My life is being completely consumed by Kaitlyn's anxiety at the moment.
Today I got a call from her teacher. He said Kaitlyn had thrown up in the toilets at lunch time.
I asked if she was ok, if she looked sick. He said apart from being hot from running around she seemed fine.
Every time something like this happens I get scared, I wonder if she actually did throw up, I wonder if she's sick or stressed, I wonder if she succeeded in MAKING herself vomit, I wonder what's happened during the day to make her like this, I think back to the morning and if anything she said or did hinted at not wanting to be at school.
I wonder if this is just a 'normal kid' having a 'normal sick day.' I wonder if there's anything I could have done to prevent this.
But most of all I wonder if there's anything I can do now to make it better.
I wish I could find a pattern or find a trigger for her anxiety. Apart from the unpredictable-ness of her dad's work I can't figure out what has changed in the last few months that's caused such drastic changes. And then I wonder if all of this is just because we don't know when her daddy's going to be home, or what time he finishes work.
But then, he's always had a job with slightly unpredictable hours. I'll admit it's more unpredictable at the moment but he's always had changing rosters and some long weeks and some short weeks.
Seeing your child going through so much suffering and her not knowing why/how to deal with it is heartbreaking.
She's sleeping now, mainly so she can't see me sitting on the bed crying about what to do for her.
Anxiety sucks!
Thursday, 19 November 2015
Monday, 16 November 2015
Living With A Child With Anxiety
Unless you have been paying zero attention or you’re new to
this blog you will all by now know that my 6 year old Kaitlyn suffers from
anxiety.
You will also know, from my previous blog post, that she’s
been a bit of an emotional mess lately.
It’s been a few weeks now and not much has gotten better.
In fact I would say they are worse. Her 7th
birthday is coming up and I’ve been trying to help her plan what she wants to
do. For a kid that usually spends an entire year planning her party I was
expecting huge ideas. But this year she just keeps telling me “I don’t want to
do anything at all.” Its more the way she says it, she drops her face, her eyes
go blank, her whole body seems to slump and she mumbles “I just don’t want
anything at all then mum” its actually heartbreaking and I have no idea why she
doesn’t want anything. I couldn’t even talk her into inviting a friend out for
dinner. We are going to a nearby town for a couple nights for a bit of beach,
exploring and fast food. She keeps telling us no she doesn’t want to. But we
have told her we are doing it to celebrate her Dad’s birthday (which is the
same day as Kaitlyn’s).
At school her teacher has been using sneaky tactics to check
whether or not she’s been eating her food (however I think she has
outsmarted him on more than one occasion). I also had a meeting with her
teacher and the school principal to discuss what’s been going on.
I was pleasantly surprised to know that, although still
quite behind for her age, she has made some quite good improvements this year.
The difference between what she can do at school and what she does at home
though is enormous. For homework at home I’m lucky if she will write a 3 word sentence. At school she’s writing longer, often descriptive sentences (not
all the spelling is correct but nearly!)
Her teacher told me that first thing in the morning Kaitlyn
comes in happy and is content to do her work, if she gets an answer incorrect
or he questions what she’s done she is open to constructive criticism. However
by the afternoon after lunch she falls apart, she gets lazy with her work and
doesn’t like being corrected. She makes a mess of her work if she makes a
mistake and has a short temper, not that she is ever rude she just loses her
patience and falls apart with the slightest “oops you spelt that word wrong” He did tell me he thinks its fatigue. And if
Kaitlyn is sleeping as bad as I think she is I can understand the fatigue. No
wonder come 4pm she refuses to do homework or does a real piss poor effort. She's exhausted. Physically and mentally drained, making it through a day is exhausting enough for Kaitlyn. Adding in extra activities or even fun things like after school sports is too much for her.
The principal was surprised to hear quite how bad things had
been for Kaitlyn and has agreed to get the paperwork and referrals together to
start getting some testing happening first thing back at school next year,
she’s also offered for us to come into school before school officially goes
back to have a sit down with whoever will be her new teacher to discuss Kaitlyn
and try get Kaitlyn used to her new teacher. While talking with the principal
we got onto the subject of Kaitlyn’s horse riding lessons last year and how
amazing it was to see the improvements in Kaitlyn: building that relationship
and confidence and trust with the horse and how good it was for her. The
principal mentioned she knows someone with horses in town and would speak to her
about any options that may be available to us-fingers crossed because I REALLY
REALLY want this to happen.
Kaitlyn has been given a special sensory cushion and foot
rest at school to try and help her sit properly and sit still as when she’s
tired or anxious she has a tendency to wriggle around, sit on her legs, hang
off the side of the chair etc. she loses focus too easily and it can be very distracting for the other kids.
Unfortunately Kaitlyn also still isn’t sleeping well, she is
awake well past 8:30 most nights, keeping Bradley awake also, and is waking up
the whole house at 5:30am. Everyone is exhausted and run down from lack of sleep.
