I got up and made pancakes for breakfast. The kids love them and we do this often adding different fruits or chocolate to them. Each child came to the stove to get theirs and add butter. They returned to the table to add syrup and eat them. Every child does this for themselves. We recently stopped running over the pancakes with the pizza cutter and suggested they try to cut them up with their fork. Nothing has been said about this until today.
Today, Patches was one of the first to start eating and when the others began, she went off. She insisted they were copying her. Everyone was confused. She screamed and slammed things around until I finally figured out what she was upset about. She claimed they were all cutting their pancakes with a fork, like her. I had them each show me simultaneously how they were doing it. It was painfully obvious that Patches was delusional. No one was "copying" her. They were eating. She went on for several minutes before slamming herself around the kitchen and throwing her plate at the sink. She continued to slam her room around for an hour.
This is one tiny example. I have 2 kids that are delusional like this. They have their own thoughts and rules and we all must abide by them or we get this. They hold us hostage with their delusions and paranoia. Most days, I can see it for what it is. Some days, I'm just sick and tired of it. Today, I'm sick of it.
She has just blown up again and gone to her room. This time she is angry because she felt it was her turn with a ball so she took it. The others all agree it was Ella's turn. She called me a *itch and went to her room. There is no pleasing her. If I try to explain it to her she thinks I am out to get her. If I let her stew in it, there are 2 possibilities. She will eventually calm down and come back or she will continue to escalate and we have to intervene physically.
All this started over pancakes.
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5 comments:
Oh, ALL KIDS DO THAT!
muhahaha
Seriously? That sucks. I'm sorry.
Hi there,
You don't know me (obviously) but I have recently found your blog and have been reading it trying to "catch up" ever since. I found it via other blogs I've recently begun reading on PTSD, Attachment/RAD, parenting. I am reading it basically for two reasons.
One being that i myself am a survivor of trauma that spanned my childhood into my young adult life. I never blocked the majority of my former stepfather's abuse which began when I was around 8 and ended in early adulthood. I initiated a civil suit against him back in 1990 and that case spanned many years and took a huge emotional toll.
Over the past year I've begun to have new memories of an earlier perpetrator...a boyfriend of my mom's when I was just a toddler. He used to beat her and they had a child together that died. I had previously had no recollection of the sadistic sexual abuse by him.
I've been in therapy for a while. Things got worse during the court case and I too was hospitalized while also somehow managing to work full time and earn two degrees. I went to college and graduated summa cum laude in 2000 with an A.A. in Social Services and graduated magna cum laude in 2003 with a B.S. in Mental Health and Human Services. Around that time I ended up on disability, diagnosed with PTSD, Major Depression, Anxiety and Panic Disorder.
About 8 months ago I began working on the phone and online with a fully credentialed therapist who specializes in sexual trauma, adoptive and foster parenting as well as attachment issues. She is the first and only one who has had the expertise and insight to tell me she felt I have unresolved attachment issues. Thus, I am trying to learn more and that in turn led me to do some research and find your blog as well as a few others. I hope someday to be able to do some face to face work with my therapist but for now, I'm in Maine where I live and she lives in Illnois so I have to wait on that.
I just wanted to say thank you for your courage and dedication to these brave children of yours! I have great hope for them--even though they are wounded. Because they have YOU in their corner to believe in them and be their advocate. I wish my own mother had been as strong or that I'd had a "you" in my life when I was little!
I'd be honored to call you friend.
Sincerely, Lori
Lori, You made me cry. Please tell me you won your case. Our children have improved so much since winning theirs. If I had to put my finger on a single thing that helped them drop their guard and accept me as their mom, it was when their parents were arrested. They knew I would do whatever it took to protect them. I wish you could have had that moment.
Thank you for taking the time to share your story. I look forward to more insight from you.
Awww, I hope they were good tears. Yes, I won my case --sort of. I was going to email you more detail privately but for some reason am not able to get your email link to pop up. Oh well!
I filed the case against Jack in 1990. The lawyer I hired was male and very difficult for me to trust. I'd intended to hire his sister but she'd not been admitted to the Maine Bar yet. Anyway, he won my trust--which takes a lot.
He wanted me to include my mom in the suit for failure to protect (It had come to light just after I turned 17 but she fell apart and said she had two younger ones to look after. She ended up staying with him at that point). I didn't feel able to include her--she and I get along well to this day--as long as we don't discuss the REAL stuff.
So I filed the suit in 90 and by the end of 92 was told we should be going to trial "anytime." In April 93, my normally conscientous attorney stopped returning my calls. I called the courthouse at that point to see if we'd been put on the docket list. It was then that I found he'd missed the deadline for submitting the witness list so the judge gave him a 15 day extension--and he missed that too. I was never told about it! I fired him, on the advice of my therapist at the time, hired a new attorney. We appealed. We lost our appeal to have the case against my stepfather reinstated ONLY because the attorney had missed deadlines from early on--and again, I was never aware of this. I felt held accountable and victimized further by the system. It was shortly after that I was hospitalized for the first time. I ended up filing suit against the attorney--he tried to claim poverty and he moved to one of three states where you can't garnish wages except for child support cases. We finally went to trial in 1999--which was around the time he moved. He didn't show up for trial. I testified many hours. My former therapist testified. I had records from DHS from when I was 17 and it had been reported. I had to testify not only about the sexual abuse but also about what the attorney had done to mess up my case. My stepfather however did not have to be there b/c the original case against him was dismissed--unless I chose to file suit against him for any new memories. The judge ruled that I would have WON the case against my stepfather--that there was more than enough evidence of the abuse I'd suffered and that i STILL suffer from the effects to this day! I won the case against the attorney--a huge judgement--but have not seen a cent of it. He recently moved yet again--to a commune in New Mexico if you can believe that one!
I wish I lived closer because i'd love to be able to go and help you out just an extra pair of hands --someone that's been in some pretty painful places myself.
Warmly, Lori
onceachild, girl. I feel you... I have some shitty stories too. ^5 for getting through!
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