Dilly-Dally is a runner. I am dreading to see what she is like when she is fifteen or sixteen. Keep in mind I work with students who may be considered troubled. I have one who has just been recovered after a run-away situation. And, while these children are near and dear to my heart, it's nothing compared to when it's your own.
Last night we were shopping for school clothes with Project Schoolbell, a program through a local assistance league. Everything was going well; Daddy grabbed DD and went with her to pick out clothes. It was a special time between them.
Then, things took a turn for the worst.
At one point she started becoming oppositional. She was sitting in the hallway of the fitting room, making it difficult for others to walk around her. We asked several times to stand up so others could get by. She refused. Next thing we know, she is gone. Just gone. If you've ever had an ADHD child, you know that it's similar to raising a perpetual 2 year old sometimes- turn your back for just a moment...
Now, I don't want to sound like I'm being hard on her. But it's just the way it is. She runs off at the drop of a hat. Literally. Thirty minutes and a sound heart attack later, we find her in the housewares section. Like a little frightened bunny. She began to back away from me, and when she does that I always find myself assuming that she thinks she's in trouble and she's trying to get away.
This morning she describes a different situation. She tells me that in the middle of the store she suddenly had a panic attack. She told me it was kind of like an out of body experience. Afraid that every person around her was out to kidnap her, she flees. Flight or fight response- she chooses flight. Even as I come up to her, she could barely recognize me as mom. She found herself questioning my existence, or if I was just another stranger out to kidnap her.
Approximately 5% to 10% of children in the general population struggle with anxiety disorders. Among children with ADHD, the rate appears to be even greater. A first step in helping a child manage and overcome anxiety is recognizing it, and sometimes this can be difficult. Anxious kids can also be rather quiet, shy, cautious and withdrawn. They may be very compliant and eager to please adults. On the other hand, an anxious child may “act out” with tantrums, crying, avoidance and disobedience. These behaviors may be misinterpreted as oppositional and “difficult” when they are actually anxiety related. "Anxiety in Children" http://add.about.com/od/relatedconditions/a/Anxiety-in-Children.htmOnce I finally got to her, all she could repeat was "I want to go home." No matter how much I told her that we would go but I had to check out with her clothes if she wanted them, she just kept repeating it. I feel so badly, I find myself having to learn how to trust her word again. She makes up stories so often- but this, this makes sense.
When we first moved into the house we are living in now, she was petrified to go upstairs by herself. She needed the light on at night when she slept, because otherwise she was too scared. It got to the point that you couldn't leave her in the next room alone without her panicking. Why? She had convinced herself that our house was home to a ghost, Cassie, a little girl about 13 dressed in Victorian clothing. True, unexplainable events started happening right after we moved in, but now that we've lived there now for nine months those things have long stopped. She now has no issues about moving through the house. She finds the need to sleep with me at night, especially if for some reason daddy isn't home. She quite honestly would sleep with me every night if she could. She has also stood on top of toilet seats hiding at school to avoid going to a certain "special" I've been informed by the school counselor.
I wonder just how early one can spot anxiety symptoms in children? Could they even experience it as babies? Dilly-Dally lost body heat right after she was born, so the nurse asked if I wanted to put her under the heat lamp or try skin-to-skin. I chose the skin-to-skin method (placing her body sans-clothes against mine, and then I placed a blanket over both of us). After several hours of sleeping like this (she was a night baby, born just before eleven at night), about six the nurse comes in and discovers that the skin contact wasn't working, and we put her under the heat lamp until around 11 a.m. For the next two weeks, DD refused to sleep ANYWHERE but against my chest. Try as we might to lay her down other places, it would wake her up. She also would refuse to sleep on her back in her crib. After many, many, many attempts to lay her down on her back per Back to Sleep guidelines, one day this overly exhausted mommy broke down and placed her on her tummy (NO comments please on what a terrible mother I am because I laid her on her tummy, I got enough of that from my pediatrician when I confessed my terrible "sin". Okay, not really, but he did his duty to inform me of how unsafe that position was...). She stayed asleep that way for TWO HOURS! It was the longest nap she had taken to date! I was the anxious mommy that time, constantly checking on her to be sure she was still breathing... Could these have all been early signs of an anxious child?
As more and more things come to light, I just feel more and more overprotective of my little girl...my baby.
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