You may not agree but in our house we have always (since
Kaitlyn was a baby) had the rule that when you wake up you stay in bed until
mum or dad come and get you. I find it keeps the kids from wandering around the
house, getting up too early, bad habits of watching the tv first thing in the
morning and safety, I always knew as toddlers they wouldn’t wake up and go
running into the kitchen and climb up anything, also just a simple privacy thing. Hubby and I like the kids to know that we deserve our own time together (talking, watching tv, having a coffee and chat) without kids being around.
Kaitlyn however has become so bad with wandering the house,
hiding behind doors and walls and listening into hubby and I having private
conversations (because she wants to know what’s REALLY going on and listens to
all sorts of adult conversations about life and work and her and the other kids
and people we know etc..), going to the toilet up to 30 times a night (not even
exaggerating) and basically being a pain and waking everyone up, that we made
the decision to take the door handle off her door. So when the kids are in bed,
that’s it. And for the last few months that’s worked perfectly fine with no
dramas. Bradley happily sleeps all night and doesn’t get out of his room so
it’s never been an issue with him. Thankfully we’ve been blessed with an
amazing little boy that just takes it all in his stride and doesn’t complain.
The last few weeks Kaitlyn has been waking between 5-5:30am
most mornings and because she can’t open the door and wander around she bangs on
the wall, screams out “I need to go to the toilet” and cries and just
generally anything noisy and attention seeking that will wake anyone up. Last
week she even tried making herself vomit (a habit that she does when all
else fails and her life is way out of control, possibly the thing that scares
me the most about her. I dread the day she succeeds. Listening to your 6 year
old daughter sitting in the bathroom head over the toilet bowl coughing and
spluttering trying to make herself vomit is not how anyone pictures their life.
It’s literally heartbreaking, and so damn scary-where did she even learn this
from??!!) I don't even know why she feels like her life is so out of control at the moment, a few weeks ago things were difficult with hubby's work but that has slowed down lately and he's been home a fair bit.
So why don’t we just let her out?? Well sometimes we do,
like this morning I got up opened the door told her to go toilet and straight
back to bed. So she did. Less than 10 minutes later she was banging on the wall
again “I need to poo.”
She doesn’t actually NEED anything, it’s just one of her
things she does.
Living with Kaitlyn is very demanding, very exhausting, and
very hard at times.
A few weeks ago we borrowed a weighted blanket off a friend
to try and help Kaitlyn sleep at night. It worked AMAZING for the first few
nights, but as Kaitlyn got used to having it, the desired effect wore off. And
it’s the same with everything, something might work really well to keep her
calm, eating well, sleeping well, keeping up in school, happy etc. but as soon
as it becomes something she’s used to, it automatically stops working.
So we are CONSTANTLY looking for new strategies, new ways to
deal, new ways to help her cope and to encourage her.
You can never truly understand how hard it is living with
such a young child with anxiety until you have fully experienced it.
From the outside Kaitlyn seems like quite an average child.
Others sometimes think she’s just naughty or rude (don’t get me wrong,
sometimes she is naughty!). Hubby often gets frustrated when we see people that
Kaitlyn knows out in public. Her school friends will see her and shout out and
wave to her and Kaitlyn will often look the other way or whisper a very quiet
hello-it seems as though she’s completely ignoring the person. It’s not
intentional to be rude; she just doesn’t know how and doesn’t have the confidence
to respond properly.
Today has been a particularly bad day after being woken so
early. Isla was overtired and grumpy. Kaitlyn had meltdown after meltdown. Then
she was rude and bossed everyone around (a sure sign she’s feeling anxious is
when she starts trying to take control over everyone’s lives, telling us what
to do, how to do it, trying to discipline her siblings etc. When she feels her
life is out of control she tries to control everyone else). Hubby was home
trying to sleep for night shift while everyone was arguing and having loud
screaming meltdowns (myself included in that).
Having an anxious kid in the family is hard, I often feel
sorry for Bradley and Isla. Kaitlyn takes up so much time and effort and
attention that I sometimes feel as though the other 2 get left out. I try so
hard to spend one on one time with the others but Kaitlyn can NOT play by
herself, she’s always there, hanging around, trying to interrupt, trying to
butt into your game, trying to listen in on your conversations (even when they
have NOTHING to do with ANYTHING to do with her), trying to take over, trying
to ask questions, trying anything she can to take my attention away from the others.
Some days it all just feels like a struggle. I feel like a
failure, I feel too tired to function, I feed the kids junk takeaway because I
don’t have the energy or time or just basically don’t want to fight over
another meal to cook.
But then 7pm comes, the kids all go to bed and I sit back
and realise how incredibly lucky I am to have 3 amazing children who are mostly
healthy, mostly happy and are just my whole world. I love them all equally, and
they all drive me insane equally.
And on those bad days the only thing that keeps me going, is
knowing that even if it takes a week or it’s a month’s long “flare up” THIS TOO
SHALL PASS. . .
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