I had a major breakdown last week.  I cried for most of 12 hours and for parts of 36 hours.  I felt overwhelmed…no helpless, scared…no panicked, and angry…no furious.

Every transition for T-6 is hard, especially if it is a transition away from playing.  The playground is right outside of her classroom.  From the beginning, we have let the girls play on the playground for a while after school gets out, but the departures from the playground have gotten more difficult and dramatic.

The days where I had both girls and Jeff was working have actually generally gone pretty well, but they are definitely scary for me, because if something doesn’t go right, I am out-numbered.  And most of the times when things do go very badly (as opposed to only slightly badly) it is when the girls are together and T-6 is enlisting T-4 to join her bad decisions.

On the playground, we have 2 simple rules.  The girls are not to leave my sight and T-6 is not allowed to grab or hold T-4 on the play structure.  So on Thursday,  I gave a 10 minute warning that it was time to leave.  We usually do give a warning have heard that giving a warning would be a good thing so that the girls can start getting used to the idea of leaving.  Unfortunately, in T-6’s case, preparing usually means sabotage and leaving quickly becomes a game of “catch me if you can.”

So on Thursday, after my 10 minute warning, T-6 broke a rule by taking T-4 out of my sight. This meant that instead of 10 minutes, it was time to leave immediately. I found them, grabbed T-6’s hand and began walking immediately. The more she tried to squirm away, the more I tightened my grip.  After about 20 feet, she started screaming at the top of her lungs. I high-pitched scream for screaming sake.  We made it off the playground and about 1/2 block, which was about half the way to the car. She started hitting me.  I held her up against the chain link fence and told her that hitting me was unacceptable and she needed to calm down before we went the rest of the way to the car.

As we started walking again, I looked back and saw a man who I think had followed us out of the school, watching. He said, “I saw you push her against that fence and we know who you are.”

As soon as I got into the car, I started sobbing.  Ironically, T-6 had no idea what was going on. Of course I had not pushed her into the fence hard enough to hurt her, as soon as she was in the car, the whole incident for her was forgotten. Luckily, when we got home, I had a friend there to help and I was able to make some phone calls and get my bearings.  The social workers assured me that this guy was a jerk and that I hadn’t done anything that 90% of all parents had done.

By the next day, we had come up with a plan with our social worker to bring T-6 directly to the principal’s office to leave school, bypassing the playground issue.  The school felt really bad for what that guy had said and was trying to track him down to talk with him about it.  For the most part, we have gotten a great deal of support from every level of the school…teachers, administrators and parents.

The situation was definitely more physical than I feel comfortable with and I have been talking about this to the social workers and therapist from the beginning and instead of getting feedback on more appropriate ways to deal with these situations, we mostly have gotten, “You are doing a great job, keep it up!”  When I have complained about how things are going and that T-6 is more than I can handle, I have heard, “You are handling her and you are doing well.” Instead of being provided access to more resources to help us.  Jeff and I thought it was a joke during our social worker’s visit when she gave us a hand-out about seasonal depression.  One kid had bit Jeff while he was trying to calm her down to sleep and our other was throwing major tantrums 4-6 times per day. Having a moment to consider seasonal depression sounded like a luxury. We feel so angry that we didn’t get all of the available information about the girls during our disclosure meeting.  The therapist seems to know much more than the social worker.  We are feeling that this is much more than we expected or signed up for.

We feel angry that we were not given more support in determining the criteria of the kids that we could take.  Anyone will tell you that reading books and attending a class will not really prepare you to be a parent, let alone a parent of a special needs child.  As I discuss here, we were really left on our own to decide when trained professionals could have been involved and helped.  Even with specific questions that we had, we look back know and see the inadequacy of the answers that were offered up.

We are also not getting the level of support from our agency that we expected.  Although our agency brags about low case loads for the workers, all of the workers are part-time.  I have heard that some social workers will answer their email on their days off, but ours does not.  The one time that we have used her cell phone on a weekend (when we felt it was urgent), we got a chilly reception.  Our social worker is brand new at the agency and usually has to ask the “team” before she can answer many of our questions.  To her credit, she has given us great advice around the girls behaviors.

Well, the silver lining is that a real crisis actually motivated people to start looking for the help that we really need and to recognize that although T-6’s behaviors may not be surprising, they are extreme.  We are toughing it out for now and will be thinking about our own boundaries. How long can we do this?  What is best for each of us as individuals?