Menay O; mom to 4, Christian and thrift shopper on the side…

When Thomas was 2 years old and 1 week his sister, A was born.  Of course we were all enamoured with her, how could we not be??  She was one of the very few girls born into Tommy’s family.  At that time I was floored that I even gave birth to a girl!  A was a sweet baby and she’s still sweet.  Her and Thomas were very close when they were young/toddlers/preschool and that closeness still exists today.

 I wish I could brag and say Thomas adjusted so well to A but I cannot.  He would hit/slap her, in the car throw his sippy cup at her, throw his sippy cut at who ever was sitting in the passenger seat. I’ll never forget my mother taking a great hit to the head with a full sippy cup I’m sure she saw stars.  One time Thomas grabbed the cordless phone and threw it at A who was sitting in her car seat on the floor.  I literally dived in front of her to deflect it and got hit in the eyebrow.  The end of my eyebrow was cut and it bled and bled.  Thomas started screaming because of the blood, but there wasn’t anything I could do.  Tommy was working so the ER was not an option so I just cleaned up the best I could.  I still have a small scar there.  

 I had 2 play pens so if I took a shower or had to leave them alone in the living room I could do so safely otherwise Alyssa came with me every where.  

When Alyssa turned a year we decided to move to NJ. My mom had already moved there and I thought it was the right thing to do, the right place. Thomas was 3. I did not fall in love with the Great Garden State. I tried but it’s so difficult to make friends when you’re an adult. Thomas was in special ed preschool but he took the bus so I didn’t have the opportunity to meet the other mom’s and hopefully find someone with common ground. When we attended a birthday party for one of the boys in his class, the other mom’s all knew each other and stuck together. I guessed they probably all grew up together, much like the friends I had here on Staten Island.

In the middle of our time in NJ, I searched high and low for a therapist to take Thomas to. He had fits that lasted around 20 minutes (yes, I timed them), he was still hitting me and had tantrums that would come out of nowhere it seemed. It was horrible. I never knew what kind of day we were going to have, what kind of fit he would have, where or how hard I would be hit or how long the tantrum would last. Our pediatrician at the time was useless. I would call her in the middle of one of his fits so she could hear what was going on here and she never helped us, she never would say there was anything wrong with him. If anything I felt like she was blaming me.

I did find a therapist, a young woman who was awesome but Thomas was not speaking very much at this time (speech impaired) and he never hit me in front of anyone except family members. So she really couldn’t help us much but she really tried and if anything it gave me a “grown up” to talk to once a week. After a few months with no improvement we asked to see the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist was a very nice woman and Thomas for whatever reason was in rare form that evening, very rambuctuous and even hitting. The doctor sent us home with the name of a medication we could try but of course I looked it up in my nursing drug book, became scared to death of the side effects and we decided no, no medication. “I mean he’s barely 4yrs old!!, How can we give him medication??” The therapist soon after took another position and left the practice and her replacement made me uneasy so we stopped therapy (not that it was doing anything anyway). In a few months I was ready to talk medication again but we couldn’t see the doctor without seeing the therapist and the whole thing seemed like so much trouble I kind of ended that chapter right there.