My 10-year old hasn't been...performing...as well as he should be and we think we figured out that it's because he is sleep deprived. He has so much trouble falling asleep at night and naturally gets in lot of trouble for it, but I think the worst thing is seeing what a zombie he is in the morning. It is heart-wrenching to see this little boy so tired.
It's been going on since probably the beginning of last school year. His grades have suffered, his sports performance has suffered, his concentration and behavior has suffered. We've suffered.
At the most recent parent-teacher conferences, his teacher suggested that if his concentration doesn't improve that our next conference will be a very different conversation. He's never had attention issues before, and a lot of the issues he had last school year I attributed to his and his teacher's personalities not quite jiving. But to hear that come out of the mouth of a professional, and that professional be talking about YOUR kid, well needless to say, it's alarming.
It was around the same time that I realized that his sleep situation could really be contributing to what is going on at school. Yeah, sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake. Whatever, nobody's perfect. The pediatrician suggested I try giving him Melatonin about an hour before bedtime. Good idea. Shaklee has a product called Gentle Sleep Complex and I already owned it, so we gave it a try. Instead of being straight-up Melatonin, which has possibility of side effects and can only be used short-term, it's a combination of herbs that is good and effective. I've used it...no hangover. It's been working ok so far, though I did just up the dose a little cause he was still having some trouble falling asleep.
The other night I handed him the two tablets and went to get a glass of water. In the time it took for me to get that water, apparently quite a bit of the scent of the tablets had rubbed off on his hand. As soon as he took the tablets, he then proceeded to wipe his hand on his pants, down the length of his thigh.
You'd think somebody opened a can of crazy-ass cat wack-a-doo. Our girly-cat, let's call her Black Betty for privacy reasons - she's shy with strangers, flipped out on the boy and started biting his pants and his hand that held the tablets. She freaked out enough to scare the boy off the sofa to where he cowered by my side, laughing, and from there we watched Black Betty chase invisible flies, roll around, and finally fall off the couch head first.
At this point we were on the floor and in animal territory. Black Betty's bro, Bam-a-lam-a-lam or Big 'un for short, came sauntering up all casual-like and took a couple sniffs. Now, Big 'un isn't quite as theatrical as Black Betty is - he is a big, simple, giant, gentle clown and he's got a real fat ass. No seriously, he weighed more than my daughter until last spring, and she's 6. Big 'un also made a beeline for the boy's hand/leg area, which tipped us off to the fact that these Gentle Sleep tablets must have something in them the cats wig out over. The boy ran for the bottle, opened it, and stuck it under the cat's nose. This action was immediately rewarded by the cat trying to grab the bottle with his teeth and run off, and when he quickly realized that wasn't going to happen he got all sexy on us, rolling over onto his back and open-mouth purring.
Which was a little weird.
I've seen cats on catnip before, and the following is the closest behavior I've ever seen. At our first apartment, hubby and I had two cats and a corked bottle of catnip. During the night one night, these cats got the bottle down and chewed the cork to smithereens, spilling the catnip all over the damn place. I found it in the morning, and having to rush out the door to work, I merely scooped up what I could of the catnip pile and threw it in the sink on my way out the door. Most of this pile landed in a bowl of water, in the sink. This bowl of catnippy goodness steeped and brewed all day long, with kitties 1 & 2 sipping from it at will for hours on end. By the time I got home that night, they were wasted. I've never seen cats act that way. We've all heard the term 'bouncing off walls', but this was NUTS. Running from the floor, up the wall, then back down onto the floor all Matrix-style, attacking each other and our feet, and anything else that seemed mildly threatening - or not threatening enough, basically freaking out in the most entertaining yet slightly disturbing way.
