Grace has been going through some changes lately. Some are wonderful... she is learning her letters, she can almost spell her name, her speech is improving in leaps and bounds... I am so proud of the little girl she is turning into. Unfortunately with her maturation are coming some very difficult changes too. I knew they would likely occur but had hoped, prayed, even begged for it not to come to pass.
Her SPD is accelerating... rapidly. It is looking like ADHD is definitely in our future. Her impulse control is gone. The poor kid will get frustrated over the simplest thing (like not putting her arms in the right holes in her shirt), flip out (I mean punching, screaming, kicking, etc) and then do something out of control (hit, push her sister, bite me, punch something, throw a plate on the floor, etc.). That sounds bad enough, right? Well that's not the worst part. It's what comes next.
After the out of control action THEN her thought mechanism kicks in and she realizes she has hurt someone, broken something, made a mess, ticked off her parents... whatever. Then she starts to sob and throws herself on the floor. She will scream "I'm so sorry, I love you Mommy, I'm so sorry." I cannot even begin to express how difficult this is to deal with. It breaks my heart that she feels so sad, so remorseful about it. It feels like my heart breaks in a million pieces. I want to cry and sob along with her. Why is this so hard? Like we don't all deal with enough... WHY?
I want to protect her from everything that can hurt her. What do you do when that thing is herself? It is so painful to watch and to deal with. I have started the process of looking for a specialist and we are also working closely with her OT at school. The problem is they are there to focus on school issues not home issues. Since part of her problem is that she has to "keep it together" for three hours at school they don't see it as bad there. It feels like such a conundrum.
Isn't this whole parenting thing supposed to get a little easier at some point??? ;D
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5 comments:
I think living with a child that has SPD is never going to be easy...your doing a great job though you know that right? I understand some of the things you talk about, the little things also frustrate my Abby. She likes to put her crayons in bags...and then dump them out, and do it again. But she likes to put all 16 crayons in the bag at the same time, which is impossible because she can't open the bag to put them in because her hands are full of crayons...then she flips out and starts screaming "help Mommy" and gets sooooo mad. It's hard to watch her struggle, but also Ive been trying to teach her to chill out and not get so upset about stuff like that. But can she help it? I just don't know...its tough to understand and figure out if I'm doing the right thing.
C - That is exactly right. I feel like I should know what to do in each instance but lately I feel myself struggling a little to know what to do. Nothing about it is easy, that's for sure. I had to laugh about the crayon thing because that is such a Grace thing. ;D
I knew you would get a kick out of it. ;)
I can't speak to SPD, but I can understand the pain of watching your child frustrated and taking it out on themselves and those around them. My daughter used to head bang out of anger and frustration when she was a toddler, then moved on to hair pulling for a time. To date, as a parent those were the hardest things to be involved in. We were told to place her in a safe place and let her work it out. Basically ignore it and redirect her when she calmed down. It makes you feel as if you are a terrible failure of a mother that your child is doing these things.
I always say that I was a waaayyyy better parent before I actually had a kid.
Anon - That kind of sums it up. The whole idea of parenting it a whole lot easier as an ideal than a practice. :D
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