All the little Things Add Up

Lately, I have been thinking about all of the little "abnormal" things Kenz does that if alone would be probably no big deal but if you add them all together then there is a definite problem. Problem being childhood bipolar, in my mind, is what I have come to conclude again. I keep coming back to this even though I can't seem to get a doctor to give her that diagnosis. I wonder if I am right all of the time. So I thought if I wrote down all the little things maybe that would give me a better picture and for those of you reading who have bipolar kids could maybe tell me if it looks similar. I am not sure if it matters if she actually gets a name to her disease, but more importantly that she gets the right medicine to help her. So here goes all of those "little" things...

One minute she can be sweet, huggy, and lovable, then the next she is angry, resentful, short, and plain ugly. Then she gets quiet and distant. This mood reminds me of my depression. She swings in and out of these moods throughout the day with the mornings always being the worst and the evenings almost always the best. When she is bored, she comes up with crazy ideas like making potions with anything she can find in the kitchen or wild art projects with huge messes that never get cleaned up. Once I caught her trying to scale the backyard wall to get into the neighbor's yard to borrow their wagon so she could pull her sister around the yard. The neighbors were not even home. I have found her playing hide-n-seek and hiding in the weirdest places like the top shelf of her sister's closet or once she tried to put her sister in the dryer to hide.

She loves to be in total control and if not, all hell breaks loose. If asked to do something she does not want to do her immediate response is always "No". Over the years when she has raged, she has thrown dinning room chairs at me, hit me, broken the windshield in our car by kicking it, kicked a lamp and broken it, punched several holes in her walls and her bedroom door, threaten to kill herself by holding a knife to her throat, threaten and run after her sister, poured water all over the floor, thrown objects across the room, kicked the dog, and much more that I cannot recall.

She has very few friends, and even those, she does not see that often. None of them go to her school. She likes to play with younger kids and wants to play with her seven year old sister's friends. She is extremely polite to adults and seems very mature to them. She gets very attached to adults who befriend her. She would rather hang out with her teachers than her peers. She hates lunch recess and the school has arranged that she goes to a younger classroom to help during that time.

She always wakes up in a horrible mood. Her language is foul when she is mad. And no matter how much we punish her, consequences do not matter to her. Or if they do not enough to change the behavior. She wants me to do everything for her including picking out her clothes and brushing her hair. If I refuse she then has an emotional breakdown. Her favorite three words are OMG and I hate you! She will not wear anything that buttons for any length of time. She wears sweat shorts and sweat pants all of the time. She does not care about what she looks like. I have to make her wash her hair. She is allowed to wear a little make-up but would rather sleep in than take the time to put make-up on. She never flushes the toliet especially at night. She say the noise scares her.

She has a lot of fear which I think has prevented her from doing even crazier things. She has a terrible fear that I am going to die-has dreams about it and hates when I leave her at home with her dad or alone. Once she said what if while you are gone, you die. When I leave she kisses me a thousand times. She has a harder time with it than her younger sister. At night she says "I love you" a billion times. And if you do not keep answering her with it back she keeps going until you do. She says the reason she does this is because if someone kidnaps her in the middle of the night then she knows that her last words will be "I love you". She throws a fit if we close the door to our bedroom. Once we closed it because she would not leave us alone and she banged and cried on it for over 30 minutes. She won't sleep in her own room if there is a thunderstorm going on.

Her eating habits are terrible. If I let her she would eat sweets and noodles all day. She hardly eats any lunch but then after everyone is in bed she sneaks food and eats quite a lot sometimes. She still has a blanket that she sucks on the corner of and she still sucks her thumb at home. She has to go to the bathroom right before we leave anywhere-even when we are out. And it is always at the last minute and she makes us wait until she does. She has to have her bedroom door closed when she leaves the house or she freaks out. She ask tons of questions and wants to know everybody's business. I cannot make a phone call without her asking who are you calling. She turns the radio up very loud and has to have complete control of it. She gets mad at her sister if she has to turn it down for her sister to talk. It got so bad with the radio that we finally just removed the chip from the car so the radio would not work. She would spend all of her time on the computer, playing hand held games, watching T.V. or listening to music if we let her. She says that it blocks out her thinking. If she is doing those things then she does not have to think or "deal". At night she has to play her hand held games before she goes to bed. She says it helps her get to sleep.

She loves to take care of her baby sister and I think that is because her sister makes her feel good and she gets to play "Mommy" but only when it is convenient for her or when she wants to. She gets ideas stuck in her head and cannot get off them. She say horrible things and then turns immediately around and denies she said them. You cannot trust her because she lies all of the time and again I think she does this so she does not have to "deal". She does not like who she is and wants to be someone different. She cries a lot about "why is she like this?"

I know all of this sounds very negative, but I needed to write it all down. Deep down there is a little girl who wants to be a healthy child and wants to be accepted and loved. We do so love her very much and we just want to get her help. We also know that God loves her so too and He has a plan. We rest in that truth.