Scary times. Sorry, this is a long post, which is why I've avoided it.
Miss Nastia has had a rough couple of months, to say the least.
I can see how it happened - in fact, I could see it as it happened - it's been a kind of slow-motion train wreck. I think I might have saved the situation early on, but wasn't clear-sighted enough. I was also unaware of a key trigger or two - ones so obvious that this post is a kind of perp walk. I blew it.
Even though - even though I posted a few times previously about how disturbing it was for Anastasia when, in December, her beloved and perfect-for-her teacher, Mrs. Allen, was let go - despite knowing on one level how bad this was for her..... I really did not know how bad this was for her. This teacher was someone she had come to trust completely.
Here was where I think I made my mistake. I took Anastasia to visit Mrs. Allen's new school.....But, transportation issues, and other logistics seemed to argue against this solution, and when Anastasia hated this new environment, to the point of seemingly refusing to attend ("I'll run away", etc.) I gave in. I suppose on some level, I don't know how we would have managed all of the hurdles, practical and emotional - I simply know that it would have been better. Instead she "moved up" and joined the 7/8 class at Summit.
Unfortunately, the secondary end of our school became more and more chaotic as the year went on. Unpaid teachers left. Children were left in "study halls", unsupervised - not even on a regular basis, but randomly. Teachers would come, and go. This is why I took on more, way more than I should have, teaching almost all the classes that the 7/8 kids had - except for math and science. PE teacher left, Spanish teacher left, science teacher left. During the last month, if I wasn't there, or they weren't in math, they were pretty much on their own. Now, these are really good kids. But, that sort of structureless social scene was the worst possible situation for Anastasia as all trauma mamas will clearly recognize. Add to this, that since I was giving so much time to Summit, I had to work late into the night and all day and night on the weekends, to do my real job. I thought "well, Anastasia sees me during the day...." I didn't quite understand that she felt abandoned by me at home and at school.
I was too stupid to realize that what I so erroneously thought of as "being with" her - was a trigger in and of itself. Only in a recent therapy session did I see that for Anastasia, seeing me give the other children lots of love and attention in the classroom was like sandpaper grating on her soul. Add to this that at school she wanted nothing more than to have friends and be accepted, but the more she wanted it the crazier she was acting.....and, well.....there you have it.
Then, a week or so before school was out, a high school boy called her a "Russian wh*re", and for the first time ever, Anastasia "lost it" in school. One great thing about Anastasia is that she has always been a wonderful student. School has always been the safe and structured place where she could achieve. No more, obviously. I was not there, when this occurred (it was during unstructured time, wouldn't you know). But, Craig called me at work to come and get her.
Here, I'll make a very long story short, and say that this incident was followed by a week or more of her /staying at home/getting it together/begging to go back to school/losing it again/sitting at my office while I taught at Summit/going to school/losing it again......and so forth, until the day she lost it so badly that she clearly should not have come back. Yet, I took pity on her and let her come back to say "goodbye" to her girl friends one final sixth hour. Didn't I say this was a perp walk? How stupid could any one person be?
She was immediately overwhelmed, but spent that hour trying to regulate herself by doing some art, while everyone else did English. She didn't totally lose control until school was over and the anger was directed at me. She refused to get in my car and said she was going to "walk somewhere". Well, knowing that walking can often soothe her, and my chasing her down or attempting to force her into the car would do the absolute opposite, I figured the best thing was to let her walk. It is maybe three miles to my office, and Anastasia knows the way. She also had her phone. She stomped out of school and set forth; I followed in my car and when I caught up with her, I saw she was walking, safely, against the traffic. What argued against my letting her go was that the first mile or so, she'd have to walk along the commercial route of a highway without sidewalks. However, there is a decent shoulder and small businesses line the road, the speed limit is 55, and there really isn't a day when we don't see someone walking along there. It was clearly not optimal, but it did seem better than the alternative - having a physical altercation with her.
Now, to this day I believe that a) she would have been perfectly safe and b) she would have walked to my office and c) by the time she got there, she would have been regulated again. However - I didn't count on loving-kindness.
One of the moms from school saw her walking and stopped, and tried to get her into her van - and as luck would have it this was the mom with the boy who'd started off the whole spiral with his "Russian wh*re"comment, and his sister, one of Anastasia's classmates . Anastasia wouldn't get in. They tried to force her. As this was happening, in a strange coincidence, along comes my friend Edita, who adopted a girl from Anastasia's orphanage. Edita sees someone trying to get Anastasia into their car, and Anastasia resisting. Of course she stopped and tried to help - but now we had embarrassment added to Anastasia's bucket, and the inability to say anything that would explain her desperate need, at that moment, to be left alone! Obviously, these ladies did just what any reasonable, caring, loving person would do. Unfortunately, it resulted in massive amounts of flammable liquids being poured on Anastasia's little fire.
