Where we are today!

Finally, now, we have some stability again.  Our finances have improved.  My husband and I both have stable jobs with family oriented bosses.  Freyja’s school is great, a huge improvement on the one we went to for kindergarten, and there is no bullying.  She has dear, close friends.  She is growing and learning and doing well at school.  We have close family friends who are like a surrogate family here, they live only a few streets away.  Her daycare (before and after school) is the one she has been going to for almost three years now, her sister goes there now, and her care-giver is like an extra grandma, the other kids are like cousins.  Our landlady is a wonderful woman who has treated us like family and basically told us we can stay in the house until it falls down if we want to.  Finally she has a stable basis, continuity….. but the behaviour hasn’t stabilised, if anything it is getting worse.

She’s getting vivid nightmares of people hurting her, her sister, me.  Daddy trying to save us but not being able to.  She is frustrated when she can’t get something right first time.  Calls herself stupid, hits herself on the head.  She is angry when she can’t do things her own way and lashes out, especially at me.  She is doing well at school, getting all B’s,  but her teacher is getting frustrated because she thinks she should be easily getting all A’s.  Says she is the smartest kid in the class but cannot concentrate, does not listen, is always the last to finish.  These are things I have been hearing for a while, and things I have been telling teachers since she was 3, but because there has been no continuity, they have not realised that this is a continuing pattern, not a phase.

Well, it finally came to a head a couple of weeks ago when she started throwing things during her tantrums and almost hit her little sister with something.  She was heartbroken about it, and as always when she loses her temper, she was full of remorse after and telling us she was stupid again, and that we would all be better if she was dead.  As a person with depression issues, that waves a huge red flag to me.  There is depression on both sides of our family, and after watching her cousins as kids, I think possibly some ADHD tendencies amongst them too – certainly they had anger issues as young kids, though now they are grown into well adjusted teens.  So, we went to the family doctor last week, and he referred us to a Paediatric Psychology Unit, who have in turn yesterday referred us to the Paediatric Behavioural Development Clinic (PBDC) at the East Calgary Health Clinic.

So, in around 10 weeks we should have our first appointment, and bearing in mind that we have been dealing with this for five years, you would think that 10 weeks would be a breeze, but already my mind is racing....

What have I done? Am I a bad parent? Will it scar her for life? Will they think we are mistreating her, hurting her? Was it a mistake? What did we do wrong? All the usual second guessing I am sure all parents in the same situation as me and DH must go through...

So, I am going to take a deep breath and started this blog to get all those thoughts and feelings out. To document it for me, and for her, so we can decide if it was a mistake, or if it was the best thing we could ever do for us as a family, and to show her down the line (hopefully) how far we have come.... oh how I hope that we do indeed go far and that she can grow up to be an inspiration to other kids who just can't help themselves sometimes.