January 15, 2002
I started looking up stuff on post-traumatic stress syndrome this morning because we had a horrible night with Russell. I about flipped when I read the following:
Children 6 to 11 years old may show extreme withdrawal, disruptive behavior, and/or inability to pay attention. Regressive behaviors, nightmares, sleep problems, irrational fears, irritability, refusal to attend school, outbursts of anger and fighting are also common in traumatized children of this age. Also the child may complain of stomachaches or other bodily symptoms that have no medical basis. Schoolwork often suffers. Depression, anxiety, feelings of guilt and emotional numbing or "flatness" are often present as well.
Source
Yup, that pretty well covers the range of experiences we've been contending with. I think he's had everything except the bodily symptoms, although he may well come up with that later.
Sigh.
All I know is that I am at the end of my rope. He isn't improving, though, as Mike pointed out, we've only had the one appointment so far. We had something during the holidays but I flubbed the date. I wrote on the calendar it was a week later than it was.
I about ripped out all my hair last night. I actually went into his room to look around and he had taken all the brand new, expensive clothing he had gotten for Christmas from his grandma and it was in a heap in the bottom of his closet. His Christmas clothing was kept company by clothing which I recently washed and folded and sent him upstairs with and asked him to hang up. This was after we went through a knockdown drag-out about whether I'd washed his Cub Scout uniform. Whether or not I had washed it was a moot point because he obviously ignored my requests to hang things up (including his washed uniform), which meant that nothing was where it was supposed to be and he was screaming at us about not being able to find his uniform, which he found in a heap on his bureau.
The screaming part...amazingly enough did not go over well. He is now grounded through the weekend.
The thing that is most frustrating about all of this is that I find myself screaming back. I think one of us needs drugs because I can't live like this any more. Every time I ask him to do anything...the simplest of chores, it's a knockdown drag-out fight to the death. I hate to be around him. I hate to listen to his incessant whining. In fact, I hate him. The only thing that shows me that I love him right now is the fact that he's still in my house and the fact that I am this enraged by him. You don't get pissed off at the mailman -- only the people you love.
Knowing all this, doesn't stop the tears I cry in my sleep or even the ones that are falling down my face now. Knowing he is suffering only makes them thicker. Knowing that I am such an ineffective parent in the face of post-traumatic stress syndrome -- an experience I know intimately after years of abuse and rape -- is just plain depressing.
I know I am doing the right thing...setting limits, sticking by them. He's got til Thursday to clean his room and if it's not cleaned up properly, I send the gal who comes to clean in there with garbage bags to haul crap out of there. He's been given fair notice and when I suggested to him that he clean this morning, after he got ready, he already started to argue with me.
Sigh.
If he chooses not to clean, I'm hauling it all to the dump. He'll simply come home to empty shelves. That should keep the overstimulation to a dull scream.
In the story he wrote for the counselor, he said that at the moment of the molestation, he was insane.
I think he still is.
I know I am.
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