You Need to Calm Down

There is a Taylor Swift song out right now titled, "You Need to Calm Down" that is running through my head.   The message in the song is entirely different than why I'm using it as a title for this blog post, however.   Today was a hard day for my daughter.  It's her that I'm thinking about with the song and hoping she can calm down soon enough.

My daughter isn't coping well lately at school and at home.   Dhruti says there are multiple things in play, but that her blindness is affecting her mentally.   She's not accepting that she's blind and as a result, there are a lot of behaviors manifesting.

Today, for instance, we went to Dhruti for a session.   I came in for the last twenty minutes and was greeted by a still-manic child.   She couldn't calm down even though Dhruti was going through lots of "games" that should have helped.   She was able to stay still and quiet for the length of time it was necessary to get an M&M, but as soon as she was told it was okay (we had left the imaginary island of the sleeping penguins) my daughter bounded up in the air and was back to full-on mental chaos.

Even when we did the blanket swing, something my daughter and almost all children love because the movement is soothing as two adults swing you back and forth in a blanket they're holding, she couldn't relax.   Instead of waiting for us to sing a calm song to her, she launched into a song of her own.   She also couldn't stop moving around, causing the blanket to be put back on the ground, "until she was safe and still again".

At the very end of the swinging, my daughter rolled over and stretched out, something most children might do naturally.   My daughter spends a lot of time in the fetal position face down.   She listens that way, but it's very primal and protective of herself as well.   Dhruti said that was, at least, one good sign.   What she didn't do, and what she normally has done, is calm down and start to breathe normally.

We left and my daughter asked if we could go to a park so she could get some energy out.   As I drove to the park she called my mother on her watch phone and stayed on the call with her for the majority of the twenty minutes we were in the park.   Mimi is a very kind grandmother indeed to listen to my daughter detail everything she's doing on the playground.

My daughter knew everything, had already done it or didn't want to know about or do something.   That was the general theme of the day.   Other people, non-blind people, know and do things she can't, and she doesn't want to accept her blindness.   It was a tough day with her from that perspective.   She is highly inflexible right now too and gets upset and almost anything.   Tonight at bedtime she was nearly hysterical.   Some of it I can put down to juvenile behavior in general, but some of it didn't make sense.   It just seemed like she was far more upset about little things than it made sense to be.  

I don't know how long it will be, this phase in her life, but I hope for her she can move through it with as much grace as possible.   We're trying to help her as best we can.  Again, I don't know what we'd do without the advice of professionals and friends.  I hate to see her so unhappy.   This is on a far deeper level than I've seen before.

To give you an idea of the thoughts going through my daughter's head, I was able to get written down some of the words she was singing to Mimi in the car today.   She is far more expressive in song than she is in any other way.   She's mostly stream of consciousness with rhymes here and there.   Some of the phrases she said included, "when you're blind, seeing is difficult.  You see in your brain.   You gotta figure things out.  It's not always your fault.   It's called see with your brains.   When you're bored you just write a story or think of something in your mind's eye."

There was more, maybe Mimi got some of it down.  It came out as factual the way she sang it, but it wasn't easy to hear as a parent.

The Big Boy Update:  My son played basketball today after school.   We have a basketball net but he hasn't been overly interested in it.   He's got some friends who want to play now, which is always helpful.   We couldn't find him when it was time to get ready for bed.   We discovered him in the dwindling light out front with Rayan, still playing basketball.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Tomorrow is Wacky Wednesday.   My daughter say still for me to make small spiral twists of hair all over her head this evening while she read her book aloud to me.   It looks fun already, but in the morning we're spraying it with brightly colored hair sprays, adding pink, green, blue and purple to the twists.   If she sits still long enough she wants me to curl each up into a mini-bun.   I don't know if we'll have time and I think the hanging twirls look more wacky.  We'll see what we have time for in the morning.   The twists she could sleep on tonight, which is good because it took me a good while to get them all done; we wouldn't have time to do it all in the morning.