We were on vacation at the beach for a week. All the kids love this spot and the three littles played nonstop in the water and sand. Jane was swimming without her floatie by the second day. She went to the beach twice each day--morning and evening--and had to be lured out of the water during the heat of the day with promises of food and cartoons. The big boys love that she's fearless and were helping her jump waves and even tossing her about in the water. It was the most fun I've seen them have with her.
By the sixth day she was exhausted. Sleeping 12-14 hours each night. She even told me she wanted to go home. Honestly, I could relate...that much fun IS exhausting.
We get home and everyone takes a day or two to recover. Pretty much just laundry and laying around. By day 3 post-vacation everyone else is back to normal. Not Jane.
Today is Day 4 and she's still all out of sorts. Yesterday she was non-stop naughty in that passive-aggressive, under-the-radar way she has. She has a smile on her face all day, even while she picks at her siblings every time my back is turned just to set them off. She looks bouncy and happy, but really its frenetic and hyper and she isn't processing a single thought, just reacting to everything. She pinches the cat, sneaks food, scatters toys everywhere, pees her pants...all this little stuff constantly happening under the surface while she bounces, with unfocused eyes, from one thing to another.
Why does she get into this state? I don't know. But once she starts spiraling it's hard to get ahold of. This morning she woke Kate up at 5:30 (a full two hours early) and then came in our room to pester us. I sent them downstairs (see result below). Later, when I asked her why she was up so early she said she couldn't sleep. Why couldn't she sleep? Her room was too hot. Why was it hot? We forgot to turn on her window AC unit last night. Ugh. Why didn't she come and tell us last night that we forgot to turn it on? She doesn't know.
This spiral is so hard. She makes bad decisions because she's physically uncomfortable and yet she won't come and ask us for help to fix the physical problem.
It always feels like a test. Like we're supposed to intuit her needs without her articulating them and fix her whole world for her as a demonstration of our love. This is a sick pattern that has destroyed many a marriage and I refuse to let her be that kind of female.
I know she's triggered by going away plus too much physical activity. But I'm not going to cut our vacation short or tell her she can't play on the beach because I believe she's getting too tired. I do make reasonable accommodations. I make sure I feed the kids really healthy meals on a regular schedule and they get lots of sleep at night. But, again, she has to learn to function within the real world and not expect us to change our whole vacation because she struggles to regulate all the sensory input.
As a special ed teacher I've seen too many parents accommodate the hell out of every environment. Their child with autism or sensory needs floats through life in a perfect bubble while their exhausted parents cease any semblance of a normal life to keep that bubble afloat. I keep thinking of the example of Temple Grandin who spoke about her mother giving her rules to follow in order to function in society and then making her follow them even when Temple didn't want to. It was incredibly difficult for both of them but in the end Temple was far better off for it.
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Update: as I was typing the above Jane came into my room announcing she was ready to talk about why she was being naughty. (She'd already been sent to her room after breakfast today for dumping out a whole box of Lucky Charms and picking out and eating all the marshmallows at 6am while I was still in bed. She also licked the marshmallows and used them like stamps to decorate Kate's arm. Okay, that was pretty funny and I wasn't mad but, still, not a habit to get into.)
So, we had a good talk. She's only 4 and truly doesn't fully understand her emotions and reactions. I prompted her by asking if going away from our house reminds her of leaving her birth mother's house. That was all I needed to say. This look of comprehension came over her face and she launched into a long, rambling speech that revealed all her anxieties while we were on vacation, plus memories of loving and missing her first mother, but feeling conflicted because she knows her first mother didn't take care of her or do what was needed to keep custody. (Obviously she didn't use these adult words and I'm paraphrasing for her.)
It's like she can't access these emotions until I open the door for her. At the same time, I can't open that door when she's in a pissy mood and spiraling frenetically from one reaction to another. So we're just kind of stuck at times.
I'm hopeful that with enough practices, and as she matures and can understand her own feelings better, we'll get through the pissy spiral sooner and be able to resolve things quicker. (Or, her teen years will be 10 long years of a nonstop pissy spiral and I'll be ready to ship her off to military school by age 16. But, I probably shouldn't dwell on my worst fears, right?)
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I also have to acknowledge that when I'm tired and emotional I don't cope well with her passive aggressive behaviors. There's something about that specific mood she's in that sets me off big time.
All kids do stupid things. I'm sure my older boys dumped out boxes of cereal. My parenting when they were little was pretty calm but also strongly consequence based. I would've made them clean up the cereal and lose access to it for a few days. I did the same thing for Kate (no more Lucky Charms for her) but underneath I'm more angry towards her than I would be toward my other children.
It's like the intention behind the action strongly influences my reaction to it. Kids doing weird or stupid things because they're curious is fine. Perfectly normal. We apply consequences to teach them, not because they've committed a big wrong. Jane doing something weird or stupid because she's secretly angry about being adopted...ugh. I don't cope well with that. I can intellectualize but I can't empathize. You're mad that I adopted you? Fine, go back then. This is a horrible thought and obviously nothing I'd ever say or do, but it is my own immature and fragile reaction to her anger.
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