How should we respond to this? - Page 2

[bigeyes]

Originally Posted by UUMom

Ah, poor little bunny. It is so complicated.

My thoughts are with *all *of you who are trying to make this better. This is going to be nothing easy. Please take care as best you can. This is all beyond my experience. I will hold all of you in my heart.

Thanks. It really is amazing she's held herself together so well, isnt it? I think suppressed emotion is a bad thing, and probably us getting irritated when she finally lets it out is not helping.

[bigeyes]

Originally Posted by UUMom

I wonder if she has learned over the years that she is so messed up, so in need, and because of all of her 'issues', can't see any way out of it. Maybe 'normal scared kid' is so beyond her mental grasp that she acts out even more?

We are what we think we are, & what we'e been told we are. Sometimes people are never allowed to simply be afraid, scared, sad, or 'really worried'-- and have that seen as normal. Therapists can't fix sad. We can't fix grief. People can learn to manage it-- put it aside at times so we know joy. No amount of therapy and/or good theraputic drugs can change us totally.

Hmmmm, something else that could be a real problem is, dh has always treated her like she's such a brave little soldier, but then the other relatives treated her like an infant. And you're right, nobody gave her time to just work though it.

DH couldn't handle it, and the other relatives were so busy continuing to mourn another family member who died years previously that they hardly acknowledged her biomom other than to try to get money out of it. When I had first started seeing DH, my now DSS ran into his uncle and when they spoke, he didn't even acknowledge that he'd lost his sister, (DSS's mom!) he just kept going on about the relative that died years earlier! I hardly knew DSS then, but that made my head explode that the uncle could be that insensitive to not even pretend to miss his sister for his nephew's sake.

I could write a book. : suffice it to say they're evil. I think the combo of denial on DH's part and complete dysfunction on their part was just a recipe for disaster for dd and we'll be backpedaling for years to come. I just hope we haven't waited too long to get things started in therapy.

[EdnaMarie]

edited: Just read the other responses. Totally agree with the poster who said that you can't expect and 11 year old to act like a 20 year old. Also want to say that schizophrenia is normally not diagnosed in children so an undiagnosed 8-year-old schizophrenic seems really unlikely. None of the things you've described sound characteristic of shizophrenia to me... not that I'm a doctor, but I mean... she's just ignoring you and being rude.

When I was 12 I used to write stories about vampires, fantasize about all kinds of things. Kids get in funks. Not saying she's "normal"- sounds like she's got issues. But schizophrenia is a huge label.

*** original post***

What you are saying totally makes sense. I am just going to continue probing from your daughter's point of view. I hope you don't think I'm judging you. I'm just trying to look at it from another perspective.

"But the ignoring thing is more as if she is trying to make it very clear that she hates all of us and can't stand to be around us... Personally, I'd rather she say I hate all of you than slam things and do the silent crap. She is obviously angry, but nobody knows what her problem is..."

Maybe she wants you to know how badly she feels she's being treated. I'm not saying that you are treating her badly, but she might feel that way. I know I was depressed (not clinically, but quite sad) and felt very misunderstood at 11 and 12.

It may seem to her things are not being done properly and that the reason is that she's not being listened to. Maybe that's why she doesn't give her opinion: even though it seems to you that you are giving in too often, to her it seems that you are not listening to her, so why bother talking?

This could be the message she is trying to send when she goes into the family room and is silent. "Hey, everybody. You're not listening to me so I won't bother talking."

If she verbalized that, what would you say? "But we do listen!"

That would again contradict her, proving that you in fact do not (in her view).

Maybe you could tell her that you feel that you need to integrate her ideas into the family in a better way, and somehow (possibly with the psych?) think of a way to help her express her opinions on how things should be run in a more positive way.

[bigeyes]

I agree there is a huge problem with her not feeling in control and not feeling heard, but when we ask her to talk, she won't. And last school year we had problems missing the bus because of her problems getting ready, so now we have her get her clothes ready beforehand so there are no last minute problems in the morning. She has control over how they go together, but she doesn't control what time we leave. I feel like that's all I can do, I am not going to let her hold the rest of us hostage, but I do want to help her feel heard.

