How Do You Know If Your Child Is Lying?

Answer: Her mouth is open.

 I remember the first time I heard this "joke". Cheyann's respite provider shared it with me one day when I was feeling particularly discouraged about her ongoing inability to be truthful. Miss Goldie knew what she was talking about. She had adopted a young girl with Reactive Attachment Disorder herself and had lots of experience with this particular challenge. Back then I felt like it was a funny exaggeration. Lately - not so much.

Lynn has been on the waitlist for Driver's Ed for almost a year now and her number finally came up. Her first class was yesterday. She came home talking details about the class and I assumed all was good, but today I received the message that she never actually showed up. She SWEARS she was in the room, just in the back where nobody could see her - but not only did she not sign the check- in form, she didn't pick up her folder either, and to top it all off a teacher saw her at a local restaurant in town during Drivers Ed time, but even with all of that information presented, she still maintains her story.

A few hours after chatting with the school team about that situation this morning I received an email from my mom. Over the weekend Lynn told her grandmother that she had never actually received her birthday card with check that MaMa sent her, so a replacement $20 was given. Somehow that missing $20 was cashed last week (when I was on vacation) and so Lynn ended up receiving it twice. The $20 sent by her Aunt for her birthday was also mysteriously 'stolen' from her at school and the $20 I took for myself for spending money for the weekend also mysteriously disappeared from my wallet. Naturally she knows nothing about any of that.

Exhausting.

Fill Your Own Cup?

I love to travel. It really is one of my favorite things to do in life and the one activity almost guaranteed to provide me with much needed rest and relaxation. And - every good  therapist is sure to remind those of us who are tasked with the job of raising traumatized kiddos that we have to make sure we fill our own cups so we are able to do the best parenting job we can do, right?  So, with all of that in mind I have been very mindful over the last few years to be sure to include on my schedule at least one good vacation trip. The problem is, my vacations inevitably trigger severe attachment-related behavioral reactions in Lynn. The last time I went away on a short vacation was the time she disappeared and ran away to her bio mom's house. This time, I returned, from a wonderful cruise in the Caribbean,  to a 1am knock on the door from our local police officers who were asked to make a well-child check on Lynn due to some suicidal ideation activity on her Snapchat. As I dug into that some more I found out that not only had she expressed interest in drinking a bottle of cough syrup, she also had shared with a young man she met at a church dance that if he told anyone that she tried to kiss him that she would kill herself and sent him pictures of slashed wrists (not hers) to prove it. She was able to tell me that she felt really depressed and did wonder how much medicine she needed to take so she didn't have to wake up in the morning.  We spent some time on the phone with Crisis, played with the idea of a residential treatment stay, and then checked in with her full team who had varying degrees of concern. The result: no real action or changes,  and now that I have been home for a week, she is re-regulated and back to "normal". So, yes, we do need to fill our cups, but sometimes I wonder if it's worth the drama upon the return....