difficult child's bizarre and scary statement

shellyd67

Active Member
We decided to take a quick weekend trip to the beach this past weekend. Our last hurrah you could say. While driving, difficult child and easy child were watching a movie and being very well behaved. husband and I were having great conversation and everything seemed to being going well.

Anyhow, difficult child says, " Something in my head is telling me to open the car door and jump out."

husband and I look at eachother and try not to panic. We both reached for the locks and I whispered to husband " Do we have child safety doors and windows ?" Our car is fairly new and for the life of me I wasn't exactly sure.

husband and I both say, " Are you hearing voices telling you to open the door buddy?"

difficult child says, " No, I just wonder if I would get squashed or not and if I did jump out
you guys would probably keep going.

Knowing difficult child they way we do, he says some very stange things to see how we will react and sometimes simply for attention be it positive or negative.

He takes Concerta 36mgs daily and has no side effects other than sleep issues and he used to bite on his shirt.

He has not made any statements since and really enjoyed himself this weekend.

Just keeping any extra eye and ear on him.
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
Well that would be enough to get my anxiety ratcheted up a notch or ten!

I hope this was simply a passing thought expressed for the sake of attention. Definitely jot that down to mention the next time you go for a psychiatrist or therapist appointment, and definitely keep your radar up for any repeats.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
My heart would have been beating pretty fast. :anxious:
At least he said it out loud so you could lock the doors. And now you know to always check for the baby locks.
(I didn't know my car had those kind of locks until difficult child was about 5, and I got pulled over for speeding because difficult child was raising h*ll, climbing all over the car, yanking my hair, seatbelt, etc. and I just wanted to go home. The cop sat difficult child down, put on his seatbelt, locked the babylock ... and gave me a ticket.)
Anyway, I am so glad you and he have his impulsiveness under enough control that he "wonders" instead of acts. Sheesh.
I'm sure you told him you would definitely pick him up? ;)
I read an autobiography (Glass Castle) by a former news writer who was raised in a really dysfunctional family, and she did, in fact, fall out of the car, and the family didn't notice she was missing for hours. Don't let difficult child read that book!!!
 

Farmwife

Member
Hearing something like that would scare me too. I would definitely bring it up to the psychiatrist asap just to be safe.

I have a couple points of reference though they are not from a child. My ex has schizoeffective disorder. He didn't always JUST have a voice tell him something. He also had urges and feelings that were non verbal. The thoughts were intrusive but also repetitive. Sometimes he would just have a strong sense that he was wrong/bad/defective and want to punish himself for it, he felt he deserved it. It would repeat in his head like a record with a skip in it and the same theme would play over and over in a loop, sometimes getting louder or maybe just trailing off in the distance and fading to silence. The various collection of thoughts, urges and voices never completely went away. (On one rare coherent moment he actually described the process in his head to me and it was a profound thing to finally *understand*) the ex had been hiding/managing these issues since age 11 and they didn't present in a noticable way until he was 30. (started out with unusal belief in ghosts and strange creatures/memories of surreal things that didn't happen)

I am bi polar and when I am stressed I get a lot of very intrusive and disturbing thoughts. In fact I had the *wonder* about jumping out of a car once. I was not suicidal at the time. The thoughts can also be vivid scenes of bad things happening to loved ones (sometimes I envision doing them), things that scare me, things totally out of character. For myself the thoughts are VERY upsetting and not urges whatsoever. I wouldn't jump out of a car, ever and would never hurt a loved one. However, the feelings feel very intense and real so processing it can be complicated. The worst part is that the harder I try to tune out what I know are irrational/obsessive thoughts the more they stay. I just have to get dsitracted in my day and it goes away. I have never talked about it before but perhaps a child who is less concerned about peoples perceptions would just ramble about their random thoughts.


I know my scenarios may not be what is going on with your difficult child. Sometimes things kids say are major red flags and sometimes they are just symptoms of something else going on, something seemingly unrelated. Just trying to point out that difficult child's have so much more bubbling beneath the surface than the simple answers we hope for.
 
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PatriotsGirl

Guest
Okay, as scary as it sounds, I have the same thoughts. While I am driving I will just think - what happened if I drove under that truck or bridge or what not or fell out the car door. Not that I would EVER do something like that. But I have had those thoughts...
 
R

raregem

Guest
Hi all, I suffered with strong anxiety and panic attacks in my 20's and 30's and can vividly remember thinking "OMG, what if I opened the car door right now and jumped out". It wasn't that I wanted to at all, the thought just popped into my head. Just though't I'd share that with you.
 

shellyd67

Active Member
Thanks for all the replies all your posts really help. We of course told difficult child we would come back and get him and not keep going and then went on to say we would walk thru fire, take a bullet, etc ... We have told him this many times. I really think it was a "what if" kind of moment but I will definelty mention it to psychiatrist.
 

mstang67chic

Going Green
Shelly, do you know where to look to find the child safety locks? Open the back doors and look on the side. There should be a little switch that once flipped, prevents the back doors from being opened from the inside.
 

Wiped Out

Well-Known Member
Staff member
That definitely would have put me on alert. My difficult child did actually at one point open the car door while we were driving-very scary! Hopefully it is just a passing thing!
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Very good! (about the car being in gear and the locks)

Hey, Raregem and Patriot'sgirl, no fair. You're grownups. ;) What would you do it your g'sfg said they wanted to jump out? You still have to consider the risks just in case they act on it. We all have weird, self destructive, what-if thoughts now and then. Sometimes it's creative, sometimes it's panic-driven, sometimes it's irrational. Not that I'm a dr, but I just don't think it's the same thing when you're a grown-up, FWIW.
 
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