Getting Back on Task

I have been horrible about blogging this fall. For a while, it just seemed like everyone was dealing with bigger issues than ours, and I started to feel petty and whiny, and didn't want to inflict that on everyone else.

Then things started to change, and I just have been too overwhelmed to put it into words. DD has really been having a rough fall/winter this year, and it's been exhausting.

It started with horrid PMS issues - rages and general grumpiness about 2 days before she started each month. She had great timing, too - just before we were to leave on a family trip to Boston, just before Thanksgiving, and just before Christmas. At first, things returned to "normal" after a couple of days, and we moved on.

Then in December it intensified, her rages became more violent, and independent of the time of the month. As we headed into January, the frequency increased. She started smacking me hard on the side of the head with her fist, pulling hair, and trying to bite me. Screaming at the top of her lungs, defiant and hateful.

The climax came two days after she returned to school in January. I received a call from school telling me that she was running away from the principal, yelling, hateful things, harassing other students, etc., and that she needed to go home. I had a bad feeling about the situation, so as I got in the car, I flipped the child locks in the back. At school, I moved everything that might be a projectile out of the back seat. I left the driver and one passenger door unlocked. I headed in to confront the situation.

She was wild. It eventually took 3 of us to get her into the car (including another parent, who happens to be a police officer, who happened to drive up during the drama, and slid in so calmly to help us put her in the car that you'd think this happened every day.). I shut the doors and stood outside while the van shook, not willing to get in until she had at least regulated a little. As I expected, things started flying around the van. Once I was able to feel safe enough to leave, she still fumed in the back, taking a frozen water bottle and slamming it into seats, doors, windows, etc.

Once we arrived home, I decided it would be a poor choice to let her out - I fully expected her to run, or become more violent in the house. So there we sat.... well, I sat... she bounced around the back of the van like a ping pong ball, screaming, slamming, hitting things with the water bottle, even climbing into the cargo area. I didn't interact with her except to block her from getting in the front seat area. It took her over an hour to calm, and when she did, it was like a switch had been flipped. She pleasantly started chattering about tidbits of what other kids had said/done that day. Very spooky! She spent the next day cycling through moods, sometimes in a manner of minutes.

I kept her home for 2 days before sending her back. Fortunately, we had just had a Psych appt two days before, and added Ab*lify, so we had hopes this would help her regulate. It does seem to have helped her snap out of the rages sooner, but she still is losing it on a regular basis, and at the tiniest imagined slight. Some days I think I make her mad just by breathing! I still don't feel she's stable, and this is a huge change from previously. She's always had a defiant streak, but nothing so violent and hateful.

I think we're getting the "perfect storm" of challenges for her. First, she's 14, when hormones can make it tough for any kid to keep regulated. Second, she's been with us for 7 years, the same age she was when she arrived here. Things she's telling me really indicate she is struggling to trust us, to believe that we won't get rid of her like her birth family. Third, she's the one who has basically tried to shove all her emotions regarding adoption, FASD, abuse, etc. into a closet and ignore it all. Those boogeymen in the closet just aren't willing to stay put anymore, and she's fighting it tooth and nail. Not that I blame her, but it's just like a splinter... you can try to ignore it, but eventually it will fester and hurt even worse. Fourth, she's never been strong at abstract reasoning, or cause and effect, and now she's got to battle all her attachment demons while dealing with raging hormones and no impulse control.

We're constantly reinforcing our commitment to her. We're telling her we love her no matter how much she pushes. We tell her that she can make the choice to be in charge of her body and its reactions. I'm trying to get her to work on not showing "the mad," in the hopes that 1) she'll learn a valuable skill for self-control and 2) that perhaps if she doesn't get her whole body involved in every emotional upheaval, she may find it easier to stay on track.

The interesting thing is, tonight in her prayer she asked God to help her control her anger when it goes up and down. I asked her if sometimes it felt like a wave that came through, and she said yes. I asked her to just pay attention to that felt like for a few days.. not to worry so much about what to do about it, but to start to recognize when it was coming, in the hopes that eventually we can teach her to ride through it instead of letting it swallow her.

I'm worried... She's never had a complete psych eval, and I think it might be time. We don't know enough about her history to know what mental health issues there might be, but we do know it's likely there's something like that going on with birthdad. I worry what next year will bring, when she starts high school. I worry what the future will bring if she doesn't learn to control this. Last week, when she was raging, she dialed 911. When the officers arrived at our door, she screamed at them that they didn't belong here and to go away, while Jeff stood calmly in the doorway. By the time I got there (Jeff called me to come home once the rage started), the officers had seen enough crazy that they were worried that *we* would be safe with her.

On the negative side, it's not a good feeling to come home to find two cops cars in front of your house. I started worrying what body parts I might find on the lawn. On the plus side though, it was good that she was showing her crazy to the officers, while my husband stood there calmly, so they knew where the crazy was coming from. They offered to try talking to her, but DH declined, since he really didn't know what she might do.

So that's where things stand these days... with DD losing it for every little thing she doesn't like, and with me exhausted by it all. I wish I could be philosophical about it, but really, I'm just ready to run away somewhere, anywhere!