Phone rings.
Girlfriend shares how my little RADish blatantly disobeyed me.
She's a good friend.
She shares it with no condemnation. No shame.
With kindness, reminding me that the Lord is faithful to reveal all sin.
She knows I don't actually care about the issue.
She knows I care much more about the distance between my heart and my daughter's heart.
She tells me to do what I want with the information.
After a very long week of pee on my floor, ignoring my voice, making a mess of her lessons and generally stirring up strife in our home, I decide to see what I can elicit with this information.
In other words TORTURE her!!! I don't mean for it to sound so fun. . .
She doesn't know who I just got off the phone with or what was said.
I simply say, "Well, bummer! That was such a disappointing phone call. Now I know that you are trying to hide from Mommy. But the Lord is faithful to reveal sin. He loves you that much! that He would let me know about even the secret things so we can deal with them and help your heart get stronger. I want you to come and sit right near me as I make dinner. I want to give you some time to think about your choices. I hope you will choose tell me what you are hiding from me."
(now insert tears, whining, carrying on and me smiling and telling her I know you can use your words!)
she is a twisted mess right now. I know she is dying trying to figure out which hidden thing I now know about. She would rather die than give up this control.
So I'll wait.
She is healing enough now that it won't be long. Maybe not tonight, but not long.
I know she will choose us.
And her choosing to tell me---to trust me---will be 1000x better than me coming down on her for an incident that doesn't really matter
always choose the heart, ladies. always choose the heart.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Torturing a RADish
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8 comments:
I love it. Thank you. HUGE thank you. Please keep posting. God is using these specific examples to encourage Andy and I so much. It is so tempting to deal with the behavioral issue at hand and overlook the heart sometimes. Especially when you are tired. And the same issue pops up over, and over, and over, and over (you get thd point :) again.
I have just started reading this blog and I tell you it is what I have needed. I don't have a lot of time to read because my daughter with RAD controls everything including the limited computer time I give myself. Phone calls are OUT of the question. We have been without real help for the two years that she has been a part of our family and I'm a little weary and most times react the wrong way to most things. :( She just turned 4 this week and it feels like she turned 14. All this to say thank you for this blog and I hope to find things that I can try that might make a more peaceful home even when she is causing chaos in our home.
April,
We are so happy you found us. Sometimes it helps just knowing that
you are not alone.
Blessings,
Dawn
Thanks Dawn! Satan does not want me to be on this blog I'm thinking. My computer completely crashed right after I posted the comment. While waiting for it to be fixed I decided to turn on the laptop and that hard drive was broken. lol Okay, so never have we had a computer totally crash, but two in one day??? Crazy. Now that I'm back up and running I will be going through older post!
Yes, it does help to know I'm not alone. We finally have an attachment therapist in town so we were very excited to have a resource here, but alas she doesn't seem to think the same way as we do. She called my daughter a jerk (not to her thankfully), but said she is four and all four year olds are jerks you just have a double jerk!
Anyway, you don't have to publish this comment...I understand I just needed to vent a little.
Blessings,
April
Hi April-so glad you found us. :)
Just my two cents, but I would fire anyone that talked about my child that way. Walking this road is hard enough without advocates and people on your team wanting your child's best.
~Cate
Thanks Cate! I have really been struggling with it since last Friday. We have been working with a WONDERFUL Christian attachment therapist via phone and one home visit for the last 1.5 years. The distance between Washington state and Michigan is a little much and the fact that we can only talk to him once every couple months. But I think we might just keep working with him. Eliana is pre-verbal so it is more for us at this point and trying to help her.
Thanks for your two cents...we appreciate it.
Blessings, April
Pee on your floor?! I want to cry because this is one of the most disgusting and disturbing ways of retaliating that our son has come up with and we've felt helpless against it since he thought it up. So much of what we deal with feels like dirty secrets because how can you explain something like that to someone? The isolation and struggle to deflect the constant judgment of others is so depressing. Thank you for putting yourself out there via this blog.
Anon-yes! it is the worst. We've now gotten to the point where she'll jump and scream and carry on like I'm keeping the bathroom from her. I'll just quietly say, thank you for letting me know you'd like to clean my floors. :) It is the worst.
Vinegar helps.
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