Controlled Chaos (continued)
by Tammy Copechal-Beach
"Kalee, you have 10 minutes before we have to leave."
"Almost done, Mommy,” she'd say.
I would then busy myself with something and yell up the stairs.
"Kalee, we now have five minutes!"
"OK, Mommy."
Then, I would maybe wipe up breakfast dishes.
"Kalee, it's time to go! Kalee, where are you? We don't have time for this, Kalee!"
Most times, I would find her hiding in her closet or under the bathroom cupboard. I
would have to pick her up while she'd be screaming, "MOMMY, NO, I HATE SCHOOL! THEY ARE MEAN TO ME!"
"You have to go to school. How else are you going to learn your ABCs?" I’d ask her.
"I don't need to learn nothing, Mommy."
When we would get to the door, she would place her hands and feet on either side of it, causing me to fight to just get her through the door. The same thing happened getting her into the car. When we would finally arrive at school, it was the same process of putting her hands and feet on the car door so that I could not get her out. Then, she got smart. When I would get out of the car, she would lock the doors. That is when I started to take the key out before I got out of the car. Eventually, the guidance counselor had to meet me at my car, just to coax her into school. By the end of the school year, we were on a first-name basis. I was told she was having trouble transitioning from one place to the next. Once she was in the school building, she was fine. However, when it came time to go home, she would display the same types of resistance that she would show in the morning. This continued through kindergarten and first grade. By second grade, her behaviors seemed to have disappeared, at least in school. At home, however, things got progressively worse.
By the time she was 9, she had taken the jet ski for a little ride, told a police officer off, and turned our home into a battleground. Several times I asked her pediatrician if she could have ADHD. His comment was that she was just a “high maintenance child." I grew to hate that term. Over the years, she turned into a strongly independent, willful, determined child. At 11, she was jumping out of moving cars. When asked why she did this, with tears in her eyes, she would say, “I just couldn't sit in the back no more, Mom. I had to get out, I couldn't breathe.”
Her pediatrician finally agreed she needed to be evaluated. Western Psychiatric Institute of Pittsburgh diagnosed Kalee with Bipolar Two Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder when she was 12. BP Two is also called Rapid Cycling BPD, which means severe mood swings all the time. Kalee can go from happy to extreme aggression in a matter of seconds. Add ADHD on top of that, and that’s one irritable child. I also feel that she has selective mild colloquial Tourette’s syndrome, because she has a bad habit of saying inappropriate words at random, and sometimes not so random, times. When she is stressed or nervous, she also has facial twitches. Our family had been diagnosed with a disability.
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