Like I said, it has to just suck to have been through all this and be wondering why nobody has told her the truth, but the docs have actually advised against it. I don't know what to do.

BTW, she is 9 1/2. Her mom died at 6. I have been around since 6 1/2, but I worked with DH and knew DD from her being with him at work because her mom was often hospitalized. We got married when she was 7 1/2. To add to the joy, all the women in her family hit puberty at age 8, so we have teen hormones in a child's body.

I know she's angry and possibly depressed, but I don't know how long it is going to take to reach her. And yes, the poster who made the comment about not expecting her to act like a well adjusted 20 year old was dead-on. I think all this time people have been saying how 'mature' she was when in reality she was bottling all this stuff up and some of us were in denial about how bad things were for her. I've told her all along that I would never try to replace her mom or make her forget her, and we have photos of her on the wall with all the other family photos. But I do believe some of her hostility springs from stuff taught to her by the toxic aunts and other not so normal relatives.

The schizophrenic thing is seriously something that doctors have suggested because of the symptoms we've described. We have not labeled her as schizophrenic, but we believe her mother was. Her mom was a nurse and she stole her medical records because she was paranoid about her coworkers reading them. They were part of the reason dh isn't too keen on psychiatry.
She would tell him the television told her he was having an affair with their 80 year old neighbor. Apparently it also told her he was having an affair with a coworker (me.) She never mentioned this stuff to her docs, so they never knew how bad things were. When DD's teacher told me she was reporting hearing things that were not being said, I was concerned and so was DH. We were worried about a learning disability and after consulting a few people at school and having a few go-arounds with the bus company, we found that the general consensus was that she was imagining incidents that were not happening. Her teacher told me she was convinced that this was why she was not learning, because she was so busy with these imagined incidents and worrying about who might be talking about her or looking at her that she couldn't concentrate on anything else. At first we thought the school was covering up bullying incidents, but after having the special ed people observe her, and talking to so many people that it just wasn't possible for them all to be lying, we had to admit that she was either imagining things or lying. With her mother's history of delusions and disassociative states, and with the history of mental illness in various relatives, we really can't take any chances.

That was how I finally got him to agree to getting her to counseling. We just started toward the end of school last year, and now we're in our second week of the new school year.

She was coming home every day telling me how great school was going, and I told her that was great, maybe it would be a good year, to keep looking on the bright side. Then she comes home and has gotten in a fist fight with an older boy. I have to call the school on monday, NOBODY even bothered to call me or send home a note, which I find outrageous....but I am trying not to overreact just in case it isn't true, since the last 2 times I came unglued the incidents were not exactly as she reported them to me. Because of this, I don't know whether to think why can't they leave her alone? or things were going great and something had to happen!

Every little thing with her is hard to understand because I never know if it's embellished, misinterpreted, imagined or an outright lie. Until someone reaches her and figures out exactly what it is, I never know what to think. Half of me wants to go sue people for harming her, and half of me wants to just stop altogether because she keeps lying and I look like the crazy overprotective mom. I feel like I go fight all her battles and look like an idiot, and then I get slapped in the face for it too.

And this is soooooooooo childish, but it really pisses me off that some other woman offed herself and left her so messed up emotionally, and I'm chronically ill and am catching all the flack for her actions. I would love to be able to just hang out with both of my dcs without all this drama. It's emotionally and even physically exhausting and I really can't keep doing it. I know there are women who are in much worse health than me and I don't know how they do it. Some days it's all I can do to just figure out something to fix for dinner that isn't going to set her off or take more energy than I have in reserve.

[EdnaMarie]

Okay, well I think that if you put the not listening in the context of also hearing things which are not being said, then that's a different story.

Many abandoned and abused children have very rich fantasy lives which they do not give up easily. Think of Anne of Green Gables- she was always imagining another reality because her real reality was unbearable.

I do want to say that telling a kid to talk is not the same as listening. She might be thinking, "You ask me to talk but you never listen- so why bother?"

Sounds like she might have had experiences that lead her to believe that when she gives an opinion, it will not be valued. Instead others will think that she's being a control freak or lying.

