Despite the pure misery described in my last post, overall life is actually on a generally upward swing and has been for the last year. There are so many moving parts and the fall apart and taped and glued and shoved together into a newly assembled “norm” so fast it is impossible to give even a partial ride-along tour. But let’s keep getting closer to caught up!
TLDR: We are doing the best we have been doing, all of us, for many years. The best we have been was never and is still not the goal; we have dreams and hopes for lives that will be lived in relational safety, with individuals that love and treasure each other and grow together. But right now – even two days into winter break, with 4x Older meltdowns, 3 x Younger meltdowns, and so far only internal adult adults meltdowns with one raised voice to break up a literal physical melee, we still feel joy and hope for the future, and have times of delight together.
And the times of delight are generally on the upswing.
Stress & Transitions
Longer version of of some of the last few months. After the absolutely miserable years for all of us, we found a highly recommended day treatment program for our Older. We really struggled with letting her get further behind academically, but the reality is, she wasn’t available for academics while she was living in flight or fight, so we needed to focus on creating “felt safety” – it didn’t matter how safe she was unless she factually felt safe. And, we needed to be in the role of “parent” not “parent, educator, therapist, nanny, PCA, and night nurse”. October through December is her hardest time. So, she started in March, with a full-year plan; meaning she would go through the honeymoon time, know the staff well by the hard time and be well-settled in before the hard time hit, and then we would all have full support through these dark months.
Day treatment was really helpful if only because so many needs were being met, there was a time to take a breath in our parenting, and finally start to fill our own empty buckets so that we had something left to give our children. Despite hard work, introspection, familial loss, this summer was a legitimately good time, where we spent enjoyable time with our children and friends! The girls had their own first flower beds!
And on October 1, her daytreatment program announced it was closing immediately, end of month. SO! Instead of “support, fulfilling needs, calm trustworthy adults working together to support her through the hard times” we switched to “removing that support, during a hard time, creating a new trauma/break, and need to suddenly transfer back to full day school with no transitional support and now ever further behind in academics and only half through the social emotional program that she needed. My rage was boundless. Our misery and terror was overwhelming. It’s like certain kids have a “fuck with my life” sign that only the fates can see and my Bigger a permanent one.
We made it through and are back at school. Some ups and downs. 1,000,000 meetings. Threats of lawyers if she cannot get the support she NEEDS so she participate and grow with the felt safety that is absolutely essential to any forward progress. School is actually now going SO WELL! So, of course, it’s winter break. You know, like it always is!
Bigger
Lots of changes for our Bigger, she was doing so well at not having constant meltdowns, that we decided to start the girls in hip-hop dance classes. Somehow, this first “move” is now at:
Girls in Hip-Hip classes on Saturdays; local ed gymnastics on Mondays; family Hip-Hop class (really!) on Wednesdays; and Bigger has choir Thursday mornings before school! Bigger is exhausted by Thursday – like EXHAUSTED. But has mostly been holding it together, with some rearrangement to routines (get into jammies before dinner, then one less thing to do at the exhausted meltown time).
Big girl is really excellent speller. She is a dance phenom. She loves dancing and singing with every fiber of her being. Reading is not easy, but she is still loving graphic novels and as long as she is reading something for joy, we call it good enough. She chose to have her ears pierced and was a trooper for the (relatively minor process – turns out they were already opened and did not even need a needle).
Her favorite color is still orange. We have been learning to do some great hair, including giant puff, for puffs or puff mohawk!
The struggles have not changed. At nearly 5 full years, more than 1/2 her life, we are just starting to build a world of “felt safety” (different than just being safe). She must have felt safety at all times to remain present in her brain and body – and, she has a hair-trigger into panic. This is the goal right now, especially at school. Routine acts, routine faces, expectations are met, constant adult presence to ensure that adult regulation is just a look away. Each of these calms the nervous system BEFORE the explosion. Although it was an emotional and very upsetting battle, we did get on the same page with the school and have been receiving great reviews again!
Littler
In some way, things are harder overall with our Littler right now. She remains a delight, but there are a lot of moving parts including a decent amount of pass-along trauma from Bigger, and social/cognitive delay for some timeframes she had no space for her own growth because the entire household was focused on Bigger’s needs and that explosiveness ruled the house. She is perhaps a little extra clingy for her age; and very dialed into near hypervigiliance – but much more like mine. When Bigger escalates, Little turns into sweet as pie, trying to calm and control everyone around her, making presents, trying to be charming – very unhealthy and sad coping behaviors to see in our 4 and now 5 year old. We work hard to remind her we will keep them both safe and take care of the parenting, but of course it is scary when she sees her big sister go wild; her big sister is the very most important to her.
Little is well into five, and is still not potty trained. She’s like…85% during the day. The more tired she is the less so. If she is sick, not even worth trying. And nights don’t happen at all.
At home, she is a terror. Tantrums, control, poking and rude to her sister, testing all boundaries non-stop. She kicks, spits, hits, and throws things – at other things, like the large-screen TV! At school, she is quiet, listens, follows all rules, is shy and reserved! She seems to be learning. She desperately wants to read, and I’m so frustrated with the way that they are teaching reading, and so we are ordering books and teaching phonics at home.
It’s a bit up/down – kids really prefer to learn from NOT their own parent! She has high anxiety about being anything other than perfect at every second, even though we are trying everything we can with every kind of vocabulary and demonstration that trying is what matters not success.
As the Bigger has calmed down some; it appears to have opened the space at home for all tantrums Little did not have at ages 2 and 3. Intellectually she appears to be age appropriate (she’s very young in her class, turned 5 only 3 days before starting K). But she can count by twos, not yet tie her shoes, spell her name, count on, loves to rhyme and is figuring out letter sounds that start words. She is very dialed into the social emotional understanding of things; she was able to fully participate in our Solstice “burning of the fears to let go” very well.
Neither of these children sleep yet; and both need so much sleep. Despite this, all four of us are sleeping better than we have in years. We grieve that we did not have another baby; and we dramatically celebrate the correct choice of not having another baby! This family is done, starting to coalesce into how we can function, to be followed some day by “how to get to where we can make choices about how we want to function”. We are, generally, living in a place of hope.