He hums constantly, and it's the same melody over and over at times for example.
Welcome Christen99!
Sounds like you have 2 lovely sons who are highly gifted. I had to smile over 2 parts of your post which exhibited signs of giftedness:
1) Jumping in with both feet. When my DS13 was first given a diagnosis, it was NVLD, so I read every book I could find on it. (At this point we've had several other consults, and think we think NVLD was a misdiagnoses, due to the tester just not getting PGlets, but he currently has a diagnosis of ADD, which seems to fit pretty well. Our local private psychologist said something like: 'certainly he's very bright, and may be having trouble handling boredom, but his big problem is his gap between verbal IQ and Processing speed, therefore NVLD. Wrong: His big problem was being 7 years old spending 6 hours a day in classroom with no one who spoke his language and nothing to do)
Anyway - I sure read a lot of books, and tried lots of the parenting techniques and they were quite useful! OT helped a lot for the fine and gross motor delays.
2)Perfectionism. As a group, we hold ourselves to a 'higher standard' than anyone could hope to live up to - have looooooong memories - and are slow to forgive any errors, we feel we may have made. It is completely true that the doctors are the ones responsible for making the medical decision!!! It is also true that they will do the best they can in each case, but that in a few cases, things will not go as well as we would like. We have a hard time 'understanding' this lack of perfection in others as well. I think it is from our own experience growing up without reasonable frame of reference. Either we were the oldest child, and looked to classmates, parents, characters in book and younger siblings - all ususally hopelessly poor references, or we were a younger sibling - comparing ourselves to the towering godling of the older siblings, but really, how many of us grew up with classrooms full of young people who are similar in age and IQ to compare ourselves too?
Another aspect of this perfectionism, is that we have very strong imaginations, and the idea is more 'present and real' to us than to normally developing people. I told my friend it was like having amphibian eyes - we see what is above and below the surface of the water at the same moment, and for many of us, learning to love 'what is' is a major life lesson.
There are some differences between us, Christen99, that make me smile too. You pulled you kid out of a picture perfect classroom setting, because you clearly knew that you wanted your son to learn to challenge himself! I was totally in denial about my strong desire for this as well. At the time, DH and I was all about DS learning to be a good classroom citizen - we told ourselves that we knew he would be smart, so we would focus on encouraging him to be appropriately social. We totally bought the story that the schools had taught us as children - "it is appropriate for the school to teach to the middle and appropriate for the smarties to learn to occupy themselves for the good of the classroom." Lucky for us, DS was not willing to go along with our plans - he innately wanted to learn at school, and felt it was his right, and let everyone know he wasn't satisfied through his behavior. We had a lot of school meetings to try and figure out 'what was wrong with him.' ((eyeroll))
One piece of advice that I wish someone would have given me, was not to accept the diagnosis as limits, only as starting points. An example is inflexibility. My son was inflexible as a child, although not as severe as you describe yours, and I remembered with great resentment, how much I disliked being pushed through my own inflexibility when I was a highly sensitive gifted child and vowed that I would be more 'understanding' of my child, when I grew up and became a mom. So when my son fussed at his socks and tags, I felt great justification for my remembered resentment, and gleefully cut out the tags and bought 14 pairs of the one type of sock that was ok this year. I finally had 'proof' that I wasn't 'making it up' back then as a child.
This was great for me, and it strengthened my relationship with DS but I wish someone had come along and said: 'Yes, you were, and he is, much more sensitive to physical stuff than average, it's called OverExcitability, and it's common in gifted people -BUT - brains can rewire themselves, and flexibility is a virtue - AND, you, as parent, can go a long way towards helping your son grow more flexible, by kindly insisting that he bear the various small discomforts or life such as itchy clothing or changes in schedule, at least for a short time, and providing encouragement that this is a sign of maturity that the can be proud of. Of course since it really is true that he is more sensitive than ND kids, praise even the smallest marks of flexibility - don't wait until he can do what ND kids can do - praise it when he even hesitates before throwing a fit over something not matching his idea.
Chrisen99, I don't know if these specifics apply to you, but I'll be you recognize the tone of 'I want everyone to have all the possible information that is available - NOW - and it is meant as a gift, not as any kind of put down. Feel familiar?
So, welcome to the board - welcome home!
Grinity
