Yesterday, Butterfly's school had a Veteran's Day program and were asked to invite any veterans to attend. My husband, a veteran of the Air Force, went to the program. B seemed very pleased that he was there. When I picked her up from school she was completely out of sorts. Everything was an issue. She played games with her homework, and I stuck to the rules that we had come up with. She continued screaming, yelling, hitting and throwing things as I put her in her room. At that time I found out she was upset that I didn't go to the Veteran's Day program. I explained I wasn't a veteran but she said I was a veteran to her. I tried to explain what a vet is until I realized that no amount of rationalization was going to get through to her. She then said how sad she was by a song the 4th graders sang that talked about people dying and she doesn't like that. I empathized the best I could.
She kicked the dog and tried to punch him in the snout. I ended up putting up the baby gates in the doorway of her room, as I didn't want to her to hurt the dog or myself. I sat at the kitchen table and began working on a presentation for class Thursday night. Butterfly screamed at me the entire time. I wrote down what she was saying as it was so bizarre, I wanted to be sure I remembered it correctly. She said the following:
"Don't come in here or I will hurt you. I will bite you and kick you and hit you. I will kick you in the privates. You don't want me to hurt you. One time I hurt a boy named Caleb so bad that he was screaming bloody murder. And no one knew I did it but it happened in preschool. And only his parents knew I did it and they said that it better never happen again or we couldn't play together anymore. But it happened again. I hurt him again and his parents were out of town and no one knew about it. You only know because I'm telling you. And then I threw up on him and you would throw up too if I told you the rest of the story."
I just let her get it all out. And it isn't the hurting me part I find so disturbing. It was her attitude towards the dog and the story she told. I assume it was all made up. I called her grandparents who she lived with during preschool to see if they remembered a Caleb and they do not. I think she got the name from the A Safe Place for Caleb book.
I'm just at a loss. I don't know where this all came from, and don't know what to do.
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3 comments:
Is she still in therapy? If so, run this by her therapist for sure. It may be made up, it may be things that happened TO her, or she may have just changed the name. I wouldn't discount it as made up. Kids can't just make this kind of stuff up. It all comes from stuff they've seen or experienced and they're trying to make sense of all this stuff in their heads by sharing it as stories.
My guess is that this is some either preverbal or blocked trauma stuff coming to the surface. She's wanting so bad to tell you about it, she's wanting to bad to get it out of her, but her little RADical brain just won't let her do it normally. Praise her for sharing it with you and let her know you're happy she felt safe enough to share those things with you. And then take a nice, long hot bubble bath.
Go somewhere quiet and private for five minutes (or longer if you can!) and just breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Let yourself just do this and be in the moment with your breathing. It will do wonders for your blood pressure and clearmindedness.
And, yes, if you're still with a therapist, this is the kind of thing I'd run past her/him. So great that you wrote it down.
Don't panic. Just breathe. Things will come clear, and you're going to be okay.
P.S., I am speaking to myself as much as to you with all the breathing advice...
My daughter who is 9 now used to do this when she was 5 and it was stuff she had done and was taking "inventory" of each day. She also hurt/threatened to hurt the cats. It was extremely disturbing. My son who is 10 has done stuff like this (talking) every time he gets mad and sent to his room. I think it is a mix of real and imagined experiences and I agree with Diana that is may be a mix of things. I found it helpful to write it down and then show it to him later to gauge his responses. SOmetimes he had nothing to say but other times he could actually tell me the parts that were real. I always praised him for sharing it. Hang in there.
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