My girlie is a quirky character. After 4 kids, I’ve fallen firmly in the nature over nurture camp and Camille is proof positive that one nutter begets another. That might sound like too strong a statement to make about a 6 year old, but the signs are all there that she has the potential for the same weaknesses and patterns of thought that will land her on the Zoloft train if I can’t figure out how to help her manage it. Or maybe she’ll need it regardless. At least I’ll be able to tell her that there’s no shame in that game. And we can get matching pill boxes to dole out our daily doses of sanity.
One symptom I see is that she has an irrational (key word) reaction to change. I know that lots of people don’t like change, but most people don’t have to fight off tears if they go to church and find that their class has been moved to another room. Her anxiety doesn’t flare up with everything, but if it’s a situation that she once found anxiety provoking and has since been able to manage, and then one small thing changes, it’s an entirely new phobia all over again.
For example, the bus. She’s great on the bus now. She smiles and waves and goes off to the bus. Yay.
But I have to wave to her as the bus passes our house. One morning I had to hop in the car to head out to an appointment right after getting her out of the house and when I told her that I wouldn’t be able to wave that morning, she about had a breakdown. She flopped on the ground and burst into tears and refused to go to school. This is not an “I love Mom so much that I will be sad and miss her if she doesn’t wave goodbye” kind of sadness. It’s an “I need this mental checklist to be completed so that I know everything is normal and the same as every other day” kind of reassurance.
On that day it was easier for me to delay my departure for 5 minutes and wave to her than to spend 5 minutes convincing her that she would be fine on the bus with her brothers even if I weren’t standing at the window as they drove by.
And swim team. She’s a great swimmer and she has nothing to fear, but if she’s been swimming in lane 2 for three weeks and then she shows up and they say, “Congratulations! You’re swimming so well that we are promoting you to lane 3,” she will tear up and cry through the entire 45 minute swim because she’s scared it’s going to be something different that she won’t be able to do. God bless her coaches who have learned that’s just how she is and pretend that she’s normal. They are actually impressed by her ability to cry and swim at the same time — on those days she prefers backstroke.
I’ve made her continue swimming because she’s good at it (they swim grouped by ability and she’s the only 1st grader to be moved up to lane 4 — poor girl keeps getting promoted) and because I want her to practice doing things that make her uncomfortable so she realizes that she can master them. At the end of the first term she showed up for swimming and it was a pool party/free swim day to celebrate and she got teary eyed because she was expecting to swim laps. God bless her.
But finally, as we approach the end of the school year, I’m seeing light at the end of all of these tunnels. She’s made friends with an older girl in her swim lane and she’s been smiling before getting in the pool instead of biting her lip.
It’s definitely worse when she’s tired so we’ve been working on fixing that. And it’s worse when there’s been a lot of change all at once, like at the beginning of this year. It’s as my therapist explained: I could be fine for a while without medicine, but if there’s a perfect storm of stressful events (like a birth, a move, a deployment, a back surgery, and a child’s surgery all at the same time — thanks 2004) my brain might not be able to handle all of that at once and that’s when things start to short circuit. (And why I take Zoloft preventively — so I don’t have to dig myself out of a mess later).
I knew she was like me, but our move to Abu Dhabi and seeing how she couldn’t handle all of the newness at one time really highlighted that. I told Josh we can never move again if we want her to have a chance at normal. Just kidding. Kind of.
At least she is able to express herself and writes letters to me all the time. Usually they are drama filled and full of accusations that I’m not a good mom. If she’s already feeling this way, her teen years are going to be good times. (Basically nobody loves her and she drew pictures of herself happy and crying. )
(This one is “stop treating me like a baby and like you hate me.”)
But they are quickly followed up by sweet apologies. She burns hot and fast and then is swiftly contrite.
Writing in her journal (not for school, but for fun) all about how she loves school. She is her mama’s daughter.
And she doesn’t just write in English. Look at that Arabic! It says something like, “My name is Camille and I love bunnies.” Let’s have more of that and less of “My mom is mean.” But I still love my little nut. Calvin summed it up perfectly when he said, “Our lives sure would be boring if we didn’t have Camille.”
