Reply to Extreme anger in 5 yo: psychologist or psychiatrist?

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "Extreme anger in 5 yo: psychologist or psychiatrist?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"Except for the psychiatrist part. I would check out a child psychiatrist as well."

But the general rule is don't medicate unless you've tried behavioral therapy and are still in behavioral therapy (ADHD excluded from this).  As the mother of a slightly older child who has been to three psychologists, I personally don't believe age 5 is old enough to get a good evaluation and engage in good behavioral therapy to get to the point where you decide you must add meds to the mix.  (The exceptions being with extreme behavioral problems, like early childhood bipolar, but given OP's child is doing okay in school I don't think it rises to this level).[/quote]

Is this your point - OP should do nothing because you (an expert after having 1 child and 3 psychologists) don't think: a good evaluation can be done on a 5 yo, behavioral therapy isn't effective for a 5 yo, and because he doesn't show these negative behaviors in school they don't rise to the level of concern.  Really?  Do you know how ignorant that sounds?

Just because that may have been true for you and your DC doesn't make it true for everyone - as I can attest.  We got great evaluations for our kids at 5 and sometimes younger.  One of our DCs had anxiety at age 4 that was significant enough for us to seek an evaluation and therapy which were enlightening and helpful.  He wasn't even in school at that point!  Cognitive behavioral therapy can be very challenging for younger kids and we didn't have much success with it until about age 10 but even at age 3-4  there is a lot you can teach a child to help them - calming breaths and movement breaks are two very easy, very effective techniques that help with a lot of symptoms. We started teaching our kids yoga and stretching when they were quite small.  It's how we introduced meditation and mindfulness which has also been very effective - but ultimately not enough and we have used medication when needed.

Your comment to the effect that since OP's DS is doing fine in school it doesn't matter what he's like at home is just plain ignorant and short sighted.   If the  behavior is having a significant impact on their home life and relationships and it definitely rises to the level of concern.  It's incredibly shortsighted to be aware of a serious problem and wait until it's also a problem in school to be looking into it.  It's like knowing your kid has a LD but waiting until he's failing in school to do anything about it.  Why wait?  No one is suggesting OP go the medication route right off but to do nothing is just plain misguided.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics