Background

Forgive me in advance as I'm sure this will be very lengthy...

Our journey began 5 and half years ago when Timmy was born. I was induced at 38 weeks because of high blood pressure but aside from that the labor and delivery went without incident and we had a beautiful healthy son. He as 9 pounds 6 ounces at birth. He was a pretty mild mannered baby. From very early on he preferred to be out and about with lots of activity and people over being at home and by 5 months old or so would rather be in his excersaucer or active somehow than be held unless he was tired. He was also a super smart guy. He learned to sign many signs well before he was a year old. And I often freaked people out, including my own mom by insisting he knew his shapes before a year as well and then proving it with the shapes from a shape sorter. Before 18 months he was speaking in short sentences that were clear enough for strangers to understand. Overall he was a delightful little guy to be around. He even handled the addition of his brother to the family when he was just 13 months old better than any mother could hope for. He was gentle and careful with the baby. He was patient enough to wait for a drink or snack or story until I was done feeding the baby almost every time. The only thing he did that anyone ever worried about was his humming. He would hum in a monotonous tone whenever he concentrated or was tired. We were asked many times about this by friends and family but with no other indications of an issue the Dr, though he'd never heard of it before said it was probably just something he did to soothe himself and not to worry about it.
Timmy continued to grow and learn at an amazing rate and even when he hit the terrible twos he was not terrible.
Unfortunately that next year would be a really hard one for all of us. Before he turned four he would endure the loss of his great grandmother, who until she became ill had been a very active part of his life; he watched his grandmother undergo chemo therapy while battling cancer for the second time; his older half brother moved with his mother over 1000 miles away; and he was subjected to the fighting and tension in our house as a result of drug and alcohol abuse and ultimately two separations before a reconciliation. All the while it was becoming more and more obvious that he was beyond the "normal" level of activity of a little boy. And he also became more unmanageable. While I pushed aside my concerns chalking it up to acting out because of circumstance things have only continued to worsen.
Currently Timmy is overly loud, almost ALWAYS, he still hums when he concentrates and while sometimes it appears he is aware of what he is doing and possibly just waiting for someone to comment on it, often times he seems to legitimately not be aware of it. He is also always on the move. He rarely walks anyway, he either runs skips or hops almost constantly. While he can stay focused on an activity he likes he is still almost always moving, it may just be a wiggly leg or a tapping finger but he is almost never at rest until he passes out at night. And when he crashes he crashes hard.
It wasn't until this last year that I've felt I could no longer push aside my concerns about his behavior. I started by speaking with his preschool teachers. They felt it was most likely not ADHD because his actions often seem willful and not uncontrollable as with ADHD, but they encouraged me to speak with my Dr if I was concerned. After doing a lot of research and talking to a LOT of people I really felt that I was right in that something was not right. I could for sure say he did or did not have ADHD but that SOMETHING was going on with him that he needed help with. So I called our Pediatrician. An appointment was set and we were mailed a package with questionnaires to fill out. There was one for my husband and I and one for his teachers. When I got the survey back from the teachers I cried as I read it. While I was not directly surprised by the issues he was having, it hurt to see that they were seeing that it was affecting his relationships with his classmates. To me there is only one goal in parenting and that is to raise a happy well adjusted child and it seemed something was missing the mark. When we met with the Dr I was worried that Timmy might act out of the norm for his considering it was the Drs office but as luck would have it, he very clearly demonstrated his true self by bouncing from place to place within the room the ENTIRE time. The Dr went over the surveys and told me that typically when they look at them they look for 6 affirmative answers in each area and while the one my husband and I completed had 9 his teachers only had 5. He felt that the discrepancy was most likely due to the small amount of time he was at school as opposed to home. But he asked that because of this AND his age that we have him evaluated by a psychologist. After attempting to have the evaluation done by our school district to no avail I contacted the Dr our pediatrician had referred us to and set up an evaluation.
I will meet with the Dr at the end of June for a pre eval meeting. And then she will meet with Timmy for 2 1/2hours three times in one week. This will be a comprehensive evaluation that will hopefully provide us with some solid answers and let me tell you it can not come too quickly.
We are currently really struggling to hold things together as Timmy continues to act out, we have a 4 month old very needy baby and in the midst of it all Johnny is fighting for attention.