Posts from — September 2008

I’ve told you before how M is grieving the loss of her sister E.  But at the risk of sounding completely insensitive, I think she’s beginning to use this grief to her advantage.

More and more, she’s using “missing E” as a rationale for meltdowns, general pissyness, and not going to bed.  But more and more, J and I are thinking its really just an excuse for bad behavior – its not what’s really going on in her 6 year old head.

Thing is, there probably are a whole bunch of other things she’s struggling with – friends, school, recovery from her past – so I don’t want to shut her down completely.  I want to encourage conversation, and help her process these feelings.  But when she starts with “E”, its hard to move away from that subject on to something else.

How do you help a 6 year old correctly identify the source of her emotional pain?

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  My husband had his gallbladder removed yesterday (outpatient surgery, which means I’m playing nursemaid at home).  In an effort to make things as easy as possible around here, I asked a friend to take the dog (aka Cosmo) home with her for 24 hours – one less yippy little mouth to contend with, I figured.

What I didn’t count on was the reaction of the kids to the temporary loss of their dog.  M spent most of the night talking about missing Cosmo, then fell apart crying when she went to bed.   I’m thinking M is tired of missing those she loves, like her sister, and now her dog.

Would I do it again?  I think so.  Hopefully, tonight, when Cosmo comes home, M will see that those she loves DO come back, and stay in her life.

Today, out of the blue, M started spiraling into the angry zone.  This has been one of the hardest things for me to learn how to handle.  Her behavior is so completely irrational, so reason (my favorite tool) is not an option.  And when she gets like this, she’s not ABOUT to crawl into your lap for comfort.  So what’s a mom to do?

I’ve found the only thing that “works” (whatever THAT means) is to go into her room, lie on her bed (while she’s huddled under her comforter on the floor), be quiet, and wait to see what direction she’s going to take.  If there’s no move from her, then all I can do is tell her I love her, and leave.  It kills me, but that’s the only option.

But today, she was verbal.  She was able to start listing the things that were making her angry.  And I had to fight every instinct I had to try and make her feel better – all I could do was listen.

When she slowed down, I briefly mentioned things that had happened to me at her age that were similar.  Her response?  “So what?  What else?”.  She didn’t want to seem interested, but she was.

Nothing was resolved today.  I don’t know if any progress was made in her healing.  But for a few minutes, I was able to come into her anger, and show her I could survive it.  Maybe, if she can see that, she’ll learn that she can survive it to.

Lately, L has been doing really well – seems the latest med-cocktail is really helping him make good choices.  As a result, we’ve been doing a whole lot less displining, correcting, yelling, whatever.

Funny thing though – once L started calming down, M started ramping up.  This is the girl who knows what all the rules are, and is perfectly capable of following them.  Yet all of a sudden, she’d go out of her way to do the wrong thing, resulting is displine, correction, yelling, whatever.

We suddenly realized that she was doing this on purpose – that she wanted to get us to yell, punish – to do anything negative.  Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?  Why would someone WANT to create a negative environment.

Well, when its the only thing you’ve ever known, “crazy” can be comfortable – its the thing you’re the most prepared for in life.  “Calm” is new, different, and uncomfortable.

So we’ve come to realize that the crazier M and L get, the calmer J and I need to get.   The goal is to prevent them from getting what they want (crazy), and help them learn to live in the calm.