What's new
Well, I haven't really written much lately about how things are going at home, at school and so on. I have been kind of busy, and with the holidays, time is short. Now that they are over and things are settling down, I can catch my breath.
My daughter is now off the Prozac, which I am kind of glad of. I don't know that it was doing much good and sometimes it seems sort of a panacea, the snake oil of our day. I do think she has some depression, but I feel she is helped more by how we deal with her and by encouraging a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy approach. She perceives the world in such a negative way, oftenw hen things happen, no matter what the cause she assumes a negative, why me or everyone is out to get me attitude. She doesn't even try to make things better in the areas she does have control over because she thinks, what's the use? It is a very helpless, dependent position to take. We encourage her to replace negative thought patterns with positive ones. When she says "I am stupid" we remind her that that is a lie. She isn't stupid. This is a very Christian approach, when we remember that God tells us that the enemy is a liar and that we combat that by replacing the lie with the truth. We don't argue about the validity or viewpoint etc, we replace it. What is true? God tells us what is true, not the world, not the Dr, and not even our circumstances. We know that he says we are created for a purpose, our lives have meaning, that he desires good things for us, we were meant for good not evil. That is the truth. So we try to help her with this.
We had a very disturbing event after Christmas, while they were on break. We had gone round and round about her room being a pigsty all weekend, and late in the evening, just before bedtime after nothing had been done with the room, she was getting ready for bed supposedly. I went in to tuck her in and found her standing in the closet with a belt around her neck, tied to the rod. Needless to say, the night got a lot longer. We had her in to see the psychiatrist after this, and I really think it was more a case of wondering what would happen if, rather than an actual attempt on her life. He agreed. She is a dramatic kid, and I can kind of see her thinking to herself, I'll show them, boy will they miss me when I'm gone, or even, I'll make them sorry they push me around, all the while going through the motions. Had I not come in and found her, I believe she would have undid it and stepped out before she actually did anything, realizing what a silly thing it was. ADD kids have poor impulse control. They act out before their minds really process what they are doing, it's what causes alot of their behavior problems. It's not that they don't know right form wrong, their emotional brakes suck.
I suppose it seems silly to take her off the Prozac after that, but it really was not making any difference in her mood, and that waskind of an anamoly. But it is a perfect example of how hard it can be to parent a kid with ADD. You can't predict alot of their behavior, it seems like they are acting immature and in a way it is, but they don't have the ability to manage themselves as well as other kids their age. People assume they are just poorly disciplined, but that isn't the case. We disciplined the kid 10 ways to sunday and it just never did any good. That's the problem. They need structure, but not neccesarily more discipline. There is a difference. People who criticize these kids or their parenting really don't understand. They try to apply logic that would work with the average kid to a situation where it just doesn't work. They don't really believe you, and I think that even the most well meaning freinds and family secretly harbor a suspicion that if they were the ones dealing with the kid, the problems would not be as bad. I understand, we told ourselves that for a long time, but you begin to realize when it happnes day in and day out that these are not kids that function like other kids. It's like blaming a VW for not going as fast as a mustang. They just don't respond the same way. You only understand that when you see them every day in every situation. Maybe if either of us had the same problems we would have seen it sooner, I am sorry it took so long. We just kept telling ourselves that she needed more disciplining, that she was just stubborn, etc. We had to face the facts. If it took us 12 years, I don't suppose anyone who only sees her occasionally can really grasp what we go through and what we have seen. You can't imagine your kid sitting in their room, screaming over and over again, in rage and frustration, because of some small mishap that most kids would brush off. You can't picture them hitting the walls or banging their head against a wall, because they are mad. You watch them make the same mistake over and over and over, and you can't imagine why they won't change their behavior. They are so filled with frustration and anger, and you can't imagine where it comes from. Never the less, there it is.
We completed the assessment by the district for special ed, and they decided she did qualify under "other health problems", becuase of her emotional disturbance. I listened to the eval results and they said the over all theme was that she has this learned helplessness, "poor me" which impacted her motivation more than the ADD affects her ability. It does but more than that she just doesn't try. I know that. They said she doesn't ask for help, I explained that that is because in the past when she asked for help the teachers would tell her no, because she asked too often. They would get tired of helping her, because they wanted her to try on her own. She just got to the point where she wouldn't ask and wouldn't try. She shut down. It's a lifetime of failing at everyhting you try and being told it's because you aren't trying hard enough. They said she kept talking about how she is disabled, that was a crutch for her as to why she couldn't do something or why she should be treated special . I tried to explain that she jsut found out about the ADD last year, and for several years she has been told it was her fault. Finding out there was a reason for her problems was a relief and I am not surprised she clings to that right now. I would too. Anyway, the be all and end all is, she will have an IEP and more hlep than she has had before. YAY! We have our first IEP meeting at the end of the month. I am looking forward to it.
