No wonder you're in a bad mood!

It took us a long time to come to the conclusion that J isn't a "difficult" child. All signs pointed to us having a kid with issues. Now, he's a great kid and he's smart and interesting and gets along with adults and kids in a regular kind of 6 year old way... but he is a challenge when it comes to his emotions. He is prone to bursting into tears at the least provocation, like "please pick up your shirt" led to crying and histrionics of massive proportions.

So Ryan and I have spent countless hours worrying, reading, talking to teachers... ok, mostly the hours were spent throwing our hands in the air and declaring defeat in the eyes of this beast. We didn't know how to handle it let alone address it. We did try time and again the tricks we had in our bag. Patience, talking, time outs, reasoning, explaining, lack of patience, bribes. All of it seemed to have no impact. He understood, we talked it through, but in the end his emotions always got the better of him. As time passed, we prayed that it would pass too as he matured.

When we got to Austin he started Kindergarten and we were both hoping that he was up to the challenge. It's tougher to be in a bigger class with only one teacher who has a stricter agenda (must teach to the (eventual) test!). It was interesting to see J's teacher struggle with the same things we did. The teacher conference was educational as they were at that stage of remaining hope that we had hung around for a while. "It's just the age" they assured us. "Lots of boys are like this".

Then we turned a corner into the dark time in J's Kindergarten career. He started to get in trouble a lot more. The exasperation in the teacher's voice when we spoke was more and more clear. They moved into the "frustration & exasperation" phase ("welcome", I thought to myself, "see, it's not just me").

Just as Christmas was looming I started to seriously consider counseling. And then an unexpected thing happened. We got a Christmas tree.

A few hours after the tree was in the house, P started sneezing and scratching at his eyes, runny nose, the whole thing. I gave him some Claratin and considered getting rid of the tree. In the morning he was better but still had symptoms. I decided the tree could stay, but that he was just going to have to have allergy meds through the holiday season. As I was giving P his tiny white pill, J asked if he could have one too. Since they had both have had the same allergies at the same time in the past (and our pediatrician told me that Claratin is a very benign drug) I gave J one too. For the next week J & P got Claratin and things started to change. J listened better and had much more appropriate responses. He was able to deal with his issues in a much more rational manner. When we went back to school after the break, his teacher even asked what was different and if we had changed something. I began to realize that the allergies were impacting his ability to concentrate and deal with things emotionally.

So fast forward to today. We had J tested for allergies yesterday. The specialist says that he has spring allergies to things like Oak and Pecan pollens, and he has year round allergies to dust and... Dog. We talked about strategies, allergy shots, meds, etc. The sum of the conversation was... you have a dog, your son has dog allergies, good luck with that!

So, now we know. J started his allergy meds again this morning (after a week off and the teacher asked me "When does Joe start his medicine again?").

In two weeks P is having his skin tests as he's starting to get testy too. He's probably allergic to tulle and glitter.