I am so tired I don't even know where to begin. My daughter is 2 years old, will be 3 in May, and has been "difficult" since birth. She was born with congenital muscular torticollis and required physical therapy to stretch out a muscle in her neck that didn't grow properly. What should have been 2 months of therapy ended up being 7 because she fought the therapist so fiercely. The PT and I joked that I needed to find an anger management class for 6 month olds.

She just kept getting worse, more independent, more defiant and out of control. My parents kept telling me that she was just like my little brother who was diagnosed with ODD, Depression and a learning disability (sequencing) but I hoped they were wrong. After the second time she got into the medicine (she used a chair to climb onto the counter so she could reach it, opened the child resistant caps, poured it into a medicine spoon and cleaned up after she spilled) I cried "uncle" along with the rest of the tears and went to the doctor.

The pediatrician listened to my tales of woe, how she won't sleep even when her eyes are drooping and she's visibly exhausted, how she refuses to let me help her with anything including getting dressed or into the car or how she randomly kicks or hits her older sister with no provocation to name a few, we got a referral to a child psychologist. So far there have been three visits, two for me and one with her. After the first visit we got a preliminary diagnosis of ODD which was solidified on the third visit and the psych told me that she is wondering about the possibility of ADHD or OCD (my daughter is very detail oriented and attached to her routine).

All of this is great, I'm getting some answers and possibilities for why my little girl looks like an angel and acts like the devil, but I still don't know what to do. She wouldn't nap this afternoon and finally fell asleep on the couch at 6:30 but when I moved her to her bed at 7 it took another hour of crying and getting up to collect her various necessities (her blankie, her cuppie, her books, her dolls) before she went back to sleep.

I guess I just want to know what I'm supposed to do now. Everything I've read says it's nearly impossible to diagnose ADHD and/or OCD in a child this young, which is fine, I don't need the diagnosis but I do need to know how to get her to go to sleep at night. And how to buckle her into her c****at without looking like something out of an amateur wrestling match.

Thanks for reading my long post and I'm looking forward to any ideas on how to deal with this.

I don't know if this will help much. We had a young ODD daughter. We did all the story stuff and snuggles and then we quietly turned the lights off while we tied her door shut with skipping rope to the banister. :) This really freaked the babysitter out when we asked her to do this too. :p

Remember, this is why God created alcohol. Not so frat kids can puke their brains out but for parents who just need to take the edge off at night while their 2 year old tries to shake the door open. :rolleyes: After a while she would go to sleep and we would then open the door and tuck her in. Unconvential you say, YES...but try until you find something that works. Period.

By the way the alcohol trick works well when you have to deal with unmedicated Schizophrenic or Bipolar relatives.

I am so glad you said that! My mother made me feel like the worst mother in the world when I admitted that I had turned the doorknob on her door around so I could lock her in.

Unfortunately it doesn't always work because I have this annoying habit of opening the door to check on her after it's been quiet for about 15 minutes and lately she hasn't been asleep then and I have to start the process all over once she sees me. My father and boyfriend have both suggested putting in a webcam so I can watch undetected.

My family aren't schizophrenic or bipolar, just OCD, depressed and anxious but alcohol works wonders anyway.

Remember, this is why God created alcohol. Not so frat kids can puke their brains out but for parents who just need to take the edge off at night while their 2 year old tries to shake the door open. :rolleyes: After a while she would go to sleep and we would then open the door and tuck her in. Unconvential you say, YES...but try until you find something that works. Period.What worked for us was having our son sleep in our bed with us until he was 7. Probably a lot less palatable in Western societies.

Today, at 7 years old, he gets two marbles (c.f. token economy) if he goes to sleep without his mother laying down with him.

My older daughter slept in my bed until she was 6. Risa won't sleep with me in my room or in hers. She spent all last week sleeping on the floor of her bedroom, although I have no idea why, and she actually went to bed better during that time but then on Monday decided she wanted to sleep in her bed again.

Is it normal for this behavior to start so young and does this mean that it's just going to get worse as she gets older?

Our son is now 12 years old. (The last 10 years have been very, very l-o-n-g.) His diagnosis is adhd, ocd and mood disorder. He's been medicated since preschool.

I knew when he was 1 and learning how to walk that something was "different" about him. As soon as he took his first steps, he was gone. He hasn't stopped yet.

He always had a no fear attitude. I couldn't close both of my eyes for several years due worrying about what he was doing. Whether he was climbing a ladder to help his dad fix the roof on the garage (luckily he was wearing a bright red shirt and I was able to immediately spot him climbing the ladder) or whether he was walking up to a strange person or a strange dog. I was always on guard with him.

When we would go to "play group" at a local school, all the kids played so nicely except him. He was always rough and didn't share. I started having play group at our house because I had so many nieces and friends that had kids the same age. Eventually the group dwindled because he was so "not nice".

My daughter is 2 years older then he is and she has put up with so much from him. She should be canonized a saint, no doubt.

