She Is Not a Duck, part 2

A Mother’s Journey into the world of Mental Health and Spectrum Disorder Challenges

She was a beautiful toddler, really. Her long thick dark brown hair, with eyelashes to envy, surrounded her large brown eyes. Those magical eyes turned to iridescent green when she cried. They were green too often.

In a moment of quiet, I would catch her profile and I would feel hope wash through me. We can do this. Today will be a good day. I just knew it. She was so innocent and loving. Her child-like beauty swelled my heart.

Sadly, we simply can’t know what we don’t know. I had not been a mother for much more than 5 years when I sensed, like being hit with a ton of bricks, that I was out of my element.

It started with subtleties. Little red flags can look like poppies in a field.

She would make us wait for her while she continually put her socks on, took them off, put them back on, repeating until the seams on the toes were perfect to her. Initially, I marveled at her meticulous tendencies for a four-year-old. It didn’t take long for this admiration to turn to frustration. I would seethe with what I deemed to be her need to control a family of five. I was the matriarch; did she really believe she could take my role?

She couldn’t have any tags on clothing, no turtlenecks, nothing decorative was acceptable to her. Silky materials were her favorite. Everything had to be the same at all times. For her, change was bad. She would defiantly wait for laundry to be done to wear the same outfit from the day before.

I am not a weak person. Some battles were easier to avoid, however. Big mistake on my part. I became her laundry bitch. Fresh clothes, at the ready, so if she was ‘stuck’ for a few days and needed to wear the same outfit, so be it. I had two other kids, a husband, and a job to balance. I was picking and choosing the battles to keep an even keel wherever I desperately was able.

The ultimate dreaded days, for me, involved an invite to a birthday party. No matter how much I explained there was a start time and an end time she would run, hide and cry, when the party was over. I hated when the families had large back yards. To find my daughter, it would take high volume calling her name, looking behind bushes, and then an interminably long trek to the car. There would be the classic pulling her by the arm, cajoling, gritting my teeth, and giving the well-known Mom evil eye.

A few times, I swear I saw the other parents peeking from behind drapes to watch my sub-standard parenting.

My God, I was embarrassed every time. Beyond embarrassed, I was mortified. I would take so much time preparing Sarah for the routine, reminding her, and coaching her days before, on how this would work. I would repeat, again and again, that a party has a beginning and an end. I learned to plant seeds. When it seemed not to make a difference I would become angry.

Anger started at my wasted efforts, and then I was angry at her for not understanding. Worse, I knew she understood. Sarah was smart as a whip. Why did she play these games with me?

I had no idea that this was just the tip of the iceberg.

I was angry that the other moms were looking at me with mixed reactions, from sympathy to judgment. I didn’t want them to look at me, at all. Couldn’t I just blend in? I wanted to disappear, quite frankly. I wanted to be normal.

The bigger Sarah got, the more embarrassing her tirades became. She simply wasn’t growing out of it. My husband and I joked that she lived in Peter Pan's world and she had no desire to grow up. But, it wasn’t funny.

Secretly, I wanted it to stop.

I would finally get her home and both of us would be exhausted. The mental drain for me may have blinded me to her underlying conditions.

She was in 4th grade when our lives started to slowly but dramatically change. She was a strong student, an avid reader, and had a keen sense of humor. She loved performing in plays and frequently would stage one-man shows for us in our basement. She had nice friends and got along with everyone.

I blamed myself for her behaviors in our home. It had to be me. If I tried to tell my friends how her behaviors were disruptive and unusual, they would dismiss my concerns. “She’s so sweet and such a nice girl. Don’t be so hard on poor Sarah.”

I was horribly alone with my thoughts and fears. No one could hear me.

She didn’t exhibit those same bizarre meltdowns in public often enough. People just didn’t see what I saw. Somehow, she was able to quell her emotional swings in school.

Until she couldn’t.

Enter an angel. She was dressed as a teacher. Sarah’s 4th-grade teacher.

I didn’t recognize her as an angel, until much later, but I believe she shortened our hell. She came to me, in the form of a requested conference. Her quiet, yet emphatic words, confirmed to me that something more was brewing deep inside my daughter.

Finally, Sarah had started to reveal herself to others.

The teacher said she’s not a doctor and certainly wouldn’t leap to a diagnosis, but Sarah had started exhibiting some behaviors, in the classroom, that was unusual for her. She was becoming quite bossy, half attempting her work and extraordinarily preoccupied with everyone else’s business. Sarah had begun to try and control the classroom and was thwarting everyone’s education as a result. She was losing friends. It was all I needed to confirm that I wasn’t imagining things.

She made mention of having seen similar behaviors from her students with ADD and ADHD. Convinced that these were ‘trash can’ diagnoses, and way overused in the early 2000s, I half-listened. However, something was awry and I made a much-needed appointment with the pediatrician for the next week.

We didn’t make it that long.

A couple of days later, the morning preparations for school were filled with struggles, shouting from all of us, and heightened upheaval. I am sweating by the time we get in the car. Sarah could only be likened to a sobbing Tasmanian devil. I am ready to crumble but I have a task at hand.

I have made a decision that we were going to survive this hell.

When we pulled up to the front of the school, I asked my oldest daughter to go ahead in. I lied to Sarah and told her she didn’t have to go to school that day and to stay buckled. I drove straight to the pediatrician.

I explained to the Nurse that we would sit in the office until we could see the doctor. I didn’t care that they were fully booked. There was no turning back. Fighting back my own tears and with my shaking voice, I stood firm that we cannot possibly leave, and we would stay. Sarah’s face, swollen and red, was still streaked with tears.

We camped out and waited. She chose a chair far away from me and her head was slumped. She folded her arms across her chest and was off-kilter because this had never happened before. Those now black eyes were draped with her hair in front of them.

And then, the words I had been waiting for, “The doctor can see you, now.”

• Thank you for joining the second in my series. We will travel through the hallways of the psychiatric world, the school system, and our family dynamics. I look forward to sharing more and hope you will see that none of us are alone.