Daniel... the latest

Daniel continues to be the biggest challenge we have. I have not been able to wrap my head around the psychiatrists saying that Daniel does NOT have control over his meltdowns. When I said, “Then how come he can mostly control it around others, has a few problems at school, but only has these huge problems at home?” they said that it’s because he WANTS to control it, and so he works really, really hard to, and manages it for the most part when he’s with others, but then the buildup just gets too much, and he blows – but he only does that at home because he feels safe and loved here. I really had a hard time believing any of all this stuff – to me it was all just psycho-babble. But Daniel truly is the most excellent Jekyll and Hyde I could NEVER have hoped to meet, and there is absolutely nothing that we have been able to do to change it, so I’m beginning to be a believer!!

So I’ve had a bit of an epiphany about Daniel. The last mega-meltdown he had was on a Monday afternoon, and I actually told the teachers at school that he was gone because he was in lockdown. I haven’t told others that before, but since we have talked to the teachers in detail about Daniel’s issues, I thought it would be better for them to know and not start asking him, “Hey – did you have a fun vacation day?” or something like that!! So I sent them all an e-mail, and 3 of the 6 replied to me saying that Daniel had been *really* difficult and uncooperative in school that morning. One said that he “seemed to be wired”. So looking at it a little further, Sunday morning he had started acting completely out of control. I asked Mark to take Daniel to the church when he went to Bishopric meetings because I *KNEW* by the way Daniel was acting, that we were in for a humdinger, and I hoped that taking him out of the situation would help diffuse it. So Daniel sat in the foyer at church drawing and visiting, and was fine. He also behaved ok at church that afternoon, but that night, he was “on one” again - Just pushing the limits, being obnoxious, and getting in everyone’s faces (especially Nadia & Ben’s). If we can get his meds in him and just try to distract him and just survive for a while, the meds knock him out pretty well. “Surviving” is literally the word – as you can *NOT* discipline him in any way, or make him go to his room, or anything like that, or you just facilitate a COMPLETE meltdown. So then Monday morning, according to the teachers, was pretty bad at school. Then Monday afternoon at home, he was totally out of control. Since we’ve tried every possible thing to stop the behaviors, and NOTHING works, we now just try to ignore him. So he goes crazy around us, and I just try to shepherd the other two away from him and ignore him as much as possible. But when he starts physically threatening the kids, I draw the line. So I had the police take him to lockdown again that day (that’s the third time he’s been there – and if it changed behavior in the future, I’d feel OK about it, but it doesn’t change anything).

The cop that took Daniel to lockdown called me after he dropped him off and said, “WOW – he was really out of control – and does he ever have a MOUTH on him – he’s called me every name in the book!” He was surprised someone so young and so small was so strong. I said yeah, I know all about it, and I’m sorry. He said, “No – you don’t need to be sorry – we’re equipped to deal with it. It’s *YOU* I’m sorry for – you shouldn’t have to deal with it.” It took three cops a good 20 minutes to get Daniel handcuffed, sorted out, and in the car. Then just one officer went to drive him to Provo. Because Daniel was so small, he was able to wriggle out of the cuffs, then he broke the radar in the back of the police car, and then he was trying to get through the glass to the front and trying to get the policeman’s gun.

At the lockdown place, Daniel is with strangers, so usually settles down really fast. But this time he wouldn’t listen, was starting to be destructive, etc., so they called the Provo police who went over and talked to him. They told him that if he didn’t settle down, they would take him to juvenile detention. Well he did settle down this time, but the lockdown place said that they are not equipped to handle that behavior either, and that if he behaves that way in future, they’ll just send him directly to juvie. They said he wouldn’t go to bed that night – He was just sitting in the hallway and making loud noises and swaying back and forth. When they’d try to get him to bed, he said, “No – I can’t go to bed. My mom won’t leave me here. She’ll come and get me.” Of course THAT just breaks my heart more. We left him there a little over 24 hours, and I literally cried about that entire time! What upsets me the most is that if he truly does NOT have any ability to control this, and it’s some physiological thing due to his parents on drugs, or whatever, how tragic is that for him (and us)?! And, incidentally, it makes me feel WAY worse for trying some of the discipline things we’ve tried under the direction of the doctors – like the lockdown in the bathroom here in the house, etc. HOW in the world might that have affected Daniel – not understanding WHY he can’t control it himself, and then WHY we come down on him so hard. Anyway, the epiphany is helping me understand things a little better, but of course it doesn’t resolve the situation. We muddle on…..