My daughter is now off the Prozac, which I am kind of glad of. I don't know that it was doing much good and sometimes it seems sort of a panacea, the snake oil of our day. I do think she has some depression, but I feel she is helped more by how we deal with her and by encouraging a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy approach. She perceives the world in such a negative way, oftenw hen things happen, no matter what the cause she assumes a negative, why me or everyone is out to get me attitude. She doesn't even try to make things better in the areas she does have control over because she thinks, what's the use? It is a very helpless, dependent position to take. We encourage her to replace negative thought patterns with positive ones. When she says "I am stupid" we remind her that that is a lie. She isn't stupid. This is a very Christian approach, when we remember that God tells us that the enemy is a liar and that we combat that by replacing the lie with the truth. We don't argue about the validity or viewpoint etc, we replace it. What is true? God tells us what is true, not the world, not the Dr, and not even our circumstances. We know that he says we are created for a purpose, our lives have meaning, that he desires good things for us, we were meant for good not evil. That is the truth. So we try to help her with this.
We had a very disturbing event after Christmas, while they were on break. We had gone round and round about her room being a pigsty all weekend, and late in the evening, just before bedtime after nothing had been done with the room, she was getting ready for bed supposedly. I went in to tuck her in and found her standing in the closet with a belt around her neck, tied to the rod. Needless to say, the night got a lot longer. We had her in to see the psychiatrist after this, and I really think it was more a case of wondering what would happen if, rather than an actual attempt on her life. He agreed. She is a dramatic kid, and I can kind of see her thinking to herself, I'll show them, boy will they miss me when I'm gone, or even, I'll make them sorry they push me around, all the while going through the motions. Had I not come in and found her, I believe she would have undid it and stepped out before she actually did anything, realizing what a silly thing it was. ADD kids have poor impulse control. They act out before their minds really process what they are doing, it's what causes alot of their behavior problems. It's not that they don't know right form wrong, their emotional brakes suck.
I suppose it seems silly to take her off the Prozac after that, but it really was not making any difference in her mood, and that waskind of an anamoly. But it is a perfect example of how hard it can be to parent a kid with ADD. You can't predict alot of their behavior, it seems like they are acting immature and in a way it is, but they don't have the ability to manage themselves as well as other kids their age. People assume they are just poorly disciplined, but that isn't the case. We disciplined the kid 10 ways to sunday and it just never did any good. That's the problem. They need structure, but not neccesarily more discipline. There is a difference. People who criticize these kids or their parenting really don't understand. They try to apply logic that would work with the average kid to a situation where it just doesn't work. They don't really believe you, and I think that even the most well meaning freinds and family secretly harbor a suspicion that if they were the ones dealing with the kid, the problems would not be as bad. I understand, we told ourselves that for a long time, but you begin to realize when it happnes day in and day out that these are not kids that function like other kids. It's like blaming a VW for not going as fast as a mustang. They just don't respond the same way. You only understand that when you see them every day in every situation. Maybe if either of us had the same problems we would have seen it sooner, I am sorry it took so long. We just kept telling ourselves that she needed more disciplining, that she was just stubborn, etc. We had to face the facts. If it took us 12 years, I don't suppose anyone who only sees her occasionally can really grasp what we go through and what we have seen. You can't imagine your kid sitting in their room, screaming over and over again, in rage and frustration, because of some small mishap that most kids would brush off. You can't picture them hitting the walls or banging their head against a wall, because they are mad. You watch them make the same mistake over and over and over, and you can't imagine why they won't change their behavior. They are so filled with frustration and anger, and you can't imagine where it comes from. Never the less, there it is.
We completed the assessment by the district for special ed, and they decided she did qualify under "other health problems", becuase of her emotional disturbance. I listened to the eval results and they said the over all theme was that she has this learned helplessness, "poor me" which impacted her motivation more than the ADD affects her ability. It does but more than that she just doesn't try. I know that. They said she doesn't ask for help, I explained that that is because in the past when she asked for help the teachers would tell her no, because she asked too often. They would get tired of helping her, because they wanted her to try on her own. She just got to the point where she wouldn't ask and wouldn't try. She shut down. It's a lifetime of failing at everyhting you try and being told it's because you aren't trying hard enough. They said she kept talking about how she is disabled, that was a crutch for her as to why she couldn't do something or why she should be treated special . I tried to explain that she jsut found out about the ADD last year, and for several years she has been told it was her fault. Finding out there was a reason for her problems was a relief and I am not surprised she clings to that right now. I would too. Anyway, the be all and end all is, she will have an IEP and more hlep than she has had before. YAY! We have our first IEP meeting at the end of the month. I am looking forward to it.
posted by madmom at 2:09 PM
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