Update on easy child's razor in the backpack

[Shari]

I talked to easy child 2's mom before we picked up easy child 2 last night. Found out that easy child 2 told her she had the knife to cut "something that regular scissors wouldn't cut" and then "just forgot" when she put her supplies away and put it in her bag with her other stuff. But mom didn't think to ask what it might have been that she was trying to cut. easy child 2 told her mom that she thought punishment should be a month without tv or video games. Pretty harsh punishment for a kid who thinks she didn't do anything wrong. Mom didn't beleive the cutting something story.

easy child was not aware I’d talked to her mom.

When we got home, we asked easy child 2 about the knife. She said she was making something and used it. I asked what she was cutting. She told me yarn. I asked why she didn’t use scissors. She said she couldn’t find any.

Then I told her I had talked to her mom, did she want to change her story. She said she couldn’t remember what she told her mom.

In addition to the knife incident, easy child 2 came up with a prescription bottle full of change last weekend. I asked her where it came from, and she said she found it in her room, she’d forgot about it from a long time ago. She used it on various stuff over the weekend, it was somewhere between $10 and $15 and I didn’t think much of it until she went back to her mom’s Tuesday, then recalled that last summer, difficult child 2 came up missing about $15 in change when she was here. So we then wondered if it was difficult child 2’s money.

So we asked easy child 2 about the money. First she said part of it grandma gave her during the festival and she found the rest. I know that grandma gave her $2 in change at the festival. She said she found about 10 coins. If the 10 coins were quarters, that would still only make about $4.50. Then she said she brought it from her mom’s. She has a jewelry box there with money and she brought some in her pocket each week. I told her I was going to call her mom and ask about the jewelry box, was mom going to tell me it existed? She quickly said no, she made that up, too. Then she said she’d taken it from her mom’s money jar in the bathroom.

Then at 7:45 last night, while easy child 2 was at church, difficult child 1 called to let me know he’d arrived safely and said he’d put about $10 worth of change on top of easy child 2’s book shelf and it was gone, to please watch for it. (when difficult child 1 left for basic, easy child 2 moved into his room, so we all had to be a little giving while he was back because he didn’t have a room). He said he’d asked husband, easy child 1 and easy child 2 before he left, but all said they hadn’t seen it.

BINGO.

So after church, I walked up to easy child 2 and said “did you get the money off the top of your bookshelf in your room?” and she replied “yes, and I’ll pay difficult child 1 back.”

This doesn’t qualify for difficult child status yet, but I really don’t want to add another one to my list. Wow.

When it rains, it pours.

 

[mrscatinthehat]

Good grief. I would watch the non truths. No it does not make a difficult child but you could be heading down a rocky path if she doesn't stop. Hope this is something you are able to get under control.

Sounds like you are smart in keeping all people on board though. Good work on that.

Beth

 

[Marguerite]

That would give her difficult child status in my eyes - or at least, easy child/difficult child status (I have one of those).

The blade - I'm wondering if she is cutting (or contemplating cutting). easy child 2/difficult child 2 was VERY secretive about it, she used her weird 'fashion' designs to cover up her arms. because she's a redhead, she claimed she needed to cover her arms even in summer, to protect herself from the sun. But she wouldn't take off the long sleeves after dark and I KNOW she felt the heat... finally it was easy child, sharing a room with her, who saw the scars and realised she was cutting. At the time she had easy child status.

Now, of course, she has permanent scars on her arms, some are raised. You can see the white criss-cross lines. She's no longer trying to hide them although if a stranger asks what they are I think she has a fanciful story for it, like "I fell through a plate glass window" or something.

I'd be getting your 'easy child' into counselling, fast. Being a easy child in a family with a difficult child is not healthy, it can be really damaging. They can feel neglected, unheard, in a lot of emotional pain but reluctant to talk to us for fear of increasing our burden. I remember being grateful that easy child 2/difficult child 2 was so easy, so able to manage hr own issues, working so well at school. None of it was true, it was all an act designed to make us feel everything was OK when it wasn't.

Cutting isn't necessarily a cry for attention. For easy child 2/difficult child 2, it was a way of trying to find a physical response to the emotional pain she was feeling: "If I feel this bad, I should be bleeding." It's as if the sight of the blood calmed her, so she could tell herself, "See? NOW there is a good reason for all this pain I'm feeling; I'm injured, that must be it." Even though she was herself causing those injuries.
difficult child 1 was doing it too but we knew about it. He would cut when extremely upset, such as when he broke up with a girlfriend. For him, it seemed to be more like self-punishment. "She left me because I'm not good enough, I must be bad for her to leave me, I should be punished, nobody else is doing it so I will."

All I can say is that if this is what she is doing, she will probably lie about it as if her life depends on it, and the lying can then spill over into other areas of dysfunction, making it all worse. This makes her feel more worthless and more hateful, makes it all go into a downward spiral. The emotional pain is intense but she won't tell you about it willingly, you've got too much to worry about already (and she considers herself worthless, doesn't she?)

I hope I'm wrong, but I feel what she told her mother was the truth - she needed the blade to cut something that scissors wouldn't do the job properly.

If she isn't already seeing a GOOD counsellor, I'd organise it. Maybe mention quietly to the counsellor your concern that she could be cutting, and hiding it. Even if I'm wrong, I think she needs to see a counsellor.

Marg

 

[TerryJ2]

I was thinking the same thing. She sounds more like a difficult child.
Every kid lies about something at some point. It's when they don't feel guilty, and make a habit out of it that it's worrysome.
Take care.

 

[Shari]

I spoke with her mom again last night and she told mom she'd stolen the money from mom's bathroom again, after finally admitting the money was difficult child 1's! Now I'm really wondering because what purpose would it serve her to lie yet AGAIN???

I agree that she needs counseling. Her mother won't take her and our hands are tied - we only have her during non-counselor hours.

However, the school counselor is the same one who worked with difficult child 1 between his regular counseling sessions. They also have a "divorce group". easy child's mom refuses to take her to counseling or allow me to, and has refused divorce group, but I am going to speak to the school counselor on my own, without mom's permission. husband has joint custody, and he supports this. I'd rather it be someone other than the school counselor, but if that's the best we can do, so be it. Its better than nothing, and the counselor is good.

I'm also wondering now, since she lied again to her mom...the school did testing and they found she had some substantial difficulty in the area of recalling information. If you say a list of 5 words to her, she can not say them back to you. She also takes forever to tell you something, like if she wants to tell you what neat thing she did last weekend. Its like she has to search for words and will take several seconds to complete a thought with lots of "um, um, um, um" in it. Could she possibly really not be able to pull this info out? Yet, when I prompted her about where the money was, she spit right out that yes, that's where it came from, and she'd pay difficult child 1 back...? Just thinking. Her subsequent lie doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[Shari]

Oh, PS, Marg, one good thing about her mother's hideous sense of fashion is that it contains little fabric and covers no skin. She wears skin-tight, thin t-shirts year round, and shorts for pajamas. At least at this point, I'm sure she's not cutting. She has rolls on her belly, but her mom still buys her bikinis and we went swimming at the indoor pool on Sunday, after the knife was found (but before we knew about it). Then again, her pain tolerance is ZERO, so it wouldn't take big cuts for her to feel pain. I will darn sure be watching for it.

 

[TerryJ2]

Gosh, forgetting a short string of words at that age is very odd.
As Alice in Wonderland said, this is getting curiouser and curiouser...