[bigeyes]

Originally Posted by Mahtob

Okay, well I think that if you put the not listening in the context of also hearing things which are not being said, then that's a different stories.

Many abandoned and abused children have very rich fantasy lives which they do not give up easily. Think of Anne of Green Gables- she was always imagining another reality because her real reality was unbearable.

I do want to say that telling a kid to talk is not the same as listening. She might be thinking, "You ask me to talk but you never listen- so why bother?"

Sounds like she might have had experiences that lead her to believe that when she gives an opinion, it will not be valued. Instead others will think that she's being a control freak or lying.

Well, it isn't that I don't want to believe her, but when I've had to apologize to people because she has led me into a situation where what she told me happened was not what actually happened, it's hard.

I'm afraid she is getting a rep for being a liar. My concern is finding out if she is lying, or if she is hearing things, or what. If we know what is happening then we can work on it, the speculation is driving me nuts.

How do you make someone talk? How do you make someone tell you the truth? And how do you make someone know the difference between reality and fantasy or delusion? I'd like to think she doesn't lie, though I don't know if being delusional is any improvement.

I'm just so tired of trying to defend her and feeling like I've been set up.

[EdnaMarie]

I feel for you. 9.5 is amazingly young.

I would just again encourage you to be on your guard but really try to listen so she feels she can be honest. The environment you've been describing does not sound like one that encourages honesty. It will take her a long time to learn that she can be herself, regardless of any other mental illness issues.

Maybe she is getting a rap for being a liar. She does lie. Okay. She'll get a clean slate in middle school, and again in high school. She is young. She needs to work through her issues.

"How do you make someone talk? How do you make someone tell you the truth? And how do you make someone know the difference between reality and fantasy or delusion?"

You don't make them do anything. You provide a warm, loving, unconditional environment in which a broken person can slowly heal. You continue to be consistent, again and again and again for years and years, until your daughter can be 100% sure that she can tell you the truth. When she can face reality for what it is. Right now it sounds like she can't face reality (from what you've said, I wouldn't want to either). You need to make her reality a place that she can deal with.

[Ruthla]

Originally Posted by bigeyes

And this is soooooooooo childish, but it really pisses me off that some other woman offed herself and left her so messed up emotionally, and I'm chronically ill and am catching all the flack for her actions.

I'm sure these feelings are completely normal, but remember that DD's biomom didn't "off herself" just to mess up DD. BM was very ill- she was trapped insider her own pain and couldn't see anybody else, couldn't see much of herself even, and felt backed into a corner- that suicide was her only salvation. She wasn't being selfish- she was truly blinded to anybody else's needs. She must have been in a hell of a lot of pain.

Originally Posted by bigeyes

She has never been told about the suicide, she just thinks mommy was sick for a while and eventually the docs couldn't save her.

The story that DD has been told is incomplete, but it's fundamentally true. Even though suicide was the direct cause of death, the main cause was her mental illness. Mentally healthy people don't commit suicide!

[bigeyes]

Originally Posted by Ruthla

I'm sure these feelings are completely normal, but remember that DD's biomom didn't "off herself" just to mess up DD. BM was very ill- she was trapped insider her own pain and couldn't see anybody else, couldn't see much of herself even, and felt backed into a corner- that suicide was her only salvation. She wasn't being selfish- she was truly blinded to anybody else's needs. She must have been in a hell of a lot of pain.

The story that DD has been told is incomplete, but it's fundamentally true. Even though suicide was the direct cause of death, the main cause was her mental illness. Mentally healthy people don't commit suicide!

True, and in calmer moments I have sympathy for her. Her whole family is so effed up and the grandmother had her committed when she was 13 because she stayed out past curfew. There was apparently forced contact with the molester throughout their childhoods, and the grandmother also made sure that all the daughters grew up knowing that men couldn't be trusted and that if you had women friends they were all after your husband. :

I cannot count how many times I've had discussions with dd about how pointless jealousy is, or how often she has made comments about ooh, dad looked at that lady on the TV... only to be surprised that I don't care who he looks at on the TV.
It's really sad to me that by the time she was 6 she had a biased opinion about fidelity and how a marriage was supposed to work. And the irony? Grandma was the town tramp. Dh tells a story about one of the many grandpas who set an elaborate trap and took her mother with him when he caught her so she would quit talking to people about how awful he was treating her baby.

