Wow about kids under age six on psychiatric drugs. Something very awful happened to my daughter when she was five. She had some therapy at the time and returned to therapy around age 9. When she was about ten, her therapist suggested she consult with a psychiatrist to be put on psychaitric medication. I made an appointment to explore medication but talked things over with my daughter. Neither of us felt called to have her take psychotropics. The meds recommendation was rooted in her fairly significant OCD, which seemed rooted in anxiety to me; additionally, her father was and, I am sure, still is very intensely OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Katie had to check the doors at night to be sure they were locked dozens of times each night, wash her hands until raw.
So we went for the appointment and had a short wait. The waiting room was dirty, which struck me as odd for a shrink who claimed to specialize in OCD. Before he came out, my daughter and I discussed in that lobby how we were just exploring, that it was very unlikely we'd follow any advice to take a prescription drug for OCD. Then the very big, fat doctor came out, reeking of the cigarette he had obviously just smoked. I see, as I reflect on that appointment, that I might have been trying to allay her significant anxiety about seeing a new doc. The cigarette smell was enough to have my daughter flee but then he had the unbelievable temerity to grab her up off the floor in a big, smelly-cigarette hug. She looked over at me at the top of his lifting hug and silently mouth "please mommy". So when he had put her down, I took her hand, told that guy we would not be needing our appointment.
I still think medicating a child for what was, in our situation, a significant anxiety disorder. She later did self-harming, picking at both her thumbs until the skin was worn off and the thumbs so raw it hurt to look at them. Still, I did not endorse psychotropic meds. Then she became seriously anorexic, collapsing from her self starving, developing heart problems. We learned in family group therapy for anorexic that every single anorexic we ever met was also OCD, also a perfectionist in everything, also a star student/top achiever.
I talked, a bit, with my daughter's Waldorf teacher about her challenges, even after she had moved on to h.s. for she loved him dearly and he loved her. He once told me, while acknowledging he should never say such a thing to any parent, that she was his favorite student in her class.
She was hospitalized for several weeks and then in all-day day treatment the rest of that summer.
I wish I could stop trying to remember as many details of her life with me as I can. I spelunk in my memories hoping to uncover the key to understanding why she has shunned me since she was 19. what did I do?
When she started seeing the therapist that referred her for a psychotropic med evaluation, the one we fled together, she said she would only see a therapist if I agreed that I would never talk to that therapist about her therapy, never ask him what went on in their sessions. She knew, as lawyer I knew, that the therapist had to make his files about her available to me as her guardian and that I could have met with him regularly to find out what they were doing. Instead, I engaged in an act of great love and faith in my daughter. I decided that if the only way she would confide in a trustworthy adult -- keep in mind I know what some of her damage was about, damage I would never write about openly -- then I would agree to her demand. I did talk to that guy once, at his insistence, so he could take her social history. This is a standard practice for therapists treating kids, I think. In that social history interview, which was the only time I ever talked to the guy except to say hello and goodbye when I took her to his office for her sessions with him, I told him about the incident. He told me she had not mentioned it. And I don't think she did. I think after she had been seeing him for quite awhile, he brought up what I had told him. And she became furious with me, raging that I had made up the story I told him.
Even now, I wish I could convince myself I made it up. Several professionals had to pound it into me that what happened happened, that I had to bear up and take care of my child instead of, which was my first and common instinct in such circumstances, to just wish it all away. I was yelled at by multiple professionals when they realized I intended to honor her visitation with her father.
Anyway, I am getting too close to what happened.
After she had left home, at sixteen, for college, I moved to go to grad school. I had been accepted into a more prestigious program than the one I attended but since my daughter had spent the entire summer in full time treatment for anorexia, I chose a program a few hours away from her college - not close to her but not across the country, as I would otherwise have been. That choice has cost me, giving me less gravitas in my work. I never told her about it. She, in fact, angrily confronted me about moving to the east coast -- but hours from her college -- as 'following her'. She demanded, in a joint session with her eating disorder therapist (once she entered the land of eating disorders, she had to change therapists. . ) that I stay in Minneapolis. I told her that I had been making choices with her as the top priority all her life but she was headed to college and I would make my choices based on what I want and need, not making her my top priority.
She hated me back then. When she was at her first college, if I sent her one email in a month, she would call me up and angrily screech at me about intruding on her life, as if a parent staying in touch with a child was not normal. I note she did not complain when I sent her money but if I sent her a letter, this all before the ubiquity of online communication, she would also call me up and verbally attack me.
