Kicking myself

When my daugherd was 15 I finally got her assessed for her mental issues and the school district quickly put her into a DTC where she has been healing for the past year (on her second DTC but only because we moved).  The difference between today and a year ago is huge.  She's not anywhere close to "healed", but definitely "healing".

When she was 8 she was diagnosed with a "minor case" of RAD.. at the time I had no idea what that meant and thought, like so many people did, that she just needed more love and attention. The therapist made it sound like it was no big deal so I didn't put a lot of thought into it.

Ever since I started really understanding what it meant (and started getting her the proper treatment), I've been kicking myself for not doing it sooner...

When she was 5 she was in full meltdown mode and managed to triangulate my wife and I to the point where we separated for a couple of years.  Yesterday, when I was going through a box in the garage I found a letter I had never seen.  It apparently had been sent 1 week before our separation and was a request from my daughters school to do a mental health evaluation on her.  The very same evaluation I forced them to do 10 years later...

Had I only seen that letter then, and knew what it meant, things could have been much different!  We would have been 11 years into healing instead of 1.  We could have stopped the inadvertent reinforcement of the very behaviors we were trying to prevent.  Life could have been so much different for all of us.

I wish I had seen that letter.  I wish they had contacted the new school district about it.  I wish the therapist who diagnosed her had made more of a big deal about it.  I'm glad I did something about it when I did though.  I'm glad my wife and I figured it out - together.  I'm glad my daughter is healing (better late then never).  In fact, I'm glad for so many things I just don't have time to be thinking about the 'what-ifs'.  Instead of sitting there thinking "what if such and such was different", I think instead I will just hug my kids...