Having an issue identified and being able to start down a path of how to deal with it is one of the most fulfilling emotions I've experienced. In the same way, not having direction can make me feel I'm not being heard. And fills me with dread. And hopelessness.
Eric and I are desperately trying to help our Olivia Bliss be heard. And find hope. She has a very volatile personality when things don't go as she's planned or as she sees fit. Examples are: things being moved in her room, being asked to do something she doesn't want to do, she does not like the way her clothes look, or how her posters are hung, etc. The outbursts are overwhelming. For her. And for the rest of us in the family. She reacts so strongly and so crazed that it has boggled our minds and caused an insurmountable amount of stress in our family. The remorse and despair she feels afterward is equally overwhelming. And I know she feels helpless. I have never felt more like a failure in my life than I do as a mom to Olivia because I can't stop the chaos. I desperately want her to feel in control and I see how out of control this beautiful little girl of mine is.
We've talked to drs., counselors, teachers, friends, family and read numerous books. "You need to be consistent, she needs to know she is not the boss, you need to find her 'currency' and what will make her behave appropriately." We have heard from dozens about how I should not hold her and talk with her after these outbursts since she'll think she won-- "She should go to bed and lay in the dark and really think about what she did." How I should not always discuss feelings with her --"She's just spitting back at you what she thinks you want to hear". We've been told (and we have believed) that we just need to be stricter, stronger, tougher. We've tried. And it hasn't worked. And I am not convinced that any one has been right in their well intentioned advice. Although we are grateful. But it's not working. And I believe conventional wisdom is not what we need. It has been eating away at us lately ---as she has an outburst in the car and then walks into class with the weight of the world on her little back. Or as she lays in the dark sobbing--eventually succumbing to sleep. If this is all manipulation then I WILL get stronger and stricter but Lord knows I've tried and something in my gut is telling me loud and clear that it's so much more. In an email to my dad recently I expressed these deep concerns. His response was simple and yet said so much, "Mothers know best about these issues so go with your gut and keep praying." Eric and I were beginning to feel heard. Two days ago Eric spoke to a psychiatrist on the phone and gave examples of some of Olivia's outbursts --one at age 2 and one at age 7. The dr. recommended we read, "The Explosive Child"--it's written about children who do not progress to the degree that we would hope in the areas of flexibility and frustration tolerance. The dr. who wrote the book is a professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry at Harvard and runs the Collaborative Problem Solving Institute at Massachsetts General Hospital in Boston where my brother had several surgeries. His credentials alone sold me. So I got the book and read it--voraciously. For starters, the quotes from so many of the parents resonated with me. "People who don't have a child like this don't have a clue about what it's like to live with a child like this. Believe me, this is not what I envisioned when I dreamed of having children." "I hate what I've become. I used to think of myself as a kind, patient, sympathetic person. But she has taught me to act in ways I never thought capable. I am emotionally spent." Here was one of the first paragraphs in the book as the dr. uses an example of an 11 year old girl, "Over the years her parents have sought help from countless mental health professionals, most of whom advised them to set firmer limits and be more consistent in managing her behavior and instructed them on how to implement formal reward & punishment strategies, usually in the form of sticker charts and time-outs. After eight years of disparate advice, firmer limits, medicine and motivational programs she has changed very little since her parents noticed there was something 'different' about her when she was a toddler." Bottom line--when parents punish children who do not have the skills to handle how to deal with frustrations the children do not change. This leads to reason that the behavior is not calculated so popular strategies aimed at "teaching the child who's boss" do not make sense since she is not intentionally being "stubborn/manipulative/attention-seeking/ etc". Based on that perspective he asks parents to shelf the conventional thought and assume the child is motivated to do the right thing and already knows who's boss but has a developmental delay in the skills of frustration tolerance. No one has ever told me about this and I am so relieved. To me & for now --it makes perfect sense. We shall see.
The book states, "due to these children's poor tolerance for frustration their wonderful qualities and tremendous potential are often obscured." The children about whom this book is written do not choose to be explosive (any more than a child would choose to have a reading disability). He went on, "Parents of explosive children often discover that strategies that are usually effective for shaping the behavior of other children-such as explaining, reasoning, reassuring, nurturing, redirecting, insisting, ignoring, rewarding, and punishing-don't achieve the same success with these types of children." He states the knee-jerk explanation tends to be "their parents are poor disciplinarians" And then he says, "Of course this explanation doesn't help us understand why many of the siblings of explosive children are actually very well behaved." Amen. That's when the tears came. And that's when I felt like we were now able to help Olivia. And that's when I felt like Olivia's voice was starting to be heard. And that maybe my gut was right afterall. The premise of the book is, "Children do well if they can." And now I know that Olivia needs help finding the tools to do well. The dr. writes that "there is no other group of children who are so misunderstood." This makes my heart break. Eric and I parked at the beach yesterday morning while the kids were in school and I read him pages and pages of highlighted notes. I told him that I believe her outbursts are not planned. How she is not calculated. How getting punished or not receiving an anticipated reward makes these kinds of kids more frustrated, not less. We talked about the steps we are told to take, "empathize/reassure, define the problem together, and invite the child to help solve it." And then I read this to him and I vowed to change the way I view Olivia and respond to her, "Many people believe that if the consequences a child has received for his explosions haven't caused him to stop exploding it must be that the punishments didn't cause enough pain. So they add more pain. The majority of explosive kids have had more pain than most people experience in a lifetime." I am so sorry, Olivia. We love you. We finally hear you. We know the road ahead may be a long one but we finally have a map to help us. And most of all--we have hope.
Frib and Al basking in the rare Seattle winter sunshine
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