The Gentle Sleep/Valerian Root affected them so differently than your typical catnip high. I guess the ingredient in it that cats wig out over is Valerian Root. Some cats don't like it, some do, just like catnip. And just like catnip, they kinda freak out over it. Black Betty and Bam-a-lam-a-lam have had catnip before and they've gotten a little nutty and aggressive, but I think Gentle Sleep Complex is the new catnip over here. The boy did us an accidental favor that night and lost the cap to the bottle (one of the cats grabbed it and ran off and is probably humping it as I type), so the tablets got all weird after being exposed to the air all night. I'll be buying a new bottle soon, and the weird exposed tablets will be going into a sock for my friends to play with. I mean, they are here to entertain us. Have to earn their keep and all...
Good times ahead!!
It's been going on since probably the beginning of last school year. His grades have suffered, his sports performance has suffered, his concentration and behavior has suffered. We've suffered.
At the most recent parent-teacher conferences, his teacher suggested that if his concentration doesn't improve that our next conference will be a very different conversation. He's never had attention issues before, and a lot of the issues he had last school year I attributed to his and his teacher's personalities not quite jiving. But to hear that come out of the mouth of a professional, and that professional be talking about YOUR kid, well needless to say, it's alarming.
It was around the same time that I realized that his sleep situation could really be contributing to what is going on at school. Yeah, sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake. Whatever, nobody's perfect. The pediatrician suggested I try giving him Melatonin about an hour before bedtime. Good idea. Shaklee has a product called Gentle Sleep Complex and I already owned it, so we gave it a try. Instead of being straight-up Melatonin, which has possibility of side effects and can only be used short-term, it's a combination of herbs that is good and effective. I've used it...no hangover. It's been working ok so far, though I did just up the dose a little cause he was still having some trouble falling asleep.
The other night I handed him the two tablets and went to get a glass of water. In the time it took for me to get that water, apparently quite a bit of the scent of the tablets had rubbed off on his hand. As soon as he took the tablets, he then proceeded to wipe his hand on his pants, down the length of his thigh.
You'd think somebody opened a can of crazy-ass cat wack-a-doo. Our girly-cat, let's call her Black Betty for privacy reasons - she's shy with strangers, flipped out on the boy and started biting his pants and his hand that held the tablets. She freaked out enough to scare the boy off the sofa to where he cowered by my side, laughing, and from there we watched Black Betty chase invisible flies, roll around, and finally fall off the couch head first.
At this point we were on the floor and in animal territory. Black Betty's bro, Bam-a-lam-a-lam or Big 'un for short, came sauntering up all casual-like and took a couple sniffs. Now, Big 'un isn't quite as theatrical as Black Betty is - he is a big, simple, giant, gentle clown and he's got a real fat ass. No seriously, he weighed more than my daughter until last spring, and she's 6. Big 'un also made a beeline for the boy's hand/leg area, which tipped us off to the fact that these Gentle Sleep tablets must have something in them the cats wig out over. The boy ran for the bottle, opened it, and stuck it under the cat's nose. This action was immediately rewarded by the cat trying to grab the bottle with his teeth and run off, and when he quickly realized that wasn't going to happen he got all sexy on us, rolling over onto his back and open-mouth purring.
Which was a little weird.
I've seen cats on catnip before, and the following is the closest behavior I've ever seen. At our first apartment, hubby and I had two cats and a corked bottle of catnip. During the night one night, these cats got the bottle down and chewed the cork to smithereens, spilling the catnip all over the damn place. I found it in the morning, and having to rush out the door to work, I merely scooped up what I could of the catnip pile and threw it in the sink on my way out the door. Most of this pile landed in a bowl of water, in the sink. This bowl of catnippy goodness steeped and brewed all day long, with kitties 1 & 2 sipping from it at will for hours on end. By the time I got home that night, they were wasted. I've never seen cats act that way. We've all heard the term 'bouncing off walls', but this was NUTS. Running from the floor, up the wall, then back down onto the floor all Matrix-style, attacking each other and our feet, and anything else that seemed mildly threatening - or not threatening enough, basically freaking out in the most entertaining yet slightly disturbing way.
Good times ahead!!
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