I try not to think about them too much, it gets me too worked up. I shudder to think how many generations back the dysfunction goes. I just want it to stop with this generation.

But I will always think of a parental suicide as a selfish act. It's putting your own pain above the care of your children. I can have sympathy for emotional pain and depression, but not for actually doing something that would cause your family that much grief.

[EdnaMarie]

"I cannot count how many times I've had discussions with dd about how pointless jealousy is, or how often she has made comments about ooh, dad looked at that lady on the TV... only to be surprised that I don't care who he looks at on the TV."

Rather than say that jealousy (something that she has been taught to value) is pointless, or that you don't care about whom he looks at (i.e. an important event to her), why not try a more positive approach? Like, "Jealousy can make life pretty interesting *laugh* but I prefer trust. I trust you with your teachers and I trust /dh with his coworkers- and it gives me time to focus on more positive things, like pizza. Speaking of, who wants pizza?" or "Yep. He did. Guys are so easily drawn to visuals! Thank God you dad knows there's more to a woman than that."

The other reactions you listed basically mocked her opinions (that's pointless, I don't care about what you noticed) so is it any surprise that she doesn't want to answer questions?

It seems like you might be dealing with much more than just your daughter. But she needs you to be a role model, someone with something positive on offer, not someone who merely reacts against behaviour that (let's face it) has worked so far for her.

[bigeyes]

Originally Posted by Mahtob

"I cannot count how many times I've had discussions with dd about how pointless jealousy is, or how often she has made comments about ooh, dad looked at that lady on the TV... only to be surprised that I don't care who he looks at on the TV."

Rather than say that jealousy (something that she has been taught to value) is pointless, or that you don't care about whom he looks at (i.e. an important event to her), why not try a more positive approach? Like, "Jealousy can make life pretty interesting *laugh* but I prefer trust. I trust you with your teachers and I trust /dh with his coworkers- and it gives me time to focus on more positive things, like pizza. Speaking of, who wants pizza?" or "Yep. He did. Guys are so easily drawn to visuals! Thank God you dad knows there's more to a woman than that."

The other reactions you listed basically mocked her opinions (that's pointless, I don't care about what you noticed) so is it any surprise that she doesn't want to answer questions?

It seems like you might be dealing with much more than just your daughter. But she needs you to be a role model, someone with something positive on offer, not someone who merely reacts against behaviour that (let's face it) has worked so far for her.

Well, I never thought about it as mocking her, I just think it's awful that they taught her at such an early age that men and women relate that way. : I didn't say 'I don't care what you noticed,' what I said was 'it doesn't bother me if he looks at women on tv, nor does it bother him if I look at Brad Pitt.' We're allowed to notice good looking people, it doesn't mean we cheat.

I do like the positive spin you suggested, but I think you're wrong about me mocking her. I'm venting here because I'm really fed up with the whole thing and disgusted at what she's been taught. I don't think I've ever used the word 'pointless' in a discussion with her, but I have tried to show her that if you don't have trust in a relationship you don't have anything. Which is kind of ironic since we haven't told her the whole truth about her mom, huh?

[EdnaMarie]

Sorry, that came off harsh. I don't mean that you were teasing her, just that you were expressing that you didn't put much value on her idea. You wrote in your first post, "I don't care if he..." She probably heard "I don't care" and nothing more. And that is not schizophrenic, that is human.

What I'm trying to do is give you another perspective. Of course you don't INTEND to mock or tease or place a low value on your daughter's opinions, but coming from her background, would it be surprising if she interpreted it that way?

What you are telling us now is that you want her to be honest but actually, there's not much that she thinks or says that you agree with (because so much of it is negativity that has been inherited from people with "issues" to say the least), and you tell her so.

Imagine how she must feel about that. All the adults want her to be honest, but when she expresses what she has learned to feel and think, all she gets is negative feedback (again- that is probably how she feels, not saying you are totally negative).

