Getting Through the Bad Days
It’s often difficult to write about the bad days.
This past week has been one struggle after the other. Aisling has been honestly feeling extremely under-the-weather due in large part to sinus drainage and allergies, but I finally discovered on Wednesday morning that she had been using her illness as an excuse to get out of going to class and to avoid school. She had a full-fledged emotional meltdown on Wednesday morning, after which I felt completely drained, rather hopeless, and like I must be the worst mother in the world since my child was so completely and utterly unhappy. I also felt as if I had not helped her develop healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with her issues. The rest of the week has been peppered with intense power struggles and angry outbursts, Aisling huffing and puffing when she doesn’t get her way or when she misunderstands something I said, storming off into her room and slamming the door, practically growling at me when I come in to check on her. My darling fiance, Thomas, in an attempt to help me see the bright side of things, pointed out that I would have plenty of topics to write about and explore from this week. While this is true, these are hard things to discuss. It’s embarrassing for me to admit that I’m absolutely clueless when it comes to certain topics, that many days I feel like I’m stumbling through the dark when it comes to parenting. I’m ashamed to admit that, even after all this time, I can still be really very afraid when it comes to all of this.
Part of the issue is that I don’t have much in the way of a barometer for measuring how “normal” emotional outbursts and self-deprecating attitudes are for ten-year-old girls. I was a very odd kid, myself — well-behaved and even-tempered to an almost frightening degree, most of the time. I had a little brother, but he didn’t begin his emotional outbursts until much later in puberty. Logically, I might deduce the combination of hormonal changes that I’m sure Aisling must be going through along with the complications of autism as related to self-awareness, emotional relationships, and social interactions are what lead to her outbursts. However, I don’t *know* this for a fact. I’m not around a lot of ten-year-old girls, typically-developing or otherwise. This is why I’m so terrified that Aisling’s reactions may be extremely out-of-the-ordinary and may signal that she has deep psychological issues that I need to address in addition to the autism. Mostly, however, I’m just at a loss at how exactly to help her through these bad spots, to help comfort her and reassure her that everything will be okay. There is probably nothing worse than watching your child suffer and simply not knowing what you might be able to do to help.
On Wednesday morning, Aisling was still complaining about feeling bad. I was encouraging her to go to school, anyway, since she was obviously just suffering from allergies and she wasn’t running a fever. In the process of our conversation, Aisling confessed that she was afraid the kids at school would make fun of her for being sick, and basically said that she just didn’t want to go to school. She cried, she yelled, she talked about how ugly she was, how stupid she felt — I think she even used the phrase “I’m a fatty,” which really concerned me. She has such a low self-image, and no matter how long I argue with her and assure her that she’s beautiful, intelligent, wonderful, and loved, she just doesn’t seem to believe me. We’re reading The Feelings Book: The Care & Keeping of Your Emotions right now, and I have even tried referring to what’s in the book — how she needs to replace her negative thoughts about herself with positive ones, for example. Nothing seems to work — she still remains convinced she is ugly, stupid, and unlovable. She won’t hear any alternate views on the matter.
I’d assumed from things she’d said about the kids at school and her general attitude about herself in general that she did not have a good relationship with her peers. According to her teacher, however, her peers actually care about her a great deal — almost too much at times. When Aisling starts having a “meltdown” in class, they flock around her to make sure she’s okay. They try to calm her down and help her out however they can. If you ask Aisling about her peers at school, however, she’ll tell you that they don’t like her and that they pick on her all the time. I’m assuming Aisling often misinterprets what her peers tell her — for example, if someone doesn’t share her specialized, narrow interests, she often assumes that they must not like *her* either. When she was still obsessed with black holes, for example, she would complain that her school didn’t teach anything about black holes, and then she would make the assumption that no one at school liked black holes, and therefore no one at school liked her, either. It’s very possible that the kids are doing their best to be nice to her, but she gets the impression that they don’t like her because they don’t want to talk about rattlesnakes all the time and don’t particularly care about Pokemon. At the heart of things, it’s a communication problem — and I worry that this problem is strongly hurting her self-esteem, and I feel at a loss on how to try to help her through it.
I am planning to take Aisling to see a psychologist for her emotional issues at the beginning of the year. I’m hoping I might be able to get some useful feedback and perhaps some answers at that point. In the meantime, I know I can only do the best with what I have, and I just have to keep trying to help Aisling see how wonderful she is and how much she is loved. Still, weeks like this are hard to get through. My own self-confidence falters, my patience is tested, and I often simply don’t know what to do. It’s easier, now, that I have so much help day-in and day-out from my fiance — a luxury I never really had before — and Thomas is often much more patient than me and much better at knowing the “right things” to say to help Aisling feel better or at least to help her understand whatever situation we’re trying to deal with. All the same, weeks like this are still difficult — for all of us.