The Joys of Missing the Schoolbus

The good news: Ysa was doing much better most of the time with her aggression / anger, including being more willing to join family events and even interact with her siblings and me.

But as always, we are seeing some backslides in her progress. Last night she was annoyed with her younger siblings and told me 'If they continue like this I am going to KILL them! I don't care if you call the police, I don't care at all, I'd rather be in jail than with them!' ok... I didn't call her bluff, but removed her from the situation and distracted her with school work and I told her all about the parent information meeting I had attended at the high school and she calmed down.

She has missed the morning school bus yesterday and today though. Which of course is all my fault. I clearly don't care about her education. Especially not since I don't want to drop everything and leave Baby Bear sleeping in the house by herself to drive her to school every time she misses it. She refuses to take the town bus ('I HATE that bus! I am too young to take a bus by myself!!!!' Yes, even if she has done it to go shopping, she can't do it to go to school ^^)

So for the last two mornings she has called her dad, whining and bitching and yelling at me and explaining how I clearly don't care for her and how daddy should hurry, she is going to be late! This morning she also was slamming doors and chairs and everything, such fun. She said she would just go live with her dad now! Ok... I was calm enough not to yell back at her 'Good riddance!' but I will have to admit that that phrase did make a short appearance in the forefront of my mind when she was behaving this way.

Thanks for All the Feedback

I incorporated most of it, the only thing I had trouble with was the independence. I agree that it is not mutually exlusive from team work, but I am still not sure how to put in the list and how much emphasis I want to put on it. My Aspergers kids are Very High on the spectrum of 'I don't need anyone, I don't want anyone, I'll just be a cat lady (Violet), everyone around me is an idiot! (Zac) and have made it very clear that they want to be on their own and do not particularly need or want anyone. I wonder how much I would encourage that by adding it to the list, or whether I should just trust that the independence part will happen naturally.

My kids always have been good at doing independent stuff when they felt like / when needed. So it is not an area I am too worried about. Which of course doesn't mean I don't have to verbalize it, so I don't know yet.

I will have to ponder this more ^^

Getting Away from the Language of Fear and Anxiety

First draft of dr Plato's homework, a vision statement.
Any feedback is welcome.

Dr Plato Rocks!

X and I have been getting together with dr Plato and his new plan is to work on the positive attributes we want the kids to have, all concerning hardiness / heartiness. Write a document about that (going into the underlying character qualities of it) and give that to all the therapists as a 'This is what we want/visualize, helps us to work on that for this kid.'

This approach fits very much into the parenting I have done since they were born and into how I live my own life. Focusing on the positive, even if there also should be dealing with the negative, but I think some of the therapists have been swaying a bit too much into the direction of focusing on the negatives.

Lack of Life Skills?

Last Friday Ysa was supposed to go over to X's house. She spent the day at an old friend's house (they have been friends for like 8 years if not more?) and asked her dad to pick her up at that house. He had never actually been there, but she gave him the exact address so he could look it up and get her.

Two hours after she should have been picked up, she came home. 'E's mom dropped me off. Daddy called he never could find their house, so I can't come over tonight.'

And yet another visit not happening and another opportunity to see his daughter missed :(

How can you just leave your daughter like that? How can he not have called to say 'I can't find it , can you give me directions?' instead of 'Oh, too bad, you can't visit.'

The Other Kids

When Dr Plato met with me and X he also talked a lot about the other kids. He mentioned that they have serious problems too and whether we saw that. X claimed that the others do not really have any problems.

Ysa doesn't show ANY problems at his house. And she always had been the happiest child he has known and she should not say she wants to kill herself. She never has any explosions at his house, so he wonders what can be going on with her (Conveniently forgetting that she only spends a few hours a month at his house and he does not actually try to enforce any limits during these hours :p)

'The others don't have any problems either. Everything was just fine until a few years ago she (pointing at me) withdrew from me and the kids. All the kids problems started after I left the house, but I don't see them at my house. '

My mind boggles every time I get a glimpse into X's universe.

Window of Opportunity for Zac

Last school meeting, X never showed up (he forgot) and Dr Plato really pushed Zac again. The fact that Zac did not totally break down, didn't threaten to kill himself, in combination with the resilience Zac showed during the school meeting before this one, led dr Plato to believe that this is the time for action.

He told Zac he was going to tell his dad to turn off the computers and held him accountable for his work at school. No school work = no computers.

Zac and dr Plato negotiated that Zac should work three times 35 minutes (he is in for three periods if he makes it to school) and that would entitle him to computer that day.

