The Weekend with Josh

Josh has had a pretty rough month. When we went to the psychiatrist last time, his blood test results revealed his medication was interfering with his thyroid causing his levels to be above normal, so we cut his medication dose hoping to fix the thyroid problem. Unfortunately, this seemed to increase behavior problems. We have seen a lot of defiance and meltdowns. Some issues with behavior and focusing at school (not like it was at the old school), he ran away from one of the mental health providers, and has been disappearing a lot for us. It culminated this weekend when instead of coming home from a friend’s house (after getting in trouble there), he went to a convenience store by himself without permission. He came home with his purchased and was very perplexed as to why we were so upset. We went over the dangers and all the rules he broke, etc. He just couldn’t believe he couldn’t keep his purchase and that he was in trouble. Now he is grounded completely to the house with no friends for nine days. Then when that time period is over he is not allowed to leave the yard except for scheduled play dates for the foreseeable future. I’m not sure what is more scary: his actions or his inability to understand why it was so wrong. It is so sad because he can be so sweet and so smart, but he spends so much of his life in trouble. We have told him, if he would just run all his plans past us before he does them, he would avoid 90% of his problems. His thyroid is back under control now, so we get to raise his medicine back to the level it was. We are praying that between the medicine and the discipline, we will see less behavior problems and his thyroid can handle it.
Originally posted April 2011