Thursday, January 19, 2006

Lethargy - Asthma-Related? Or Just a Growth Spurt?

#1 son, though only four, has been behaving more like a sixteen year old for the past few weeks.

On two seperate occasions, he's come home from preschool, declined dinner, sacked out on the couch, and crashed. And then he slept straight through til morning.

How weird is that?

Now, granted, we're moving next week (albeit six houses away), he's just gotten a new baby brother, and he's gearing up to start kindergarten next year. If he *was* sixteen, it'd be a sure bet that he was suffering from adolescent depression.

But at age four?

Sure, it could be depression, but I really do think he's a happy kid. He loves his little brothers, he's psyched about having a playroom in the new house, and I don't think he's quite grasping the whole moving-to-a-new-school thing for next year.

More likely, he could be having a growth spurt. He's barely fitting into a 4T at age 4.5, and after two years on corticosteroids, it's about time he shot up a few inches!

But could it be a new asthma symptom? Is that possible? I'm sure I learned at our hospital's pediatric asthma class lethargy is a classic symptom. (MENTAL NOTE: retake that class!)

Just to be safe, I'm keeping an eye on his breathing these days.

Isn't it great how we asthma-moms love to make ourselves crazy??

1 comment:

SRH said...

Making yourself crazy as the aprent of an asthmatic kid is an extremely easy thing to do. Our kid started coughing yesterday so we started his xopenex and atravent treatments immediately, hoping beyond hope that we won't end up in the ER and then on Orapred. He starts coughing, and we immediately think, "Crap, not Orapred again..."

Parents of typical non-asthmatic kids don't have this burden.

It does sound like a growth spurt though...