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Moreso. I believe you need to take her to a pediatric Psychiatrist.
I had four sons whom I raised myself. Your little one sounds exactly like him.
Fabricating stories to get out of homework, eating too much and sneaking food and other behaviors you are attributing to her misbehaviors. I still care for my son and he is 28 yrs.
old.
I would do as oregonsmoke says , however I am quite sure she needs counseling.The earlier the better.
She may be emotionally impaired and dyslexic. I am a laymen of course,
but I have a lot of experience at this. I have been through the entire process and know "the ropes"
if you will. Message me if you would like to know more of what I learned.
There is no doubt that the current one is a dud, but I wouldn’t rush to assume it is a psychiatric issue. Prader Willi Syndrome is a a neurological condition. Pediatric Neurologists can diagnose ADHD, ASD, etc. as well but they have a different type of training. Once she gets the diagnosis, then the neurologist might recommend a psychiatrist and/or behavior analysis or CBT depending on the condition. The problem with the eating is that they need to know the underlying cause of the eating.
With PWS, it’s a lack of a gene to tell people they are full, so they will feel ravenously hungry all the time. I believe they also have decreased muscle tone and burn less calories than average, so it takes fewer calories to gain weight. People who are successful often keep detailed food diaries with strict calorie limits and exercise daily. As you can imagine, if there is some other eating disorder, this is probably the LAST thing you want to tell someone to do. However, a person with PWS can easily go on a weekend binge and gain 12 or 15 pounds because there is nothing in her brain to stop her. Someone with PWS who has to walk two blocks from place A to place B with a fast food restaurant in the middle might dumpster dive to find leftover food if they can smell the food. It is really a serious and deadly disease.
There is no doubt that the current one is a dud, but I wouldn’t rush to assume it is a psychiatric issue. Prader Willi Syndrome is a a neurological condition. Pediatric Neurologists can diagnose ADHD, ASD, etc. as well but they have a different type of training. Once she gets the diagnosis, then the neurologist might recommend a psychiatrist and/or behavior analysis or CBT depending on the condition. The problem with the eating is that they need to know the underlying cause of the eating.
With PWS, it’s a lack of a gene to tell people they are full, so they will feel ravenously hungry all the time. I believe they also have decreased muscle tone and burn less calories than average, so it takes fewer calories to gain weight. People who are successful often keep detailed food diaries with strict calorie limits and exercise daily. As you can imagine, if there is some other eating disorder, this is probably the LAST thing you want to tell someone to do. However, a person with PWS can easily go on a weekend binge and gain 12 or 15 pounds because there is nothing in her brain to stop her. Someone with PWS who has to walk two blocks from place A to place B with a fast food restaurant in the middle might dumpster dive to find leftover food if they can smell the food. It is really a serious and deadly disease.
You can see PWS 10miles away. She would also be eating non food. There would be huge alarm bells going off. The mom would have to lock her kitchen up tight. It’s not PWS.
Neuros are not the right place to start. Diagnostic psychologists are. A neuro will kick your butt out the door if you manage to get in it in he first place. Even if it was PWS (it isn’t) the first stop with be a geneticist not a neurologist.
You can see PWS 10miles away. She would also be eating non food. There would be huge alarm bells going off. The mom would have to lock her kitchen up tight. It’s not PWS.
Neuros are not the right place to start. Diagnostic psychologists are. A neuro will kick your butt out the door if you manage to get in it in he first place. Even if it was PWS (it isn’t) the first stop with be a geneticist not a neurologist.
As I said, I hope it's not Prader-Willi. It's true that it's easy to spot with older kids, but the reason I brought it up is my experience with friends who have a grandkid with it. With him it didn't reach the "lock up your refrigerator" stage until he was 11 or so. At around ages 9 - 10 (the age of KenBrookMom's daughter) he was not yet diagnosed and they thought he was just a big eater.
As a kid who had some of these problems, I'm going to say ADD/ADHD with a sidehelping of some serious anxiety are the likely causes. Get that psych eval ASAP. My mother, for her own reasons, never wanted me to get serious help for my issues and apparently refused to send me to a shrink. I now know that a lot of my subsequent social and academic struggles could have been prevented by an early intervention. Let me assure you of this though - your kid is suffering right now and she isn't happy.
I didn't read through all of the posts, so this question may have been addressed, but is she an only child?
I have a 12 y.o. son who is very bright but also swears he didn't hear the assignment, and he's pretty forgetful at times! He's currently an only child and can sometimes be a little bossy! I have other children who are now adults and one of them also had an attention issue such as not getting the assignments right etc.,!
I have learned with my 12 y.o., that I have to make eye to eye contact with him when I tell him something important that he needs to remember. For a month, he kept forgetting to bring his lunch bag home (he doesn't like hot lunch) and I would just substitute a plastic bag! Well, I got sick of it and I told him if he didn't bring that lunch bag home, he would be eating hot lunch everyday. Guess what, he brought the bag home.
You need a real doctor. A specialist. Not a general petertrician, not a family practice, but an expert. She's bulimic and obviously has no interest in the one thing she should - school. And, very disturbing at her age, she's antisocial.
At her age (she's not 5 or 6 anymore) what you describe is very worrisome. First off - do not blame her. She has no control over this. What is done to (hopefully) correct this is very important to her, for her entire life, in fact.
This is serious stuff here. You need to contact the nearest University Medical Center (big one - Like the Univ of Michigan or its equivalent). with expert staff on childhood behavior disorders. You need to look into it - NOW!
Not an "expert" in this particular area, but this is unlikely just a "phase." For starters, she needs cytogenetics.
