A Family Meeting

Michael became enraged when asked to "run through" his chore. It was a simple task I asked of all the kids. His chore is the hall bathroom. He is expected to clear the floor of any leftover clothes, wipe down the toilet, and sink. A mere moment of work. He grabbed the broom and swung it almost knocked Patches and I in the head, on purpose. I had to grab the handle to stop him from trying again.

When I moved to protect myself, Ruthie went off. She has done well over the last week of keeping it together when he has lost it or rants on and on but this time she was crazy before I could say anything. She was worse then he was. The screaming and rants are hard to ignore. She leaned over us with her fist balled up and tried to hit me. Someone came around the corner and scared her and she retreated to her room a foot behind her. She makes no sense when she is like this. She doesn't even really know what is going on other than she is out of control. It gets Michael going even more and he couldn't get a grip. He was frightened about all the noise she was making. He couldn't see what she was doing but heard her promises to jump out the window. He finally began to sob and turned over clinging to me. It took her over 2 hours to calm down. He took about an hour.

I was so stressed after that I couldn't do homework with the kids. My foot was smashed during the event and was/is throbbing. We ate the dinner I had been making and a very emotional talk afterward. Cyr vented about her guilt for not saving them. All the kids talked about how these episodes make us feel. We all hate them. None of us want to participate. We are all scared and sad when they happen. The 3 that are the root of the events, cried hard and shared what they are thinking sometimes during them. Sometimes, they think about their parents when they are out of control. They feel scared until I restrain them and then they know they won't hurt themselves. Ruthie is still blacking out for some of them. I gave them all a break for the night and began showers. When they were done, we made our very first batch of homemade, from scratch, cookies. They each got 3 and a glass of milk before dinner. They were so good.

I thought we were all done for the night and sent them off to bed. Everyone was giggling and had their bellies full of warm homemade goodness. Most were asleep in minutes. Patches was not. I went up to check on Kiera and she was standing outside her door. She looked weird so I asked what she was doing. She quietly stared into her room. Figuring she was mad at me for some made up reason, I went on into my room and laid next to Kiera for a minute. Patches came in a minute later and told me someone was in her room. She told me they were on her floor crawling around and had a mask on. She was frightened. I asked her if she wanted to crash on Dad's side of the bed until Cyr came up to bed. She couldn't have moved any faster. Patches usually barely moves faster than a snail. After a couple of minutes, she told me the person was right by her boots and looked at her. She hadn't been afraid until they looked at her. She was confused why she would see someone after not for a few months.

The hardest part of parenting my child isn't the violent episodes, it's not being able to stop these hallucinations. They are terrified of them. Some of them are creatures and scary people, others are friendly towards them or don't seem to mean harm. They can't tell if they are real or not. They do seem odd to them like a stranger in their room or grapes flying off the shelf at the store, or someone looking in a 2nd story window are not possible. It's exhausting for them and for me. I desperately want to fix this for them and I know that isn't possible.