Can you give me a general idea of “squirrelly” ? Extreme silliness maybe? Emotional? During IM, a good percentage of students have a day or two of 'squirrelly behavior, some times a week or two, worse case senario, the entire IM training, but this fades in a few weeks after IM is over.
My son did tell me he had tons of energy last night. He drew a picture and said "if this was me this is how much energy I have." And he drew a line almost to the very top of his picture. Am I seeing the squirrellies?
Every child is so different – anything that is out of the ordinary during and immediately after IM I tend to put down as an IM change, the positive and the negative (I call this a positive negative). Is it the squirrellies? Extreme silliness-yes; Bouncing off the wall/tons of energy-yes; Emotional-yes. But this extraordinary behavior fades quickly too. Not all children become squirrelly, maybe 25% are squirrelly for a week or so during IM, to as much as 75% have one small day of minor squirrellies. For these minor cases, most likely the parents wrote the day off as lack of sleep, just a bad day, PMS, etc.
Try to remember that this is actually a good sign that things are changing, but you might warn the teacher anyway. Usually this out of balance type behavior appears mid IM but can happen at any time. It's not an excuse for misbehavior, but understanding that some children have this reaction is helpful. Tics temporarily increase often too. If you are not familiar with sensory diets, now might be a good time to read about them. I think heavy work is particularly helpful when the child is too bouncy – here’s a great link to check out! Finally, go to bed early, eat right and simply get through it. My experience with IM is that the squirrellies disappear as fast as they came.
