9/3/12 Sleep Patterns And Hollering.

Well it is 3am and Joshua has been awake for a little over an hour. He is loud and cranky and the noise he is making is just a blood curdling holler. There is no reason for him to be making these noises that we can see. I wish I could share this sound with you. But my mind is so rattled I don't even know how I could do that. I am sure other parents of bipolar children know the holler. I kind of keep expecting for police to knock on our door any minute he is so loud. There is just no rhyme or reason to his actions. If we interact with him he gets worse if we ignore him he gets worse. No matter what we do it continues. As a parent it breaks your heart to know there is nothing you can do to make your child feel better. A parent of a normal child would consider this to be bratty behavior and if their child acted like this they would give them a time out or a spanking. Neither of those work with a child like Joshua. His actions are completely out of his control. With his limited mental capacity there will always be so much we don't understand about what he goes through. We just have to continue to work on behavior modification and pray it rolls over to all areas of his life. We are now pushing the 2 hour mark of him being awake. He has started to calm. We hope it is quick from calming to sleeping.