And then some big progress was made!
Literally, every day since I wrote that last post, X3 has made such enormous progress! I attribute it in part to the brilliance of her day treatment program which wrote her a book titled “X3’s Story”. It chronicles, in a very simple, and not blaming way, her life: How when she was a baby, she lived with adults that called her (her real name); when she lived with these adults she was often scared that she would not have food, or a place to live, or that adults would hurt her. Then she lived in a lot of different houses. Then she lived in a house with a lot of kids – that made her worried that she would not have enough food or toys. But now she lives with us. We take care of her in (variety of ways). She still gets worried that these adults will not take care of her and will not giver her enough food, or clothes, or toys, or might hurt her. But these adults are good at the adult job of keeping kids safe. They will keep her safe.
Seems pretty simple right? SHE LOVES TO READ THIS STORY. We read it OVER AND OVER AND OVER. And it’s like the tension melts out of her. I am sure it won’t work forever, but right now, this story is giving her the exact magical reassurance she needs, over, and over, and over. Before this book, she liked to hear the story of how our dog came to live with us – that before us she lived where people hurt her and broke her tail when she was just tiny. But we wanted a dog so much, and had so much love to give a dog, we went out and found Roma to come be our dogger forever and we take good care of her. She TOTALLY got this allegory and, if you hang out with her a while, she will tell YOU the story of Roma too!
Since “the book” she has been really practicing being a kid in sort of hilarious ways. My…difficult…FIL was over recently and she followed him around the house saying things like “in this house, we put the toilet seat DOWN after we use the bathroom”; or, “we don’t yell at Roma, she is a GOOD dog”.
My amazing beyond belief sister took the kids for their first overnight – AND IT WENT PERFECTLY! She had a hard time saying good bye, and I doubt my sister got any sleep (neither did I when my niece and nephew slept over at my house!), but EVERYONE SURVIVED, pretty much as well as can be expected for even a normal five year old and an 11 month old having their first ever sleepover. And she was not overly activated when I picked her up – a little more need for reassurance, but not significantly more. AND my partner and I were able to celebrate our five year wedding anniversary by really partying like adults – i.e. going out, but still being home and (for me) fast asleep by 9:55 p.m. ROCK STARS!
She is also practicing having OPINIONS. We went shopping on Saturday, which she usually LOVES… and every clothing item I held out to her, which she would usually love, she said “I hate that!”. So we didn’t buy any for her! But usually she looks at me to see what I think about everything and then parrots it, so even though this will likely get old pretty doggone fast, it’s lovely seeing that she is feeling safe to test boundaries by hating everything! On the way to school yesterday I kept asking her questions and she said “I don’t want to talk about stuff every day”. And, when I switched topics, said, “I SAID I don’t want to TALK, OKAY?” And so we sat in silence ALL THE WAY TO SCHOOL….today, she chattered the whole way and noted “before, I didn’t want to talk, but now I DO want to talk, so let’s talk about some more things, ok?!”
Because we had already had almost 48 normal hours in a row, and I’m not travelling or having any crazy plans for the next week, we also finally made the move (with medical and therapeutic support) to take her off her psychiatric medication. She was put on it to control behavioral outbursts, ADHD, and to get her to sleep at night. And it has honestly been such a relief to KNOW that she will go to sleep at EXACTLY X time every night, and it was hard to give that up for the unsurety of “will she sleep again?”. BUT – at her old home even with her medications she never slept – so we know she can fight through it if she is anxious enough. And she reacted really badly we accidentally gave her an extra dose one day – so we know it is disorienting in some way. And we don’t fully believe in the ADHD/ODD/etc diagnoses, we think she is likely trauma and anxiety induced chaos – but we cannot know unless we get her back to baseline and see who she IS in a safe, supportive, and therapeutic environment.
So far, we are actually HUGELY pleased with her progress. Going to sleep has been a little less like turning a switch – she used to fall asleep while we read the second story, now she is awake through both, then turn off the light time, and then she goes to sleep with us laying with her in about 10-15 minutes. Not bad, really. She is waking up probably more at night right now – but more importantly, she is JUST waking up, checking we are there, and going back to sleep (she has had one multi-hour marathon awake session, but at least no crying). Not waking up screaming, or weeping inconsolably. We suspect that when she woke up on her medication she was super disoriented, so everything was terrifying and inconsolable. This means she can now start to LEARN how to go to sleep. WHICH MEANS SOME DAY WE WILL NOT HAVE TO SLEEP WITH HER!
I’m not trying to oversell it her – she is intense, and demanding, and needy, and delayed, and scared, and difficult, and exhausting, and adorable, and smart, and sassy, and often full of it. But it’s important to chronicle the moments where she is also just a kid. My kid!