Depressed

There is a lot going on with my daughter.   I've written about it here a good bit and we're working through it at home and with the professionals my daughter sees.   I know she's processing the blindness, and I know it's hard.   It's trauma and not mild trauma at that.  It's trauma that's happened again and again as she's had insult after insult to her eyes and vision.

The surgeries, doctor appointments, drops, medications, restrictions in activity, limited activity because she can't see, having to realize again and again she can't do things other people can do and the vision loss as a whole has a huge impact on her mental state and her life.

We try to help my daughter feel as capable as possible whenever we can.   It's not always something we can do though, because she is definitely limited by her blindness.   I don't know how she feels about being capable, happy or normalized because we have to deduce things from what she says (or mostly doesn't say) in how she acts or reacts and what we're hearing from her therapists and teachers.

Emotionally, I think this is the worst she's ever been.   Not everyone can see it because, as my mother told me this morning, she seems so happy.   Yes, she can seem happy at times but those times are short in duration and typically when she's having her every whim catered to by an adult playing with her where she directs the play and gets to do what she wants.

Food—it's all awful, she doesn't want to eat anything.  Entertainment—almost everything we suggest is rejected as a matter of course, saying it's boring or she just doesn't want to do it.  Daily responsibilities—getting dressed, having her hair done, getting in the car to go wherever, doing something the family is doing when it isn't exactly what she had pictured in her mind as the thing she wanted to do—it's all negative.   All bad.   She rarely seems happy about anything.

The words coming out of her mouth are angry, accusatory, negative and hurtful at times.   For apparently no reason at all in most cases.   She is a very angry child.   At what would appear to be most things in her life.   She is more aggressive with the dog, trying to control her.   She tries to control friends, getting angry if they don't do what she thinks they should be doing.   She wants to control every aspect of her life, even when it doesn't make sense.   It's like she's desperate to have something go her way because nothing has for a long time.  Or nothing major at any rate.

Everything is a fight with her, and that only increases the amount of negative she's experienced in her life, and that's not good.  This morning I had a candid conversation with her.   It was only candid because I got very upset at her repeated bombardment of hurtful and angry comments towards me as I was carefully doing her hair.

This morning when I was preparing to do her hair, I had gotten some "Floof" out for her because she had said she wanted to play with it.   It's like kinetic sand only lighter and airier.   But then I didn't hand her the crab cookie cutter the second she wanted it.   I didn't stop and drop the partially completed braid, to go get scissors to open the second bag of Floof the second she wanted it, even though I said I'd be done in two minutes and would help her.   I was hurting her.   I always hurt her (I was being exceptionally careful and gentle with her hair).  I was the worst, the meanest, why did I make her do her hair (she had said she was interested in the fishtail braids only minutes before.)

And that was just for the hair braiding for the day.   The morning routine and breakfast was abysmal.  After resisting and rejecting everything, making ultimatums and stating she hated everything she was ultimately ordered to the car so we could leave.   She could stay in the car and miss breakfast at Biscuitville if she didn't change her attitude and I was sorry there was nothing there she liked (she had no idea if she would like any of it and yet she was certain, because she didn't like anything I told her about—a common theme.)

That's how our days go with her a lot lately.   But back to the candid conversation we had.   I broke down and cried, explaining I was trying the best I could as her mother to do everything I could.   That parents only want the best for their children.   That we try so very hard to make our children's lives the best the can be.  I was embellishing the crying a bit because I was trying to connect with my daughter on an emotional level.   Sometimes this works.   I have a lot of things I've tried with her and sometimes she needs a reality check that she's not the only one with feelings.

What surprised me was when I was talking about parents wanting their children to be happy, she said, "I'm never happy."  She didn't want to talk about it but I made her.   She tried to change the subject, pretending to be interested in something or other that made no sense but was a distraction from the main topic.  I acknowledged the additional thread in the conversation but didn't let her off the hook, continuing to come back to her unhappiness.

She'll be eight-years-old in a month, but she's still very much a child.  She doesn't have the capacity to verbalize what's happening to her the way an adult can.   I got, I think, that aside from brief periods where something fun is happening, she's really never happy.  It all clicked in my head.   All the behaviors speak to not only unhappiness but depression.  Real depression, not the, "I'm depressed I missed the sale at Macy's this weekend" because that's not depression, that being sad.   I think she may be clinically depressed.

Dhruti had told me she wanted to talk, needed to talk to me soon.  I'm going to talk to her, but I think it's time we take my daughter to a psychiatrist.   I think we need to consider options outside of therapy.  I talked to my husband briefly about it today (he's out of town) and left Dhruti a message.   But I'm firm in this at this point and it's going to take some serious dissuading with good reason to convince me to cancel the appointment.

My daughter doesn't talk about how she really feels often.   Today was, I think, a few words with a huge amount of weight behind them.   The tone of voice she said, "I'm never happy" in.  The resignation in her voice.  The despair.   The hopelessness.   I asked her to elaborate, which she obviously didn't want to do, but I pressed her hard, telling her I would get her some help if she was really never happy.   I even told her who I was going to have her see (she's been in the office that day we all had Influenza A).   She said she didn't like him (no surprise there).

And yet she didn't say no.   She wants help.   She's had so much "help" in the way of doctors, surgeries, medical practitioners and all that's come of it from her perspective is she's gone more and more blind.  I can't imagine she has much hope.  I told her I was going to do everything I could so she didn't have to feel unhappy all the time.

This is breaking my heart.   It's worse in a way than the blindness.   Strangely, she's never really been that upset it seems at the loss of vision.  She just keeps adapting.   This is different.   This hurts worse than becoming blind.   And it's coming out in all directions from her—the pain.

There is the part of me that says she's just a child wanting to get her way.   That she's spoiled and we've raised a brat.   But I know in my heart that even with all the failings we've had as parents, this isn't just being a headstrong child.   This is real.   I'll keep you posted on what we end up doing—going to the psychiatrist or not—and what comes of it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was looking forward to having some screen time when he got home today.   When I left to pick him up I had to run three errands, one of which was walking a neighbor's dog and then bringing the dog back to our house.   I brought his Switch in the car and surprised him when we drove off-campus.   He said thank you and that I was the best mom ever in the universe or something like that and then happily sat in the car with the dog while I ran into the drug store, dog store and walked the neighbor's dog before loading him up in the back of the car to head home.   He's still on his Switch now, which is good, because I haven't had a chance to do anything with him.   It's working on eight o'clock.   I suppose I should feed him at some point.   He hasn't noticed it's way past dinner time yet he's been so engrossed.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's told me when she got in the car from school before track out, "do you know what thalantropy is?   It's when you give money to people."   They've been talking about philanthropy apparently in her class.