I can't believe the teacher/school hasn't already brought this up to you.
Wow. Just wow.
OP - please ignore this post. Entirely. There is no indication that she is "antisocial" - antisocial personality disorder is a VERY serious personality disorder that was formerly known as (the much more descriptive) psychopathic or sociopathic. There is NO INDICATION OF THIS WHATSOEVER.
An evaluation by a COUNSELOR - not a psychiatrist, who is a medical doctor who will want to throw medication at the problem (a lot of psychologists tend to have a similar bent). Just take her for some counseling. Something is wrong somewhere but given the late onset you seem to indicate it is doubtful that it is a deeply ingrained problem like a personality disorder.
I also strongly disapprove of medicating children. Try to avoid that at all costs. There are situations where it is appropriate, but not many. And yes, I was trained as a clinical psychologist. There is most likely something emotional going on, and emotional is fixable without or with only minimal use of medications.
And she is not bulimic according to your description. It is far more likely from your description that she is stress eating. Stress eating can LEAD to bulimia, but I didn't see ANY mention of vomiting. If she were bulimic then she would be throwing up and then eating again.
As for cytogenetics - oh my flipping holy heck. Seriously - there is NO indication whatsoever that a foray into cytogenectics, or any genetics at all, is called for. She's just a little kid having a rough time, it doesn't mean she's suffering from some esoteric genetic defect.
An evaluation by a trained professional in person is required. But it certainly sounds like she is just a normal little kid having a particularly rough time at the moment. Take that approach before we go jumping off into the deep end.
As I said, I hope it's not Prader-Willi. It's true that it's easy to spot with older kids, but the reason I brought it up is my experience with friends who have a grandkid with it. With him it didn't reach the "lock up your refrigerator" stage until he was 11 or so. At around ages 9 - 10 (the age of KenBrookMom's daughter) he was not yet diagnosed and they thought he was just a big eater.
But it isn't just eating. Its so much more then that. I think its horrible to scare a parent brining it up when the chances the child has PWS is less then 0.001%. Its rare. Nearly all kids are diagnoses way before this. It isn't just over eating, there are so many other aspects to it, and it is life changing news. Devastating news
This thread started out helpful but really went off the deep end. PWS, bulimia, "antisocial"? What the hell? She is a kid with some adjustment issues and some areas that need attention. We cant diagnose her but surely nothing in the OP supports a catastrophic diagnosis.
I haven't read all the responses here, so I apologize if I'm repeating, but I wanted to convey our story in case it helps you at all in looking for the problem and finding solutions...
I have a 12 year old with anxiety who started coming home crying after school everyday starting in the third grade. She complained of headaches daily, then stomach aches. She saw Dr's, had an MRI, blood draw, hours at the eye dr, etc. Finally we signed her up for counseling. While that helped, I was telling the counselor that I could not get her to read anything all summer (her reading testing started to fall behind). She told me I needed to see a Neuropsychologist to have her tested for reading disabilities. My husband and I decided to have the school do it (more affordable), but the counselor talked me out of that, saying it wouldn't be effective enough. We had thrown so much money at my daughter's issues with no real results and were tired of doing so, but we decided to try this last thing.
Low and behold she has a comprehension disability (among a few other things). She can read well, so it was really hard to detect, but I had noticed years before that when you asked her questions about what she read, her answers tended to be from left field. She's a smart kid, so she found ways to work around, but it had all become too much.
We got her an IEP at the school and that was great, but the best thing by far that we did was to pay for private sessions with a great Speech and Language Pathologist, who described my daughter's issue like having a messed up filing cabinet in her brain and they were going to get it reorganized. Fortunately, her and my daughter really connected and we started to notice great strides in her school performance and testing. We spent 1 year with her and then she declared my daughter "graduated".
Now she is in 6th grade (middle school). I can't get over how well she is doing! She has skipped 2 grades in math, is in other honors classes and her English teacher is recommending her for honors English next year.
I'm not telling you this to brag, but to say that I never thought she would do so well in school after all we found out. It cost us a lot of money and time, but boy was it worth it! Also, we moved out of the city to a much smaller town and I've now seen her anxiety reduced even more. I used to get a knot in my stomach when picking her up from school (for 2 years!), because she came out unhappy and cried a lot (all while professing to love school). Now in 6th grade she comes home with a smile on her face almost every single day.
(I will also mention one more crazy unrelated thing.... it took us awhile to discover that she reacts to children's Claritin with angry outbursts. I had recorded her a couple times, because it was so unreal. Is your child on any medications?)
If she has a learning disability and anxiety, it's really crazy the symptoms that can pop up from that (over eating?!?) and it's really important to find the root of the problem. I wish you the best of luck in finding hers. Parenting is tough, hang in there!
Last edited by RustinginSeattle; 02-04-2018 at 04:39 PM..
Reason: grammar
I did want to mention, at no point has OP stated that the child has a weight issue. There is all this suggestion of eating disorders, but if the child is not chubby, then the eating issue is simply that the child is growing and needs a lot of calories that she is not getting.
It can be frightening how much a healthy child can eat. I can't see a huge appetite as any sort of problem unless the child is overweight, and to me, you don't treat an overweight child by putting them on a strict diet. You treat an overweight child by increasing their exercise.
Dieting in childhood can destroy a child's relationship to food and give them life long problem with maintaining a healthy weight.
If the child is fat (which OP has yet to clarify), sneaking food and hiding food in the room is a symptom of lack of security.... it's a common problem with foster children who never know what tomorrow is going to bring.
The eating might possibly be a separate issue from the poor performance in school. From a distance with partial information and a lack of specialized training, it's hard to tell.
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