A Difficult Child

I have a difficult child. I realize that sounds terrible but it is true. If you’ve never had a difficult child, you can’t understand the pain of not being able to “fix” whatever is wrong with your child. It is overwhelming.

My middle child is smart and funny and has a crazy memory. She is beautiful and talented and creative.

And yet, in moments, she is also filled with rage and uncontrollable. She can melt down in seconds. Seconds.

Her behavior has always seemed to be linked to sleep. She had night terrors when she was younger. They were big and dramatic and scary. When she was in the midst of one, it felt like we were witnessing a seizure. She would scream and jerk and cry – nothing could comfort her. In fact, largely, she did not even notice that we were in the room, even when we were holding her. In the morning, she had no recollection of what happened. The exhaustion, however, showed. We sought professional help and were advised to make some small changes, which we did, to no avail.

The night terrors finally transitioned into full fledged nightmares. They were horrifying to witness. Some nights, she would wake up screaming that she was covered in bugs and ants. She would be awake, unlike with the night terrors, and would be screaming at me to “Get them off!” I felt completely helpless.

We sought out more specialists. Her ENT recommended that we have her adenoids removed, which we agreed to. They were, as the surgeon explained, “very large and grossly infected.” Having those removed helped her breath at night, which helped her sleep. She actually started putting on weight again (she’s sooo skinny) and sleeping through some nights – but not all nights. Her breathing remained stilted, which bothered me a lot.

We went back to Children’s Hospital at the recommendation of her pediatrician and her ENT (who is at CHOP). She had a full-fledged overnight sleep test and met with several doctors, including a neurologist, behavioral specialist and sleep specialist. The answer that we got was pretty much what I expected and yet, dreaded. She has anxiety.

It seems crazy to me that a 3 year old could be diagnosed as anxious. What does she have to be anxious about? But it was explained to me more or less like this: she’s very smart and retains a lot of information (this is true, she could identify songs and artists when she was 2). But she doesn’t yet know how to process and deal with the information. So, when it’s time to calm down, she can’t. She’s always firing on all cylinders. There’s just no down time.

Children’s Hospital recommended a psychotherapist. Chris wasn’t crazy about this idea – neither was I – but we felt really trapped. So we went.

The therapist explained to me that therapy won’t actually work on a child that young, the therapy was more for me. Well, Lord knows I needed it. But the idea was supposed to be to teach me how to deal with her better. That’s not what happened. So we made the decision to stop going to the therapist.

Since then, we’ve tried all kinds of things. I’ve read books, changed diets, experimented with different sleep arrangements, deep breathing exercises, etc.

Nothing works. Not long term anyway.

Most of the time, most days, she’s fine. And she’s good at school for the most part. And then she hits her wall. It’s usually tied to exhaustion – I can more or less predict her worst days in advance.

But when it hits, it hits hard. Ames has spectacular meltdowns. Screaming, hitting, crying. Lots of “It’s not fair!” She hyperventilates.

And my sweet, beautiful little girl turns into this child that I don’t even recognize.

It’s a horrible, terrible feeling.

And then, as quickly as it comes, it goes. Her breathing eventually steadies. She eventually calms down. And then, it’s as if it never happened.

Until the next time.

I’m sure that you can tell where this is going… tonight was one of those times.

Tagged as: anxiety, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, difficult child, sleep, sleep disorder