The thing is, I can really feel Anastasia's desperation. She was barely hanging on by a thread and the only cures she could grasp at - solitude and rhythmic exercise - were being ripped away with a big blast of all the things that inflamed her to begin with - the name-calling boy, the girls who don't include her, add a dash of orphanage-memory and public humiliation. My heavens! The poor kid. She tried to run away from them, and Edita (again, doing the reasonable thing) called the police. Now we had the biggest trauma blast of all - Anastasia's memory of the police coming to remove her from her mother. Whether she remembers any of it correctly or not - her memories have consistently been of her being forcefully taken into a police car while her mother was threatened with being shot if she didn't allow it.
It helped me, at least, that the police were not Lansing police. They were kind, helpful, understanding, but because she was throwing out her "I want to kill myself." line, they had no choice but to take her to the hospital. All in all, that might have been a good thing. I can't imagine them handing her off to me in that state working well. However, she did text, begging me to come and get her.
So, off I went in an out-of-body state, to the hospital. By the time I got there, she was - well, there is hardly a word for it. Honestly, if I were merely an onlooker, there is no way that I would not have had that child taken off to the psych hospital.
Not since her visit here as a six year old, have I seen anything like it.....and then she was small and speaking in Russian. When she stood up straight, hand on hip, adopting the voice and superior, scornful tone of a soap-opera villainess - it was even amusing. "Where did she learn this?" we laughed. Was it from TV? Surely not her mother? We didn't know, but she seemed quite the little actress. Little did we envision a tall, thirteen-year old doing the same thing, in English - it is as horrible a thing as you can imagine. Every vulgar word, every obscenity, every vile accusation poured from her lips - and the posture, the tone......it was beyond horrible to see her snarl and hurl vulgarities at the policeman, the doctor, the nurses. (To say nothing about the things she said to me!)
God was with us, though, in a couple of ways. Can you believe that the attending physician had sister adopted from Guatemala? One who had rough times before sorting herself out? And, I also had scheduled a session with Billy at House Calls Counseling for the next day. Otherwise, honestly - I think she might have been directed to an inpatient setting. As it was, they gave her a shot of something [that I wish I had on tap at home] and let us leave. As they were giving her the shot, they sent me from the room to fill out paperwork. I heard her screaming and crying, "I want my mama! Let my mama come in here! Mother!!!!!!" It was odd to get such satisfaction from that.
So, they let me bring my limp little daughter home, and put her to bed. And the next day we drove to Chicago. To be continued......
 |
| From http://www.demotivationalposters.org/ - I love these. |
Miss Nastia has had a rough couple of months, to say the least.
I can see how it happened - in fact, I could see it as it happened - it's been a kind of slow-motion train wreck. I think I might have saved the situation early on, but wasn't clear-sighted enough. I was also unaware of a key trigger or two - ones so obvious that this post is a kind of perp walk. I blew it.
Even though - even though I posted a few times previously about how disturbing it was for Anastasia when, in December, her beloved and perfect-for-her teacher, Mrs. Allen, was let go - despite knowing on one level how bad this was for her..... I really did not know how bad this was for her. This teacher was someone she had come to trust completely.
Here was where I think I made my mistake. I took Anastasia to visit Mrs. Allen's new school.....But, transportation issues, and other logistics seemed to argue against this solution, and when Anastasia hated this new environment, to the point of seemingly refusing to attend ("I'll run away", etc.) I gave in. I suppose on some level, I don't know how we would have managed all of the hurdles, practical and emotional - I simply know that it would have been better. Instead she "moved up" and joined the 7/8 class at Summit.
Unfortunately, the secondary end of our school became more and more chaotic as the year went on. Unpaid teachers left. Children were left in "study halls", unsupervised - not even on a regular basis, but randomly. Teachers would come, and go. This is why I took on more, way more than I should have, teaching almost all the classes that the 7/8 kids had - except for math and science. PE teacher left, Spanish teacher left, science teacher left. During the last month, if I wasn't there, or they weren't in math, they were pretty much on their own. Now, these are really good kids. But, that sort of structureless social scene was the worst possible situation for Anastasia as all trauma mamas will clearly recognize. Add to this, that since I was giving so much time to Summit, I had to work late into the night and all day and night on the weekends, to do my real job. I thought "well, Anastasia sees me during the day...." I didn't quite understand that she felt abandoned by me at home and at school.
I was too stupid to realize that what I so erroneously thought of as "being with" her - was a trigger in and of itself. Only in a recent therapy session did I see that for Anastasia, seeing me give the other children lots of love and attention in the classroom was like sandpaper grating on her soul. Add to this that at school she wanted nothing more than to have friends and be accepted, but the more she wanted it the crazier she was acting.....and, well.....there you have it.
Then, a week or so before school was out, a high school boy called her a "Russian wh*re", and for the first time ever, Anastasia "lost it" in school. One great thing about Anastasia is that she has always been a wonderful student. School has always been the safe and structured place where she could achieve. No more, obviously. I was not there, when this occurred (it was during unstructured time, wouldn't you know). But, Craig called me at work to come and get her.