[bigeyes]

Gotcha. That makes sense. The hardest part of dealing with her is not reacting, and stopping to think about every single word we speak to her.

[EdnaMarie]

She's probably looking for the hidden message, the trick, the trap. If her family is like you described, she must think you are darn good at hiding your true self, and may be spending a lot of effort figuring out how what you are saying is going to hurt her in the long run. If you've been living among minefields, you don't get into a safe country and just prance around in the field. You can't do it. I know this from personal experience. It is still very hard for me to walk on open grass in the countryside because I spent two years in a mine filled country.

And I *know* there are no mines.

Your daughter doesn't.

Though, it's been two years. I don't know about child psychology but if it's taken her that long, there are obviously issues still bottled up, as you mentioned. I hope her psych can help her work through them.

(Or it could be a hearing problem that she is trying to cover up... have you tested for that?)

[bigeyes]

Yep. We've had hearing and vision tested and we've gone to the school and her pediatrician to look for learning disabilities because in the 3 years I've been on the scene she has made no progress at all academically. My opinion is that the psychological stuff is getting in the way of her learning process, but she shows so many signs of so many things it's hard to sort out. The more I read and research the more confusing it gets. I totally get the minefield thing. My mother was great at pulling information out of me and using it against me later. :

Everything you say makes sense. It's frustrating because shrinks never seem to offer much help, they just paraphrase and throw your ideas back at you. I feel like they sit there and agree with me instead of telling me what I can do to make changes. I'm glad they haven't thrown pills at us because I'm a little leery of that. It seems so many of them just indiscriminately hand out whichever pill is being sampled that month without getting to the root of the problem, and her problems definitely have a cause. But I want to rule out schizophrenia because several of her family members have severe problems telling the difference between reality and fantasy. I want to be sure we aren't reacting to something she can't help as something she chooses to do. Right now I really can't tell the difference.

[EdnaMarie]

I want to be sure we aren't reacting to something she can't help as something she chooses to do. Right now I really can't tell the difference.

It's a fine line. And I personally believe there are degrees of ability. She might be able to understand on some level that she is lying, but she might not be able to tell the truth. Kind of like some anorexics know they are not fat, they know they need to eat, but they physically cannot do it. It's bizarre. Not all mental illness is either crazy or not crazy. It's possible to be detached before you are dissociated, you know? And at nine or ten, well- just try dealing with that.

From what you are saying, it seems like she can get better but she cannot do it overnight. Celebrate the little things. Keep listening, listening, listening. Try to find the truth in whatever she says, if there is any. OF course you can't let her lie but you don't need to try to drag the truth out of her if she isn't comfortable sharing it.

Are her teachers aware of her situation?

[bigeyes]

Last year's teacher was, and the year before. I think I need to talk to this year's teacher more about the mom thing, but she is aware that we are watching for LDs and the reason behind it, so some of the background has been shared in that we are trying to figure out how much is psychological and how much if any is actually LD. She has the same teacher DS had last year so we at least have a family connection and we know she's a good teacher.

Update:
Just talked to her teacher, and she's going to call me back. She was gone on friday so it was a substitute and another teacher who handled the incident, which I guess : explains why nobody contacted me. :

She said she has something she wants to discuss with me, so now I'm on pins and needles wondering what is next.

I think she has a mild form of dyslexia, but the school system says they don't test for it, and the docs say they don't test for it, so I am still beating my head against a wall on that subject. According to the law the school has to make changes to help her if she is diagnosed, but there isn't anyone designated to diagnose her. Everyone says it's someone else's job, but nobody knows whose. I have noticed that since we stopped drilling her on spelling words her homework is much less stressful, but I have no idea if she is getting any better. The special ed people advised us to stop helping her with it so they could get a better idea of just how far behind she was.

Before I was spending several hours a day with her, having her go back and redo until it was right, explaining over and over again until I wanted to scream. We thought that was what we had to do so she would get it if she wasn't learning it at school, but they said we had to just let her flounder or they would not know she didn't get it. It sounds cruel, but I can kind of see their point, so now that's what we do. It's a huge relief for me, since I don't think I was cut out to be a teacher anyway.