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Daughter does it again! Long angry rant (LAR).
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 190812" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>A few more thoughts.</p><p></p><p>First - YOUR self-esteem. Your earlier experiences were horrible, nobody should have to go through that, especially not a kid. Unfortunately the media will give the public what sells, and what sells most is scandal. For people to walk up to someone involved (especially a kid) and say horrible things about your father, is just plain wrong. Now you're an adult and stronger (as well as coming form a position of more power - kids are powerless by comparison, unfortunately, which is why I think people felt free to tell you what they did) you can feel more capable of dealing with any such negativity. In your shoes I would look back and say to them. "You say you think my father is a loser - and you're telling me this WHY? Because your opinion is of absolutely no importance to me whatsoever." And you could say this regardless of your own opiion.</p><p></p><p>But this is now. Much as we'd like to go back and deal with things better, we can't. Sometimes replaying it in our heads with a more powerful ending can be good therapy, though.</p><p></p><p>But your self-esteem would have taken a big beating because of this experience and it takes a great deal to get it back. This makes you far more vulnerable to every little aside glance, the hand to the mouth, the careful not-looking-at-you body language from other people. It hurts.</p><p></p><p>I've been working on my self-esteem since high school, when all the girls would get together at lunchtime for the daily character assassinations. The girls talked about most were the ones who weren't there. It was tragicomical, and I made a decision - I wouldn't hang around with those girls. As a result, I was talked about. My reputation was MUD. I didn't get invited to the best parties - but if I had been, I would have again had to watch my every move and every gesture, to avoid getting talked about.</p><p></p><p>What has been important to me since then - being able to be myself. Yes, I was lonely as a kid, but I am not lonely now. I am good at making friends fast but I am not good at following the social rules. I can see them - I'm not autistic myself - but I make my own choices about how to behave. If I walk past a swing set in the park and feel like playing on them, I will. So what if I'm over 50?</p><p></p><p>I think my age is a part of it - I was at the tail end of the hippie era, where freedom of expression was far more understandable and acceptable. There was a moral swinging back of the pendulum immediately afterwards. But even in my age group, I'm viewed as an eccentric. I've not only accepted this, I've embraced it.</p><p></p><p>This is what has helped me most, about accepting the stares of people aghast at public misbehaviour of my kids.</p><p></p><p>Something else that may help you (it helped me) is to have a store of things to say when your child is having a very public outburst.</p><p></p><p>1) Welcome to my nightmare.</p><p></p><p>2) I present to you one more reason why abortion should be retrospective.</p><p></p><p>3) She's rehearsing for a TV ad for contraceptives - she's the "you could end up with one of these" disincentives.</p><p></p><p>4) Hmm, not bad - but her tantrums are usually much bigger on the Richter scale, this is her - behaving.</p><p></p><p>And so on. I'm sure you could think of better ones. It can be therapeutic to think of them. It's easy - just mentally visualise just how awful you felt, then think of what you would have liked to have said, if only you dared (and could have thought of it at the time).</p><p></p><p>Now - HER self-esteem. It's probably rock-bottom. Unless her capacity for self-deception is of astronomic proportions, she has to be aware, at least some of the time at some level, of just how unpleasant she must be, to have around. The way she is pursuing you to beg for a hug tells a lot here - she is wanting reassurance of your unconditional love; and I think you are right to back off on this, because part of her misbehaviour is testing - how bad must I be before she will reject me? She would then keep upping the ante until you finally refused to give her a hug. (And a stolen hug or stolen kiss doesn't count - it must be freely given, unsolicited, to be of value. Tell her).</p><p></p><p>Her diagnosis (or lack of) - I'm wondering if there's the possibility of Asperger's. There was some discussion about this a few weeks ago on this site, about how Asperger's seems to manifest differently in girls. Certainly, tantrums of that scale have happened with us, with easy child 2/difficult child 2. I met up with her yesterday at her work (haven't seen her for over a week). Immediately she launched into a tirade about her college course - again, a problem blown way out of proportion. I was only talking to her for five minutes and left feeling exhausted. And at home this morning I've been preparing for dinner tonight, cooking a family favourite with a friend helping. I commented that at a certain point in the recipe, I used to puree the vegetables into the tomato-based sauce because easy child 2/difficult child 2 would always make a big fuss about 'bits' in the gravy. And now she no longer lives at home, I don't have to. There is so much we do, that I no longer have to worry about. She is incredibly obsessive and made life very exhausting. And back when she was 17 - oh, horrible! At times a darling, always wanting a hug (often at inappropriate times) and other times floods of tears, tantrums, raging - I sometimes didn't have to say a thing and I would still get attacked for not being supportive or saying the wrong thing.