Elementary School

Emotions and feelings shouldn’t be a hard thing, although ask any man in an all-female household and he will tell you he is screwed when it comes to feelings and emotions. My husband once questioned our six-year-old daughter, Bunny, about the outfit she chose to wear for picture day.  His question was less about what he asked and more about how he asked the question.  Bunny took immediate offense to his question and burst into tears. Oh, brother! But, as much as Bunny has no problem expressing some emotions, others are locked deep inside her. Bunny has Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), and as I’ve written before, RAD is a disorder of relationships.  At some point during Bunny’s development, a trauma occurred.  Her particular trauma came from… [more]

We had Bunny in therapy last Friday and we were discussing her recent round of temper tantrums and struggles for control.  Lately, she has been sneaking out of the house and not telling anyone where she is going or what she is doing.  On 20 acres of pasture and woodland, a little six year old is likely to get into a lot of trouble, so you see why we’ve been getting upset. Especially now that the coyotes have had their spring pups, and we have killed two copperhead snakes in the last two weeks.  We don’t worry so much about Elle, because she always has her dog as her constant companion and she wears a pair of leather cowboy boots to protect her… [more]

When I became a parent, I never knew a useful skill would be managing a rollercoaster ride.  One day Elle is having a bad day and she is at the bottom, but Bunny is riding at the top.  Twenty-four hours later, Bunny is scraping the bottom and Elle is flying high. But, it’s not only the ups and downs of one child versus the other; it’s the pendulum swing back and forth in a single child.  For seven years, we’ve dealt with RAD’s effect on Elle.  There were times that we were so far down on the bottom of the rollercoaster; I thought we had permanently derailed.  There was a time I was convinced we would only see her during weekly visits to… [more]

When I was young, I had rules in my house that I had to live by…or there would be consequences.  Back in the 1960’s, the consequences were usually a spanking, either with a hand or a wooden spoon, and once I had to eat soap. It’s odd that I don’t think this was unusual when I was little, but I can’t fathom punishing my daughters in this fashion now. As a child of the 60’s, we had order and discipline in our house, right along with every other house on the block.  We didn’t misbehave, we knew how to treat adults with respect, we knew not to argue with our parents and I always knew I had to go home at night… [more]

In my next post I’ll get back to my vision for ATN, but for now I want to share a conversation I had with Beth today before we both crashed for a much-needed nap. Bear in mind she was exhausted so she was even more emotionally fragile, but still, what she said was incredible … She attended camp last week with a neighborhood friend and classmate. Apparently they had some difficulties, as they discovered that living with someone (actually 7 other 10-year-old someones plus a counselor in a 12 X 12 cabin!) can alter a friendship or change a perspective. I suspect the realizations that were made were inevitable, but accelerated by their closeness for a week. Beth is, as I have often stated… [more]

A couple of weeks ago I submitted a story for inclusion in a Chicken Soup book. The book is Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul and I suggested to Beth that she submit something as well. Just as we were leaving for our vacation last week (while I was frantically packing and making arrangements for a boatload of pets) Beth sat down at the computer and cranked out an “article”. Here are excerpts from what she wrote: Adoption can be easy to understand or hard to understand but it is not easy for the kids that are adopted to face the difficulties that they face in school or in families where they don’t belong in. Kids who are adopted can face meanness at school… [more]

In my discussion about my daughter Beth's sneaking candy and lying, I want to make it abundantly clear that the issues here are the sneaking and lying… not an occasional pilfered chocolate Easter egg. This is a pattern that disturbs me and sends some very negative messages. And I need to reiterate this has been occurring, and has been discussed, numerous times in the past… with no change. Just a few days ago we had a couple of the neighbor kids over after school until their moms could get them. They all picked a snack with my blessing, and I went to my office. I returned to find that Beth had pretty much opened the grocery store and an incredible amount of candy… [more]

Last October I wrote a couple of posts (here and here) about Beth’s problem with lying and my problem with Beth’s problem of lying… Well, we are (or she is) still at it. The second previous post I linked is the story of my last lie as a child... and what it was that had such a profound impact on me that I stopped lying. Beth was ten last November. When I researched developmental ages and stages the last time I wrote about lying, I was surprised to see how little definitive information I could find by Googling Developmental age and stage lying. Most of what is out there relates to preschoolers… or sociopaths. Not much about the tweeners. There were a few… [more]