Dr Plato did set up a meeting for X and me for yesterday to talk about it. He started with telling X that computer on the days that Zac does perform at school should be limited to 3x35 minutes of computer time because that is how much he worked. Not more. X did not like this 'How can I enforce that??? I am not home! I work! I don't get home till 7 or 8!'
Dr Plato offered the option of putting a password on the computer.
X didn't like it. 'I don't want to push all his computer time to the evening. It is going to be a big fight!'
Dr Plato 'Do you want to fight now or later? The consequences might be more severe later. There is a window of opportunity, he was showing some resilicience now.'
X 'Well, he didn't do well this week at all and didn't do well today at the psychiatrist!'
Dr Plato 'Yes, he will bitch whine cry complain, it is typical avoidance behavior. But we might never get another chance, we are running out of time. If we don't act now, you will have a chronically mentally ill adult that you own for the rest of your life. I am not saying you won't if we act now. Maybe nothing we do will help him. But this is your chance.'

'The computer is poison, it is an addiction, it is slowly poisoning him. Yes, if you take it away, he will argue, he will make your life hell, but he will engage. Engagement on conflict is much better than withdrawal on the computer.'

X said that he thought that taking away the computer would only take away a symptom, not take care of the cause. Dr Plato retorted by asking 'You are trying to make this in a chicken / egg problem, do you know what any farmer says when you ask him what came first, the chicken or the egg? They will say I don't have time for that crazy philosophical crap. I need to feed the chickens, I need to check the incubators, I need to make sure I breed the best hens. There is work to be done.'

There was a lot of back and forth between X and dr Plato and I don't know whether X got convinced and will actually do the computer limits like dr Plato proposes. It is very opposite to his 'Zac is a teen and needs to make his own decisions!' stance. Too bad he didn't voice that to dr Plato :p

Anyway, I hope that X will take this opportunity, but I am grounded enough in reality that I know he might not and there is not a darned thing I can do about it.

Does Mama Want Baby Bear to Get Hurt????

We were at therapy with Baby Bear and trying to get a handle on her not leaving the room when there were explosions happening. Trying to explain to her that for safety sometimes she does need to leave the room. Even if that means being away from me.

This was triggered by events during Penny's explosion when Penny was violent to her, but I was restraining Penny and was not able to physically help Baby Bear remove herself. It took a lot of talking and a long time and then she finally was willing to go with Violet.

Baby Bear has had other incidents that she'd rather stay with me and the exploding kid than get herself to a safe place, so that is something I want to work on with her.

The therapist tried to explain to Baby Bear that I was trying to make sure she didn't get hurt and did Baby Bear understand that? Baby Bear was busy playing with her dolls and didn't give enough feedback, so the therapist decided to write it down on the whiteboard. I am not confident anymore what she wrote, either the question 'Does mama want Baby Bear to get hurt?' or the statement 'Mama wants Baby Bear to get hurt.'

Under it she wrote:
YES
NO
??

She gave baby bear a marker to circle what she thought, and baby bear circled the ?? one. This was not what the therapist expected and she asked again and Baby Bear yet again circled the ?? one.

Then she decided to ask what about daddy? Does daddy want you to get hurt? Baby bear now very decisively circled NO.

I was sitting there 'Great, after 5 years of protecting them from his issues and divorcing him, this happens', also realizing that yes, my household has way more explosions at the moment because of setting limits and more time spent there and more kids at the same time, and I can understand that she feels in a way more protected at his place where they are only for a few hours and there are less violent explosions. Not to mention that she doesn't read yet and it seems unfair to put this sentence on the white board and expect her to give an answer like that.

The family therapist was 'very concerned' about her answer though and it looks like now it is coming back to haunt me in being labeled with 'lack of nurturing' 'lack of availability' and 'being aloof'.

Please give me a reality check. Does this question seem , put this way, feel like she was putting thoughts in Baby Bear's head the way she stated it? I have an iffy feeling about the whole interaction. I see what she wanted to try to do, she expected a resounding NO, but doesn't it feel a bit strange to do it in this way with a non reading / writing kid who is only 5 years old? A very mature 5 years old, but still... And she does recognize yes and no, but still... She definitely doesn't recognize or understand ?? symbols.

Book Case Organization...

Even although Penny has never been diagnosed with OCD, she definitely has some tendencies in that direction. Last week she decided to alphabetize the books on our living room's book shelves. Which went well until she found some Chinese books in between the English book. She gave them to me and refused to include them on the bookshelves, because it was impossible to decide where they would go in the alphabet and what would be the order within their group if she grouped all Chinese books together.

She was very adamant about it that these could NOT be in the book shelves.

At least it makes for a funny story ^^. For now I put the Chinese books on non alphabetized book shelves. Let's just hope she doesn't make it through all the book shelves in the house or I don't know what I will do with them :p