</p><p></p><p>One thing I did - I would wait until she was calm, then try to gently broach the subject of my concerns. if she began to get upset I would drop the topic and walk away; we would only talk about it while she was capable of staying calm enough. Slowly we were able to get the message across that we were concerned and that her behaviour was not normal nor acceptable. When you talk about taking your daughter to dinner for a long talk, I get the feeling that you're using a similar tactic to me.</p><p></p><p>Your daughter may not be Aspie. I only mention it because we're fairly sure our daughter is, and they sound similar. Plus you mentioned your daughter possibly graduating early, which tells me she's bright? So is easy child 2/difficult child 2 - IQ measured at 145.</p><p></p><p>As I drove away from the mall yesterday I remarked to mother in law about my meeting with easy child 2/difficult child 2 and her complaints about her course. I said I thought her biggest problem was the change foisted on her schedule by the course adding an extra night's study. She is very much a creature of habit and routine; very obsessive. Star posted somewhere in Watercooler with the quote which my kids have adopted - "I have CDO. It's like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) only the letters are all where they should be in their proper alphabetical order."</p><p>That's my younger three.</p><p></p><p>Something to check also - does your daughter currently, or has she in the past, cut herself or self-mutilated in any way? easy child 2/difficult child 2 stopped at about 18 but hid it well before then. She would throw a tantrum if I asked to look at her arms, which she kept covered even in the height of an Aussie summer. Now she wears short sleeves but if you know where to look you can see the scars. She will talk about it now - she said she hurt so much inside, she needed to see the physical damage to match the internal pain, as if to acknowledge and validate the pain. She said she had to see blood. It wasn't anything suicidal or even close to it, but it still could have been dangerous. There was also the obsessive picking at her skin and especially at scabs. difficult child 3 is bad with this - he would worry at any loose end (whether in clothing, or his skin) and would make a small rip in a shirt huge by the end of the day (so I learned to patch his clothes thoroughly) and could erode a small scratch to a huge hole, in his body. Covering it helped.</p><p>difficult child 3 had surgery on his wrist for a ganglion - it should have healed quickly, but he picked at the incision and the scar got infected. Six months later it still hadn't healed so I took to dressing it every day and then covering it up with a heavy-duty plaster. Doctors had told us to leave it uncovered so the scar could heal faster; but for difficult child 3, we have to keep it covered to keep him from it. Finally we found sticking down a layer of gauze was best - it let the air get to it through the gauze, but his fingers couldn't pick at it. The other thing that helped were the expensive healing plasters, gel-filled.</p><p></p><p>So if any of this sounds familiar, check out the Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) questionnaire on <a href="http://www.childbrain.com" target="_blank">www.childbrain.com</a> and see if she scores anything there. Even if she scores "no Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)" print the results and take them to her doctor next time, to see if anything you've noted can ring a bell.</p><p></p><p>When you go back to the dentist's, be matter-of-fact about your daughter. Yes, she is like this. No, it's not anything you've done. NO, you can't control her behaviour, she has to control herself and she's not good at it. Yes, she is extremely anxious. Yes, the teeth have to be dealt with. So what do they recommend?</p><p></p><p>This sort of thing has to crop up from time to time. There are many people who have dental problems as well as extreme anxiety problems. I'm terrible with dentists - I have really bad phobias over them, it takes a lot of willpower to get me to a dentist and I'm a basket-case. I was badly traumatised as a kid by a dentist I had to see every week, for several years, who was a bad dentist as well as someone who I suspect was using my mouth to maintain his business. I've had a dentist since, who used my previous dental work as an example to his students on what bad dentistry looks like. So dentists would have to know how to handle it.</p><p></p><p>Also on wisdom teeth - difficult child 1 had all four wisdom teeth removed at one sitting, under local. It was a heroic effort. But bad as the extraction was, his recovery was awful. As the local wore off, the pain set in. He even found it painful to swallow his saliva, he was miserable, in pain, didn't know where to put himself and his anxiety went through the roof. With hindsight, I'd be planning to get some degree of calming medication on board before, and for a few days after. Talk to the dentist about that and perhaps discuss this with your daughter's doctor as well.