We started the homepathic/holistic route. Then went to both homeopathic and conventional meds. Then just conventional meds.

Each year gets easier. But its still a challenge.

When he was younger, his ocd was horrible. If one of his shoe strings wasn't exactly the same length as the other one, he'd cut them. We constantly had to buy new shoes laces.

He went through so many phrases. First his pants couldn't be baggy. Then they had to be baggy. Then not. Then baggy. (What's today? Wednesday? Then it's not baggy. Just regular. Not straight leg. Just regular.)

His hair always had to be perfect. If one hair wasn't in place, he'd literally freak out. Luckily he is now into a messy skater look. He had to stop messing with his hair so much because they used to call him names (gay, fag, etc...) at school because he was always fussing with his hair and clothes and shoes and jacket. (My brother is gay and he doesn't do all that fussy so I'm not sure why they think he is gay because he did that, but that's several other threads I've written.)

Anyway, my advise for you would be to save your money so that you can afford to pay a babysitter big bucks while you are able to get away for a little while. Whether it's out to eat, or shopping or to just go sit in your car at the park and stare. It will be worth the price that they charge. Trust me on that! Finding a babysitter with an adhd/ocd/mood disorder kid was always our biggest challenge.

Hang in there. If I could do it....anybody can :)

...Is it normal for this behavior to start so young and does this mean that it's just going to get worse as she gets older?

Yes, from what I know and have experienced...the behaviour starts young. If your child is very active, this may decrease with time. Warning signs for worse things to come?..constant stealing and lieing...bullying and being cruel to animals...and other conduct disorder traits. My daughter is doing fine. She is still really annoying but doing pretty good in school. We had her put on meds at 10.

Do learn as much as you can about the disorder. Here is a nice free 40 page download from one of the top scientific reseachers in the field. It is a transcript from Russell Barkley's San Fran lecture of 2000.

http://www.schwablearning.org/Articles.asp?r=54

Her getting worse scares me. I'm hoping that by trying to find the cause of her behavior while she's still so young and beginning to deal with whatever is going on right away that we might be able to keep the worst from happening.

What kind of evaluations should I expect or ask the psychologist to do with her? I've seen other posts listing tests and stuff but none of those would really work on a toddler.

Hypothetically speaking, hyperactivity generally begins to show between the ages of 3 and 5 yrs.

I'm not saying that applies to your child, I'm merely re-stating what I've heard mentioned at workshops and in books, time and time again.

The only evidenced based (research substantiated ) therapy for hyperactive kids is behavior managment.

The Parents Guide to Attention Deficit Disorder by Stephen McCarney & Angela Marie Bauer (Hawthorne Press), is an excellent behavior management book; irrespective of ADHD or not.

It's 100% practical,w/no theory, just specific interventions you can use today/right now.

In closing, there is a toddler's version of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) Parent Form, however, I've never seen it, as I don't work with kids under 6 anymore.

Even if I did, I would still be prohibited from answering specific, personal questions.

good luck and welcome to the Forum:)

mctavish23 (Robert)

What worked for us was having our son sleep in our bed with us until he was 7. Probably a lot less palatable in Western societies.

Today, at 7 years old, he gets two marbles (c.f. token economy) if he goes to sleep without his mother laying down with him.Fortunately my brother had the good sense to marry a Japanese gal and they slept with their kids, so when we ended up with the kid that couldn't go to sleep by herself, it wasn't such a big deal to tuck her in between us. At eight, she goes down pretty well now -- although there are still some nights when she really needs to be snuggled down. Our younger one whose almost four sneaks into my bed pretty much every night and fights going down without being snuggled -- fortunately, not to the level of fighting it that her sister did. It just never seemed worth making it a fight, instead of some close time together. I figure this time will be gone soon enough -- even though it definately put a crimp in my free time. Sleep problems are very commonly a problem with ADHD kids -- seems to be both a caused by it and something that is made worse by it.

Barkley has some very good material on working with ADHD kids and ODD kids. You can look in up at www.addwarehouse.com (http://www.addwarehouse.com). It sounds like it's been tough -- our daughter was just ADHD and that was challenging enough.

Scattered

Robert,

I know that a diagnosis of ADHD at her age is pretty rare and I'm not totally convinced that's what is going on with her. I just don't know how to explain her behavior. Is there anything else I should read or look into that might shed some light on this? I was thinking of requesting a referral to a speech therapist to rule that out as a problem although she speaks at a normal level for her age and when I can actually get her to pay attention to me she listens fine as well. Should I be looking into a sleep problem as well? She seems to sleep fine once she falls asleep, it's just getting her to close her eyes that's the problem.

We go back to the psych on Monday and I'm trying to put together a list of questions that I should be asking. Any suggestions?

Another book I like very much is The Out of Sync Child by Carol Stock Kranowitz.

I am a firm believer in Occupational Therapy (OT) evals for little kids.

Getting a full medical checkup that covers hearing, speech, gait, etc., is also helpful.

Good luck.:)