The other thing is that he is still a COMPLETE kleptomaniac. I started to think he was learning and changing, PLUS I feel so exhausted at having to try to watch his every move – and when you do that, it precipitates meltdowns because he obviously doesn’t want to be watched!, so I let my guard up a little, but I should know better, as it ALWAYS comes back to bite me. He continues to just take whatever he wants and doesn’t learn. One of the VERY hard things about this is that when confronted with the evidence, Daniel continues to LIE about it – and he is extremely accomplished at it. The lies just roll off his tongue, and he always has a VERY quick and highly plausible reason why he has something. If I didn’t know any better because I’ve caught him red-handed, I’d believe him 100 percent. He’s completely earnest when he swears BLIND that he did not TOUCH anything and has NO idea how the stuff got in his room.

I really wonder about it – on one hand I’m quite sure he understands what he’s doing, because he’s very good at hiding things he takes. But then on the other – he’s so convincing when he says he knows nothing about it, so you wonder if the kleptomania is automatic and he really doesn’t “get it”?! I’ve told him that I just can’t believe what he tells me – and until he earns my trust back, it’s gone. That’s an awful thing to say – but what else do I do? Often now, I call him on it. Like when I walked on him with a whole stash of cash and asked him where he got it, and he comes back with this big story. So I said, “I’m sorry Daniel – you know as well as I do that you take money that doesn’t belong to you to I’m just going to have to take it.” And he often doesn’t say a thing. But then he doesn’t hesitate to take it right back if he gets the least opportunity. It doesn’t do any good to get mad, consequence the heck out of him, so I’m pretty much to the point that I say something like, “I feel very sad that you’re not learning to stay out of other people’s stuff.” Mercy me.

So back to the epiphany… It’s that we can see him going downhill, and it appears to be a train that can’t be stopped (we can divert it for a time, but if it’s going downhill… it’s going to go - regardless!), so I talked to the doctor about this. He prescribed some other meds to try with Daniel at that particular time that might stave off the precipitous drop – He said they would just mellow everything out. It’s funny that Mark and I were *SO* opposed to meds, and now, “WE ARE BELIEVERS!!” We can tell so quickly if we’ve forgotten to give him his meds in the morning. And sometimes, Daniel gets a bee in his bonnet and won’t take them or spits them out on the sly (he’s not very advanced about HOW he stashes… generally he just puts them in a corner on the floor or on the counter or something. He could easily flush them and we’d not be any the wiser!). We can TELL immediately, but when he’s in that frame of mind, you can’t force him to take them. (Sometimes he says he doesn’t want them because, he says, “you are over-medicating me”. Now WHERE would he have heard a phrase like that?!

Well, Daniel was “heading down the path” the day before thanksgiving, but he also seemed to not be well. He was VERY sleepy, which is not like him – he’s usually on the go ALL the time. He would disappear and I’d find him asleep on his floor or on the sofa. But when he was awake, he was obnoxious. Friday night, it was getting us down a lot, so we decided to try the meds, and we also gave them to him Saturday morning. (The doc said it was ok to give them morning and night for a week.) Well Saturday he continued to sleep a lot, and then he’d get up and be hungry. And he’d be standing there eating (that’s his mode – he just “grazes” and you can’t get him to sit down and eat much with you), and his head would loll back and he’d say he couldn’t hold it up. So we supported his head (it was CRAZY – saggy like a tiny baby’s), and helped him lay down. He’d sleep for a while, then he’d pop up and do the same thing over. Saturday night, he complained of pain all over, but he didn’t have a fever or any other symptoms, and it seemed to pass quickly. So we didn’t give him any more of the meds, and within 2 days, he was back to normal – no sleepiness or anything. So it’s really bizarre. Because he was *so* sleepy before, and we don’t know what other viruses he might have had, we don’t know exactly what the effect of the new pills were. So we are a little nervous to try them again – but think we may do it and reduce the dosage. The doc prescribed 2 pills morning and night, so we could cut it in half and see what happens….