Educating the world about Reactive Attachment Disorder through experience, hope, humor and love.
(Warning: nothing here should be taken as medical advice)




Monday, September 19, 2011

When a simple request turns into a nightmare...


Lately there have been some definite improvements in my daughters behavior.  Certainly she’s still up to some of the same old tricks, but the massive blowups and WWIII style drama explosions are further apart.  

So imagine my surprise when a simple request to “please feed the cats” would cause such a ruckus!!  We were in the kitchen, I was finishing up the days dishes, wife was preparing dinner, and my daughter started to unload the dish drainer.  The cats hadn’t eaten so I asked her to do that instead. 

From there it was all downhill.

For some reason that really seemed to dysregulate her and I could practically feel her frustration.  Then I watched her fill up 2 bowls (we have three cats) to overflowing and put the cat food away.  When I pointed out that was too much food, especially for our overweight pig.. err I mean cat, as well as for the older cat who tends to overeat and then vomit, I could practically feel her ready to explode.  So she returned almost all the food to the container, leaving about 7 pieces in each of 2 bowls.  When I said something along the lines of “come on, really? They need more than that” it was ON.  So she ended up in her room for the evening and wouldn’t talk to me when I went back to show her that although I didn’t approve of her behavior, I still loved her. She hasn’t had a blow up like that in MONTHS and I really couldn’t figure out wtf was up.  It was like she went from 0 to 100 in 20 seconds and I was at a loss… where did this come from?  It’s not like we asked her to paint the bathroom with her toothbrush, or cut off all her hair, or some other odd request.  Just asked her to feed the cats – something we all do.

Then, a day or two later we figured it out.  When she returned from grandmas the Sunday prior, she lost her anti-depressants.  Why she didn’t tell us, I have no idea.  But when we would ask if she took them, she would tell us yes – but obviously she hadn’t.  Turns out they had fallen out of her backpack in the trunk of the car and gotten into another bag with some camping stuff (we had just returned ourselves and hadn’t gotten around to completely emptying the trunk).  Thankfully we finally found them.  But I really don’t understand why she was telling us she was taking them when she wasn’t.  Or why she didn’t tell us she couldn’t find them?  Would have been a simple matter to look for them or even just refill the prescription.

I knew there was something different about her all that week.  I thought it was just the beginning of school, but it was definitely noticeable.  She, of course, says she’s no different on or off of them, but I’m not the only person who noticed.  When I spoke with her case manager this morning and mentioned it to her, she had an “a-ha!” moment – apparently my daughter had been VERY volatile all week and they were trying to figure it out also.  Like me, they had attributed it to it being the first week of school but thought there must have been something else going on. 

I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out her thought process and why she just let it go.  But I can’t.  And she’s not telling….. 

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