We know better than to even attempt to go into a restaurant with all the kids, especially the babies, so we just went through the drive-thru.
But even the drive-thru can be hectic and chaotic. Kat is screaming at me the entire time I am trying to give our order, even though I had already confirmed her order with her, she still continued to scream her order at me while I was trying to talk. And then started whining that I was being mean and ignoring her.
Once we had our food, we pulled over in the parking lot to eat. After figuring out whose kid's bag was who's and handing them out to all 5 kids, we were just about to eat when Kat started wailing at the top of her lungs, throwing herself around in her seat, thrashing her body all over the place and just screaming and crying, loudly, like someone or something was hurting her.
The cheese from her burger had touched the box it was in.
I'm just going to allow that to settle for a moment.
A long moment....
We are all tired. We are all hungry. And we are all trying to enjoy our lunch when this starts and lasts for a good 25 minutes or more. Johnnie is so worried that someone is going to hear her and think we are hurting her that he's uncomfortable and asks me to roll the windows up. I filmed her to show her doctor the video. She completely disrupts almost every situation like this. Whether it's movie night, game night, dinner, breakfast, lunch, special outings, grocery shopping, or just driving in the car to go somewhere, she is constantly throwing these huge fits that are completely ridiculous and blown far out of proportion for what's bothering her. And yes, we did try to comfort her, Clara fixed her burger, and we all tried talking her down. It didn't work.
This is what made us finally go in to her doctor with this to see what was wrong. We knew there was something going on.
So after I took her food away and put my own food away so that I could drive us home, she finally stopped the fit and quietly asked for her food back. We both ate while I was driving.
I can not even begin to explain to you what it feels like when she is in the middle of a fit. I can tell you that it makes my skin crawl, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, mostly because of the high pitch of her screams, but also because of the stress and my blood pressure shooting through the roof. I get nauseous. I get tunnel vision and I can't think through the fits. I get angry and I yell sometimes. I honestly have tried to keep my calm and I usually can through the first 3-5 minutes, after that I am just at a loss and can't even hold a thought. It's truly difficult.
Tonight, on the way home from somewhere (I can't even remember where we were), she starts screaming bloody murder in the backseat. She is trying to climb the back of Johnnie's seat, trying to claw her way over Clara who is sitting beside her and I mean just freaking out. A flying ant had come in her window at the stop sign and she was ready to hurt herself and everyone else trying to get away from it. This is a perfect example of her irrational fears, or maybe not irrational, but phobic fears, and her extreme anxiety and panic. Johnnie got the ant out of the car and she was deep chest sobbing for a few minutes.
Then tonight at bedtime, after she was given her sleepy meds, she freaked out, full blown fit, screaming and crying and being phobic about going to sleep because of the ant earlier.
I don't know what to do for her when she gets like that. She doesn't listen to me or anyone else. She ignores us when we try to explain anything and when we try to comfort her, she pulls away. Except for with Johnnie, she'll let him hold her and soothe her most of the time.
She finally got in the bed with Mary and went to sleep, but it took a good 40 minutes of fit throwing first.
After about 10 minutes of the fit, Clara got upset and started being gruff with her. As much as I don't want her to be mean to her, I do understand her frustrations. Kat keeps us all up at night. Me, Clara and Mary. We lose a lot of sleep. And when Clara had tried for about 10 minutes to soothe her and and talk her down, she just got angry and frustrated and started getting a mean tone with her. This is the disruption and turmoil that takes place within our family, daily, due to the ADHD (if that's what it is).
It's really hard to look back on pictures of her up until she was 2 and see the sweet faced, calm baby that she used to be.
We can not wait for the doctors to help us. We have an appointment coming up for her full, official evaluation. It can not get here fast enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment