It's a Freight Train Coming

Things have been going pretty well around here lately. So well, that I have not wanted to post about it for fear of bringing on the "blog jinx". When Genea is in a sort of "lull" period, she behaves very much like you would expect a child with her background, only triple it. I think the every day dysfunction we get is Attachment Disorder. The unending oddities, the incessant demands for attention, the inability to handle even a simple frustration. Here is a great example. Every time Genea and Teena go out with Daddy, Genea loses a mitten. Every. Single. Time. Not when she goes to school. Not when she is out with me. Not when she goes out to play. Just when she and Teena have their Daddy Day (Saturdays usually). She generally loses this mitten between the house and the car. Sometimes in the car. Never in the restaurant, or at the store or wherever else they go. Never loses a mitten where there is a chance it might actually remain lost. I mean, what is that?

What we have coming on though is, I think, the Bipolar Disorder. It is subtle when it starts, and mostly excusable things. Genea hit Teena. Ok, kids hit. Actually no. A typical 6 year old does not hit her sister with a bag of books unprovoked. With cause, maybe, not for no reason. She is lying. All kids lie, don't they? No, most 6 year olds do not pee small amounts in their underwear all day until they reek of urine and then lie, and continue lying even when confronted with wet underwear. Toe walking. A lot of kids toe- walk once in a while up until about the age of 2 or so. Her impulse control starts to weaken, and many 6 year olds struggle with impulse control this is true. For Genea, she struggles with the impulse to deliberately gag on her food or drink.

The Dead RAD Eyes come on more frequently and she avoids eye contact. Her pupils enlarge and stay dilated. The tone of her crying changes. It becomes more shrill, more strident and piercing, more agonizing and desperate. Talking in her sleep, whimpering and calling out in her sleep. All these things will all accelerate and escalate. She will start to try to binge on carbohydrates. I never know what to do about that. Should I try to limit her from the binges or does her body need it? I expect she will start sleeping more heavily and taking a nap during the day. I can try to prevent it but she will literally fall asleep sitting up with a crayon in her hand. She will start to instigate problems either by breaking rules directly in front of me and calling attention to it, or by constantly asking for what she can't have and using these things as her "excuse" to blow into the Wango Tango (do you think Ted knows I am using that?). I don't know what to do about that either. When her brain starts to convulse into a panic or fear response, I tend to ask her what is wrong- I mean, I tend to try to find out why she is upset. But if the chemicals in her brain are frying, then there is no "excuse" or reason or thing to hang her feelings on. So, what if I keep leading her to find a reason for her nervous and scared feelings and it turns into a phobia?

I hate watching this come on. So far I have tried about 1000 different things to help her. So far I can help her delay the bottom and I can help make it not as bad, but I cannot prevent it and I cannot make it go away. So, we live through it. Again. And with good old winter break coming on (when ARE these children being educated I ask you???), we will be living through it 24 hours a day for 12 straight days.