Too Young to be on Anti-Psychotics?

Jan. 6, 2011— -- When Chris and Jennifer Evavold adopted their son Cole as a newborn, they knew he would change their lives, but not this way. The last seven years have been a nightmare.

Every morning Cole springs from bed screaming, flailing and sometimes punching anyone near him in the family's home in Buffalo, Minn. Just getting him fed and dressed is a feat.

The seven-year-old Cole isn't just rambunctious. He was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and a mood disorder at just three-and-a-half, and was prescribed medication to regulate his behavior. Since then he has been on an ever-changing cocktail of pills. His impulsiveness and violent language and behavior continue.

"It's so hard to get anyone to relate to you," his mother said. "They just can't even fathom how out of control things are. And if you tell him one behavior that he did one day, they'll say, 'My kid did that.' But it's not the one behavior. It's the compounding of all of these things."

Evavold said problems with Cole started at a very early age.

"The very first daycare he was in -- he was six weeks old -- the woman says he's high maintenance. And I thought, 'He is an infant! He's young!' What does high maintenance mean when it was a baby?"

Being first-time parents, the Evavolds just thought Cole was just a little fussy, but it was more than that. By the time he was two-and-a-half, Cole was on his fourth daycare. When he destroyed a caregiver's bedroom, his parents decided to have him observed.

"He pulled the drawers out of her dresser and took them out. He broke a picture on the wall, pulled her curtains down, and just turned the whole room upside down," Evavold said.

She and her husband were horrified but not surprised. He'd had similar rages at home. "He [was] flat-out, an hour straight, flailing, spitting, drooling, hitting, just a little animal, just out of control."

But Cole was also becoming violent. He had hit and bitten other children in daycare, but his most frequent target was his little sister Brynn, now five.

His father, Chris, said Cole once tried to kill her. "I am sitting in the house and I heard the hit. He hit her over the head with the shovel and I walk over there. 'What are you doing?' 'Oh, I am trying to kill her.'"