-staggering changes within a very short amount of time. We switched daycares on him to one located at the elementary school he would attend, London arrived a short couple of months later, we decided to put our house on the market and move, I returned to work after a long maternity leave, we decided to take our house off the market and stay, then suddenly we were moving again. Two weeks before moving, Logan lost his grandma to breast cancer. Unlike most 6-year-olds, Logan fully understood the ramifications of death...The finality of it. It was very hard on him. Then we moved, he started a new school, etc. It was an AWFUL year. His anxiety was high, he wasn't sleeping at all by this point (which means NO ONE in our house was), he was having major panic attacks that were lasting for 2 hours, sometimes longer.

The stress on our family at this time was unimaginable. After the episodes, I'd drive to Target's parking lot and sob in my car. We were unsure of who to turn to, didn't know what to do. It felt like NO ONE understood Logan, including ourselves. We craved some normalcy in our lives. Out of sheer exhaustion, we sought help from mental health professionals. We really didn't fully know or understand what we were dealing with when it came to him.

After numerous testing...Brad and I both filled out separate packets on Logan (by the way, the mother's packet is MUCH larger than the father's, so that just goes to show it truly is always the mother's fault!). We also gave one to his teacher. His therapist said all the results came back as nothing more than anxiety. He explained it in a great way to us and he not only provided some solutions for us as a family, but also gave us someone to talk to. He became as much of our therapist as he was Logan's.

Brad and I were totally against using any kind of medication. We were deathly afraid of the side effects. It bothered us that most of these drugs weren't approved for children under the age of 18. We didn't want Logan being a guinea pig. Finally, one night after recurring episodes with Logan, we broke down and gave him a drug prescribed by his doctor. Afterwards, I went to my room and sobbed. I felt like I had given up on him.

We didn't notice any real difference in Logan after a month of giving him the meds. In fact, we noticed new behaviors that we weren't fond of. I dug in and did tons of research on this drug and quite frankly, we were scared. We took him off immediately (with the help of professionals, of course).

Little by little, Logan started to make a comeback all on his own. However, as the start of a new school year loomed in the distance, he became frantic again. I really felt we had made a vast amount of improvement in Logan's behavior and I wanted to help him transition to the new year appropriately. We tried something new this time, something more on the mild side. We saw amazing changes in him within a week of starting the new medication--even the neighbors were noticing. Logan was able to handle transitions without any kind of breakdown, he was able to communicate his concerns appropriately and respectfully, the irrational fears were almost non-existent, his OCD behaviors had subsided. It was an amazing breakthrough....

And for the first time in about SIX years, Logan has slept in his bed all night long. He hasn't even poked his head in our room for about 5 nights now. This is a HUGE accomplishment on his part.

However, I think it's also important to note that medication isn't Logan's ONLY therapy. It's merely a part of an overall program to teach him how to deal with his emotions appropriately. We've altered his diet somewhat, we are very strict about what kinds (and how much) video games and movies he can watch. We've incorporated brainwave technology--A CD he listens to each night to calm his nerves. We've also issued consequences for him when his behavior gets out of hand. We firmly believe he needs to learn self-control regardless of his condition. He also continues on with his talk therapy and we see a chiropractor regularly to help keep his spine aligned. Surprisingly, we've really see some remarkable results with this and we notice immediately when he's out of alignment now by his behavior and sleep patterns.

My point in posting this is to help others. I know there are parents out there feeling the same way we did about putting your child on medication. It's really about finding the RIGHT drug for your and/or your child. I still have my concerns--don't get me wrong. But I also believe that by doing so, we have helped Logan immensely. He's able to move forward in his life without fear. I never realized how badly he needed our help until now...Until we saw huge leaps forward. It's like someone gave us our son back....And for that, I'll be forever grateful!