My husband and I just got out of a meeting with my daughter's play therapist. It was a lot, what she told us, both in what's happening with my daughter and what will need to happen to help her going forward.
She told us, "remember when I told you you don't need me anymore? Well, that's changed. You need me now. I couldn't discharge your daughter even if you wanted me to." Serious sounding, right? We assured Dhruti we were going nowhere and then we spent the hour understanding what's happening.
My daughter is in deep-seated denial about being blind. If she were blind from birth, things would be different. But she wasn't blind at birth and didn't begin to lose her sight until just before she turned four-years-old. The "trauma" is the blindness. Secondary to that is the trauma from having to go through medical things again, and again, everyday drops and medication, all the things she has to do and doctors she has to see resulting from her loss of vision.
Dhruti sees classic trauma triggers in my daughter. My daughter is hyper-vigilant with sounds. Her body response to an unknown sound is a physiological one. Her body becomes tense. She becomes overly alert in an anxious way. She's afraid to go in her room alone, even in the daytime. This is new. We're seeing lots of fear lately. That and other physiological responses Dhruti is seeing show telltale signs that indicate she's suffering from ongoing trauma.
She avoids talking about her blindness. She's never liked talking about it. If a child asks about her cane, I have to explain because my daughter doesn't want to. My daughter's references to her blindness are almost always covert. Dhruti says if you pay attention, you'll notice everything she does implies she can see. She's approaching things mentally as though she can see. She's hasn't surrendered to the fact that she can no longer see. Her feeling of loss is profound. Dhruti says she's in crisis.
She is talking some, but it's few and far between. She and Dhruti were talking about running into things and hurting yourself, which she does to minor degrees multiple times some days. My daughter said, "I know what that hurt is like, and I don't want to talk about it." She sometimes gives you a window into her processing of the blindness though. She told Dhruti, "Rayan and Keira can do things I no longer can."
My daughter wants control. She wants to not be treated in any way that indicates she needs help. Dhruti said she knew my daughter had been pushing back on me. Some of the reasons why is how I'm talking to her. Yes, of course as her mother I want to help her, but I used the phrase, "let me help you..." and "do you want me to show you..." which my daughter will immediately balk at. Dhruti said my daughter is smart enough to know when we're making up reasons to try and sneak help in a lot of times and when she thinks that's the case she turns into snappy, curt, rude even Reese.
This isn't exclusive to adults in my daughter's mind. She loves her friends, but if those friends at school, out of genuine care and affection offer to help her, she will push them away, saying things like, "there are too many people here. I don't want you here." That's not my daughter typically. But those words can hurt her friends who don't know there's an underlying issue causing her to act that way.
In short, if my daughter senses her disability is the reason any help is offered, she is going to refuse. What can we do to help her? Saying, "I found a new way to make a bracelet." will open the door for her to ask how on her own terms. Working collaboratively with her, saying, "you can do this. Let me know if you can't." Try not to fix things, let her come up with the answers. Never until the last minute do we offer to help. Sometimes she'll walk away from something while she thinks about it and will come back with an idea or solution, so give her a chance. Any time she asks for help, help her—this means she's ready to accept help. Anything that doesn't make her feel like she needs help because she can't see. Ultimately, and tangentially to this, we will be working to help her be better able to explain to us what she sees in her mind's eye. That, in and of itself will help her feel grounded and better.
What is life like for my daughter right now? It sounds grim and dim when Dhruti describes it. She has trauma triggers all the time. Her sensitivity is very high. Her brain stem isn't communicating well with the amygdala in a normal fashion and her amygdala isn't communicating with the prefrontal cortex like that of a child not in a constant trauma state. She isn't aware of her body responses as much as she would be. The higher functioning prefrontal cortex that would allow her to reason things out isn't able to do its job because things aren't getting beyond the amygdala.
So we have to help her. This is where Theraplay comes in. There are specific things we'll be doing with my daughter that involve touch. These are things that are games to my daughter. I think I mentioned the one where we turn her into a pizza. Yhrough the process of the "games" her brain makes connections she isn't able to normally make in her heightened emotional state. It calms her as well. You can see it happening. Theraplay is grounding, and it will change her cognition, but it will take a little time and work on our part.
We showed Dhruti a video of my daughter reading braille last night. She's so good at braille, so quick. Dhruti said if we were to have an FMRI of my daughter's brain it would show the left side of her brain as very dense, because the academic and logical parts of her brain are highly developed. In contrast, the right side of her brain would be much sparser, with gaps because developmentally, she's behind due to the loss of vision.
There is work to be done. We've risen to every challenge so far and we're not going to let this one stop us. As I write this, my daughter is happily screaming and laughing as she and Madison swing at full tilt on the playset outside. It's not all bad news, it just seems like it some days.
The Big Boy Update: Today was my son's first day as "Third Year" otherwise known as third grade. He's a leader in his class, one of only four third years. There is a staggered start for the class, and only those four students attended his class today, discussing what they'd be responsible for as classroom leaders. He has a multi-day field trip coming up in just a few weeks he excited about and told me about the five-day trip to Washington D.C. he'll be going on where "we're going to walk about fifty miles total." I think he had a good day. He's looking forward to this school this year.
The Tiny Girl Chronicle: Traditional calendar school started today, and the cab situation is a complete mess. Some students apparently weren't even picked up. My daughter's cab arrived twenty minutes early, but my daughter was in the cab for an hour-and-a-half and was so late to school she was marked as absent. It is now 5:30 and she won't be home until close to six o'clock. The first few weeks are a bit crazy but get worked out. With everything going on with my daughter in the above blog post, we might drive her to and from school for a week or so until the route gets sorted out. Unless she's made friends in the cab and has been having fun.
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