</p><p></p><p>It does get better. Especially if your child is bright and otherwise capable, she will improve as she gets older and hopefully will move out of home at some point - at which time you can breathe a big sigh of relief. </p><p></p><p>Not long now.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 190812, member: 1991"] A few more thoughts. First - YOUR self-esteem. Your earlier experiences were horrible, nobody should have to go through that, especially not a kid. Unfortunately the media will give the public what sells, and what sells most is scandal. For people to walk up to someone involved (especially a kid) and say horrible things about your father, is just plain wrong. Now you're an adult and stronger (as well as coming form a position of more power - kids are powerless by comparison, unfortunately, which is why I think people felt free to tell you what they did) you can feel more capable of dealing with any such negativity. In your shoes I would look back and say to them. "You say you think my father is a loser - and you're telling me this WHY? Because your opinion is of absolutely no importance to me whatsoever." And you could say this regardless of your own opiion. But this is now. Much as we'd like to go back and deal with things better, we can't. Sometimes replaying it in our heads with a more powerful ending can be good therapy, though. But your self-esteem would have taken a big beating because of this experience and it takes a great deal to get it back. This makes you far more vulnerable to every little aside glance, the hand to the mouth, the careful not-looking-at-you body language from other people. It hurts. I've been working on my self-esteem since high school, when all the girls would get together at lunchtime for the daily character assassinations. The girls talked about most were the ones who weren't there. It was tragicomical, and I made a decision - I wouldn't hang around with those girls. As a result, I was talked about. My reputation was MUD. I didn't get invited to the best parties - but if I had been, I would have again had to watch my every move and every gesture, to avoid getting talked about. What has been important to me since then - being able to be myself. Yes, I was lonely as a kid, but I am not lonely now. I am good at making friends fast but I am not good at following the social rules. I can see them - I'm not autistic myself - but I make my own choices about how to behave. If I walk past a swing set in the park and feel like playing on them, I will. So what if I'm over 50? I think my age is a part of it - I was at the tail end of the hippie era, where freedom of expression was far more understandable and acceptable. There was a moral swinging back of the pendulum immediately afterwards. But even in my age group, I'm viewed as an eccentric. I've not only accepted this, I've embraced it. This is what has helped me most, about accepting the stares of people aghast at public misbehaviour of my kids. Something else that may help you (it helped me) is to have a store of things to say when your child is having a very public outburst. 1) Welcome to my nightmare. 2) I present to you one more reason why abortion should be retrospective. 3) She's rehearsing for a TV ad for contraceptives - she's the "you could end up with one of these" disincentives. 4) Hmm, not bad - but her tantrums are usually much bigger on the Richter scale, this is her - behaving. And so on. I'm sure you could think of better ones. It can be therapeutic to think of them. It's easy - just mentally visualise just how awful you felt, then think of what you would have liked to have said, if only you dared (and could have thought of it at the time). Now - HER self-esteem. It's probably rock-bottom. Unless her capacity for self-deception is of astronomic proportions, she has to be aware, at least some of the time at some level, of just how unpleasant she must be, to have around. The way she is pursuing you to beg for a hug tells a lot here - she is wanting reassurance of your unconditional love; and I think you are right to back off on this, because part of her misbehaviour is testing - how bad must I be before she will reject me? She would then keep upping the ante until you finally refused to give her a hug. (And a stolen hug or stolen kiss doesn't count - it must be freely given, unsolicited, to be of value. Tell her). Her diagnosis (or lack of) - I'm wondering if there's the possibility of Asperger's. There was some discussion about this a few weeks ago on this site, about how Asperger's seems to manifest differently in girls. Certainly, tantrums of that scale have happened with us, with easy child 2/difficult child 2. I met up with her yesterday at her work (haven't seen her for over a week). Immediately she launched into a tirade about her college course - again, a problem blown way out of proportion. I was only talking to her for five minutes and left feeling exhausted. And at home this morning I've been preparing for dinner tonight, cooking a family favourite with a friend helping. I commented that at a certain point in the recipe, I used to puree the vegetables into the tomato-based sauce because easy child 2/difficult child 2 would always make a big fuss about 'bits' in the gravy. And now she no longer lives at home, I don't have to. There is so much we do, that I no longer have to worry about. She is incredibly obsessive and made life very exhausting. And back when she was 17 - oh, horrible! At times a darling, always