Ups & downs

Akila has had a week of ups and downs. The week started out really rough with the restraint and putting a gash on a staff person's head. On the phone, she was pretty whiney but I think was fairly mellow the rest of the week, but I'm not sure. I took her to an appt at our clinic for some immunizations and we went to a movie after on Friday. My 16 year old niece came with as she stayed with us over MEA (which was really fun!). She was in a good mood and was fun to be with.

This morning, we were picking her up at 10:15 to go to church and lunch. She called when I was in the shower and it was another "urgent matter", and "emergency" according to her. She had Imani bring the phone into the bathroom. Michael ended up talking to her, and I did once I got out of the shower. The "emergency", was that the staff took her Halloween candy away from her. Alert the media!!!

Yesterday, the staff brought her to Como Zoo to a Halloween event and she got a bag of candy- this is what they took away from her. She was on fire about this!!!! Went on and on about how wrong it was that they did this, and I could not distract her. I told her it was good they took it from her, and tried to support the staff, but I always wonder what they think I am telling her as they sit there and listen to her trash on them.

I eventually had to hang up on her as she would not stop yelling, name calling, and just plain being angry. The phone rang right after I hung up and I thought about not answering it, but I did. She often calls right back. It was actually the staff person explaining why she took the candy away. I told her I supported her and was glad she took it.

When we went to pick up Akila, I could see her yelling and being rude to the staff. She was yelling at them to unlock the door. I heard the staff tell her they would not open the door until she stopped yelling. It took several minutes. I mean several. As I stood there waiting, I have to admit I was quite nervous about how church was going to go. Michael and I had said that before we left home even after we had been on the phone with her.

Amazingly, when she got in the van, she was transformed into a happy child. She completely forgot about the fact that they had taken her candy. Know why? Because they sent the candy with me. I gave it to her, and she then shared it with all the kids. If they had not sent the candy, she would have been on fire the entire time. Thankfully, when we dropped her off, she told me to keep the candy at home for her.

She was very well behaved the entire time with us, which was wonderful. She did call tonight, and was mumbling on the phone about her morning. She was telling me that the staff were writing things down about her when she was mad. She then actually got the notes and read them to me. I could not understand everything she said, but I did hear "kicking and biting".

She was very upset that they had taken notes as she knows that these kind of behaviors are part of the reason why she is still there. She told me that she is trying hard to make better decisions, but it is hard when people take her stuff. I told her that I would have taken the candy also and that she would have then kicked and bitten me, which is why we need a break from her. The hard thing about this, is that I can seriously handle it if it happens maybe once a day, or every couple of days. But it was happening at least 3 times a day and it had gotten very intense.

I did a training for Children's Home Society staff last week on FASD. The staff worked mainly in mental health with kids ages 3-18, school based and in day treatment. It went well, had lots of good questions. My old lady moment was when I recognized one of the staff people and thought that she was a daughter of one of my former colleagues. But no, she was one of my former students. Getting old.

I am also putting together a training in the next week on the impact that FASD has on a family and will be presenting it to some counselors who work a lot with the adult population, especially with adult offenders. If anybody has some thoughts or quotes they want to send me, feel free!!

One last thought, I will write on later this week hopefully. We got an OT evaluation done on Akila at the crisis home, and it has me kind of annoyed. It has several of those subtle parent blaming sentences strewn throughout the entire report. I feel a blog post brewing, but am too swamped with other work right now.