What did I do? What the fuck did I do? Is she, like her gather, a malignant narcissist? She has his OCD, why not his narcissim. How could she take take take from me and then shun me once, like Shel Silverstein's giving tree, I had no more money or stuff to give her? How can she live with how she treats her mother? Who is she?
When she learned from the therapist who referred her first for psychotropic mediation and then for anorexia treatment knew about the incident, she was so angry. She screamed at me about it many times, insisting I had planted the whole thing in her mind. As if I would do something so cruel to my beloved child. Paul, the therapist I had agreed not to consult about her treatment, told me, as I picked up her file for the anorexia folks, that child predators count on children's memories going fuzzy, count on having the abuse forgotten. It hurts to remember and it feel better to forget, he said. And he also said he never believed she would take her self starving as far as she did, that he kept expecting her, as we both, in our own ways from different perches, watched her shrink away, that she'd start eating again.
Her pediatrician said the same thing to me, that he was surprised she took it so far.
She was hospitalized for several weeks and then in all-day day treatment the rest of that summer.
I wish I could stop trying to remember as many details of her life with me as I can. I spelunk in my memories hoping to uncover the key to understanding why she has shunned me since she was 19. what did I do?
When she started seeing the therapist that referred her for a psychotropic med evaluation, the one we fled together, she said she would only see a therapist if I agreed that I would never talk to that therapist about her therapy, never ask him what went on in their sessions. She knew, as lawyer I knew, that the therapist had to make his files about her available to me as her guardian and that I could have met with him regularly to find out what they were doing. Instead, I engaged in an act of great love and faith in my daughter. I decided that if the only way she would confide in a trustworthy adult -- keep in mind I know what some of her damage was about, damage I would never write about openly -- then I would agree to her demand. I did talk to that guy once, at his insistence, so he could take her social history. This is a standard practice for therapists treating kids, I think. In that social history interview, which was the only time I ever talked to the guy except to say hello and goodbye when I took her to his office for her sessions with him, I told him about the incident. He told me she had not mentioned it. And I don't think she did. I think after she had been seeing him for quite awhile, he brought up what I had told him. And she became furious with me, raging that I had made up the story I told him.
Even now, I wish I could convince myself I made it up. Several professionals had to pound it into me that what happened happened, that I had to bear up and take care of my child instead of, which was my first and common instinct in such circumstances, to just wish it all away. I was yelled at by multiple professionals when they realized I intended to honor her visitation with her father.
Anyway, I am getting too close to what happened.
After she had left home, at sixteen, for college, I moved to go to grad school. I had been accepted into a more prestigious program than the one I attended but since my daughter had spent the entire summer in full time treatment for anorexia, I chose a program a few hours away from her college - not close to her but not across the country, as I would otherwise have been. That choice has cost me, giving me less gravitas in my work. I never told her about it. She, in fact, angrily confronted me about moving to the east coast -- but hours from her college -- as 'following her'. She demanded, in a joint session with her eating disorder therapist (once she entered the land of eating disorders, she had to change therapists. . ) that I stay in Minneapolis. I told her that I had been making choices with her as the top priority all her life but she was headed to college and I would make my choices based on what I want and need, not making her my top priority.
She hated me back then. When she was at her first college, if I sent her one email in a month, she would call me up and angrily screech at me about intruding on her life, as if a parent staying in touch with a child was not normal. I note she did not complain when I sent her money but if I sent her a letter, this all before the ubiquity of online communication, she would also call me up and verbally attack me.
What did I do? What the fuck did I do? Is she, like her gather, a malignant narcissist? She has his OCD, why not his narcissim. How could she take take take from me and then shun me once, like Shel Silverstein's giving tree, I had no more money or stuff to give her? How can she live with how she treats her mother? Who is she?
When she learned from the therapist who referred her first for psychotropic mediation and then for anorexia treatment knew about the incident, she was so angry. She screamed at me about it many times, insisting I had planted the whole thing in her mind. As if I would do something so cruel to my beloved child. Paul, the therapist I had agreed not to consult about her treatment, told me, as I picked up her file for the anorexia folks, that child predators count on children's memories going fuzzy, count on having the abuse forgotten. It hurts to remember and it feel better to forget, he said. And he also said he never believed she would take her self starving as far as she did, that he kept expecting her, as we both, in our own ways from different perches, watched her shrink away, that she'd start eating again.
Her pediatrician said the same thing to me, that he was surprised she took it so far.
I don't think I was a bad mother but it is hard not to beat myself up for being one.
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