wanting a hug (often at inappropriate times) and other times floods of tears, tantrums, raging - I sometimes didn't have to say a thing and I would still get attacked for not being supportive or saying the wrong thing. One thing I did - I would wait until she was calm, then try to gently broach the subject of my concerns. if she began to get upset I would drop the topic and walk away; we would only talk about it while she was capable of staying calm enough. Slowly we were able to get the message across that we were concerned and that her behaviour was not normal nor acceptable. When you talk about taking your daughter to dinner for a long talk, I get the feeling that you're using a similar tactic to me. Your daughter may not be Aspie. I only mention it because we're fairly sure our daughter is, and they sound similar. Plus you mentioned your daughter possibly graduating early, which tells me she's bright? So is easy child 2/difficult child 2 - IQ measured at 145. As I drove away from the mall yesterday I remarked to mother in law about my meeting with easy child 2/difficult child 2 and her complaints about her course. I said I thought her biggest problem was the change foisted on her schedule by the course adding an extra night's study. She is very much a creature of habit and routine; very obsessive. Star posted somewhere in Watercooler with the quote which my kids have adopted - "I have CDO. It's like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) only the letters are all where they should be in their proper alphabetical order." That's my younger three. Something to check also - does your daughter currently, or has she in the past, cut herself or self-mutilated in any way? easy child 2/difficult child 2 stopped at about 18 but hid it well before then. She would throw a tantrum if I asked to look at her arms, which she kept covered even in the height of an Aussie summer. Now she wears short sleeves but if you know where to look you can see the scars. She will talk about it now - she said she hurt so much inside, she needed to see the physical damage to match the internal pain, as if to acknowledge and validate the pain. She said she had to see blood. It wasn't anything suicidal or even close to it, but it still could have been dangerous. There was also the obsessive picking at her skin and especially at scabs. difficult child 3 is bad with this - he would worry at any loose end (whether in clothing, or his skin) and would make a small rip in a shirt huge by the end of the day (so I learned to patch his clothes thoroughly) and could erode a small scratch to a huge hole, in his body. Covering it helped. difficult child 3 had surgery on his wrist for a ganglion - it should have healed quickly, but he picked at the incision and the scar got infected. Six months later it still hadn't healed so I took to dressing it every day and then covering it up with a heavy-duty plaster. Doctors had told us to leave it uncovered so the scar could heal faster; but for difficult child 3, we have to keep it covered to keep him from it. Finally we found sticking down a layer of gauze was best - it let the air get to it through the gauze, but his fingers couldn't pick at it. The other thing that helped were the expensive healing plasters, gel-filled. So if any of this sounds familiar, check out the Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) questionnaire on [url]www.childbrain.com[/url] and see if she scores anything there. Even if she scores "no Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)" print the results and take them to her doctor next time, to see if anything you've noted can ring a bell. When you go back to the dentist's, be matter-of-fact about your daughter. Yes, she is like this. No, it's not anything you've done. NO, you can't control her behaviour, she has to control herself and she's not good at it. Yes, she is extremely anxious. Yes, the teeth have to be dealt with. So what do they recommend? This sort of thing has to crop up from time to time. There are many people who have dental problems as well as extreme anxiety problems. I'm terrible with dentists - I have really bad phobias over them, it takes a lot of willpower to get me to a dentist and I'm a basket-case. I was badly traumatised as a kid by a dentist I had to see every week, for several years, who was a bad dentist as well as someone who I suspect was using my mouth to maintain his business. I've had a dentist since, who used my previous dental work as an example to his students on what bad dentistry looks like. So dentists would have to know how to handle it. Also on wisdom teeth - difficult child 1 had all four wisdom teeth removed at one sitting, under local. It was a heroic effort. But bad as the extraction was, his recovery was awful. As the local wore off, the pain set in. He even found it painful to swallow his saliva, he was miserable, in pain, didn't know where to put himself and his anxiety went through the roof. With hindsight, I'd be planning to get some degree of calming medication on board before, and for a few days after. Talk to the dentist about that and perhaps discuss this with your daughter's doctor as well. It does get better. Especially if your child is bright and otherwise capable, she will improve as she gets older and hopefully will move out of home at some point - at which time you can breathe a big sigh of relief. Not long now. Marg [/QUOTE]
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