Here, I'll make a very long story short, and say that this incident was followed by a week or more of her /staying at home/getting it together/begging to go back to school/losing it again/sitting at my office while I taught at Summit/going to school/losing it again......and so forth, until the day she lost it so badly that she clearly should not have come back. Yet, I took pity on her and let her come back to say "goodbye" to her girl friends one final sixth hour. Didn't I say this was a perp walk? How stupid could any one person be?
She was immediately overwhelmed, but spent that hour trying to regulate herself by doing some art, while everyone else did English. She didn't totally lose control until school was over and the anger was directed at me. She refused to get in my car and said she was going to "walk somewhere". Well, knowing that walking can often soothe her, and my chasing her down or attempting to force her into the car would do the absolute opposite, I figured the best thing was to let her walk. It is maybe three miles to my office, and Anastasia knows the way. She also had her phone. She stomped out of school and set forth; I followed in my car and when I caught up with her, I saw she was walking, safely, against the traffic. What argued against my letting her go was that the first mile or so, she'd have to walk along the commercial route of a highway without sidewalks. However, there is a decent shoulder and small businesses line the road, the speed limit is 55, and there really isn't a day when we don't see someone walking along there. It was clearly not optimal, but it did seem better than the alternative - having a physical altercation with her.
Now, to this day I believe that a) she would have been perfectly safe and b) she would have walked to my office and c) by the time she got there, she would have been regulated again. However - I didn't count on loving-kindness.
One of the moms from school saw her walking and stopped, and tried to get her into her van - and as luck would have it this was the mom with the boy who'd started off the whole spiral with his "Russian wh*re"comment, and his sister, one of Anastasia's classmates . Anastasia wouldn't get in. They tried to force her. As this was happening, in a strange coincidence, along comes my friend Edita, who adopted a girl from Anastasia's orphanage. Edita sees someone trying to get Anastasia into their car, and Anastasia resisting. Of course she stopped and tried to help - but now we had embarrassment added to Anastasia's bucket, and the inability to say anything that would explain her desperate need, at that moment, to be left alone! Obviously, these ladies did just what any reasonable, caring, loving person would do. Unfortunately, it resulted in massive amounts of flammable liquids being poured on Anastasia's little fire.
The thing is, I can really feel Anastasia's desperation. She was barely hanging on by a thread and the only cures she could grasp at - solitude and rhythmic exercise - were being ripped away with a big blast of all the things that inflamed her to begin with - the name-calling boy, the girls who don't include her, add a dash of orphanage-memory and public humiliation. My heavens! The poor kid. She tried to run away from them, and Edita (again, doing the reasonable thing) called the police. Now we had the biggest trauma blast of all - Anastasia's memory of the police coming to remove her from her mother. Whether she remembers any of it correctly or not - her memories have consistently been of her being forcefully taken into a police car while her mother was threatened with being shot if she didn't allow it.
It helped me, at least, that the police were not Lansing police. They were kind, helpful, understanding, but because she was throwing out her "I want to kill myself." line, they had no choice but to take her to the hospital. All in all, that might have been a good thing. I can't imagine them handing her off to me in that state working well. However, she did text, begging me to come and get her.
So, off I went in an out-of-body state, to the hospital. By the time I got there, she was - well, there is hardly a word for it. Honestly, if I were merely an onlooker, there is no way that I would not have had that child taken off to the psych hospital.
Not since her visit here as a six year old, have I seen anything like it.....and then she was small and speaking in Russian. When she stood up straight, hand on hip, adopting the voice and superior, scornful tone of a soap-opera villainess - it was even amusing. "Where did she learn this?" we laughed. Was it from TV? Surely not her mother? We didn't know, but she seemed quite the little actress. Little did we envision a tall, thirteen-year old doing the same thing, in English - it is as horrible a thing as you can imagine. Every vulgar word, every obscenity, every vile accusation poured from her lips - and the posture, the tone......it was beyond horrible to see her snarl and hurl vulgarities at the policeman, the doctor, the nurses. (To say nothing about the things she said to me!)
God was with us, though, in a couple of ways. Can you believe that the attending physician had sister adopted from Guatemala? One who had rough times before sorting herself out? And, I also had scheduled a session with Billy at House Calls Counseling for the next day. Otherwise, honestly - I think she might have been directed to an inpatient setting. As it was, they gave her a shot of something [that I wish I had on tap at home] and let us leave. As they were giving her the shot, they sent me from the room to fill out paperwork. I heard her screaming and crying, "I want my mama! Let my mama come in here! Mother!!!!!!" It was odd to get such satisfaction from that.
So, they let me bring my limp little daughter home, and put her to bed. And the next day we drove to Chicago. To be continued......
0 comments:
Post a Comment