I Have a Difficult Child

Nearly every time I talk to other mothers about the difficulties (tortures?) of motherhood, someone says, "But your girls are great! You're doing a great job!" Either they are trying to make me feel better, or they actually believe that I am, in fact, doing a great job.  "Some days." I always answer. "I don't exactly advertise the bad times."  Bad moments like last night, when I was in bed, plotting (gleefully, a little bit, I'll admit it), how I was going to break it to my youngest FIRST THING IN THE MORNING that I was giving her up for adoption because I just could not take her anymore.  More on this later.


I have two daughters who are almost exact polar opposites.  My oldest came out of the womb with a conciliatory smile on her little fat face.  When she was an infant she only cried when she had thrush or just to get my attention if I had forgotten to feed her for too many hours straight.  When she was just a year old, I used to take her to the grocery store in the middle of the day, when the elderly people were likely to be there, so she could walk around, holding their hands, talking to them as they shopped.  When she was three she made up a batch of "business cards" that were supposed to say, "I'm Delaney and I would like to be your friend.  Would you like to have a sleep over at my house?" (they really said squiggle squiggle.  Squiggle squiggle.) which she would carry around in her purse and hand out to people in parking lots.

And then there is my current youngest soon to be middle child.  Who came out of the womb with the figurative two middle fingers flying.  She could care less if the world likes her.  In fact, she seems mind boggled by the fact that her sister would continuously waste her time on something so annoying as friends.  Shudder.  I don't have many memories of my youngest daughter's babyhood.  I'm always surprised when other mothers say that, but now I know it's secret code for "I don't want to remember."  I remember big moments.  Like when we spent $15,000 having her tested at the children's hospital because, as I remember saying, "SOMETHING has to be wrong with her."  Not so much.  Their big diagnosis was that she knew far more words than she was capable of saying.  THAT EXPLAINS IT.  I would be seriously pissed, too, if I knew words I couldn't say.  Except then she did say them, and yet, well, she remained difficult. (I can't so much qualify difficult without this turning into a book length blog post except to say it was something like this:  when she was four I signed her up for soccer camp for three hours a day for a week.  That first day I dropped her off I cried on the way home, I was so grateful, grateful, grateful, to be without her for three hours.  An hour later the camp called and told me to come get her.  She had hit another child (who just so happened to be recovering from brain surgery) in the head with a water bottle.  Why the hell would you send your brain surgery kid to SOCCER CAMP? I asked?  This, as I will get to later, is part of my second daughter's problem.  AKA me).

Next up, I started to do research on the effects of steroids on children.  She had been given steroids off and on since her babyhood for severe allergies and skin conditions.  My GOD, it was the steroids.  What I had on my hands was a toddler with 'roid rage.  NO WONDER SHE WAS SO PISSED ALL THE TIME!  We were lucky she hadn't killed anyone.  Problem solved.  Except she's been off the steroids (except for a few extreme cases) for four years.   And, yet.


So I did what any mother would do, and I signed her up for a child psychologist.  And we spent six months making cookies, playing, and learning to eat goldfish crackers one by one (the doctor was convinced that the choroid plexus cysts my daughter had in her brain in the womb and at birth had likely slowed her development, causing a need for a re-learning of the basic physical tasks of babyhood.  In other words, my daughter was pissed because, well, honestly, I still don't really understand the connections between goldfish crackers and rage, but they're real, friends).  After six months of therapy I was poorer, my daughter wasn't any "better," and I suddenly realized that only a fucking idiot would eat goldfish crackers one by one, and all the fights and "practice" we'd done at home wasn't going to change that very basic fact.  Goldfish crackers are MEANT to be eaten by the fist full, and that therapist was fired.

I decided my daughter was going to be who she was going to be and what was REALLY needed was for ME to go to therapy.  Because, if nothing else, this was an entire hour all to myself.  And it did help.  My therapist reminded me repeatedly that children under five are often best treated simply through treatment of their mothers (yes, it pisses me off, too.  I love how dads just have to SHOW UP and they are fucking heroes.  Not in my house.  There are no heroes in my house.).  Therapy really did make things better.  For me.  I was no longer in despair (yay, antidepressants), and I came to realize that if I had to.  If I REALLY REALLY had to, I could live with my daughter the way she was and not kill either one of us.  And there I left it for two years.  Yes, she often makes me miserable.  But if it makes her happy, I shall pierce myself on the sword of miserable, and there we go.  Motherhood.

But I know I let her get away with murder.  Because I didn't love her enough when she was a baby. Because it's really fucking hard to love someone who won't stop screaming. Turns out that, despite my desire and penchant for toughness, I'm actually a sucker.  When her older sister says, "I'll just clean the whole room by myself" I usually give in.  The older one is working for a cell phone, plus, I know from my own experience, if I have a choice between cleaning while listening to the screaming wails of my youngest OR letting her play on the computer while I clean, well, I'll just clean by myself thank you very much (that's right-- this is it, the moment when I recognize and tell you that I'm probably, OK definitely, her biggest problem).  I will brush her hair, stand in the bathroom while she showers, allow her NOT to brush her hair occasionally, let her get out of chores, homework, basic human cleanliness because IF IT MAKES HER HAPPY BRING ON THE FUCKING SWORD OF MISERABLENESS.

Except.  Of course there's an except.  When I took her to her most recent check up and mentioned (in very vague terms) that she's still very unreasonable and seems to struggle maintaining friendships (or, in plain words, even really giving a rat's ass), the doctor had a conversation with my daughter.  And in that conversation my daughter told the doctor that "Sometimes I want to die.  I don't understand, and I don't want to get yelled at, so sometimes I would just rather die."  And of course I cried.  Because of what she said but also because, OF COURSE SHE'S NOT HAPPY you fucking moron.  Throw yourself on the sword just for general amusement.  Because of course she's not happy.  So, we scheduled for a new therapist, and we wait, hoping this one will have a better plan than one fish two fish.

Which leads me to last night, which of course I now feel horribly guilty about (I've somehow convinced myself over the years that mothers even have to feel guilty about how they feel EVEN IF NO ONE ELSE KNOWS).  I was in bed, just asleep.  Pregnancy has brought with it atrocious leg cramps that are only cured through sleep. And my youngest had to take a shower.  The screamingest, most painful, loud, screechingest shower in shower history (for the world.  For her it was normal), and she woke me up.  And as I lay there listening to her scream and her dad threaten and her scream and her dad threaten I got angrier and angrier.  A few weeks ago I said to my sister, apropos of little else, "you think I don't pray to GOD every day that this baby isn't another one?" (which I don't.  OK, I do.  But not every day).  Last night as I listened to my current youngest scream (about nothing.  Sometimes she just likes to scream.  There was no soap in her eyes, nor was there a giant spider attacking her.  She just doesn't like to wash her hair) and got angrier and angrier, the thought popped into my head: "you are ruining my life."  And then I got even ANGRIER and I thought, "that's it.  I've had enough.  I'M GIVING HER UP FOR ADOPTION. And first thing in the morning I am going to TELL HER I'm giving her up for adoption.  TAKE THAT, KID." And then I started to cry because, A. I love her, and I don't really want to give her up for adoption.  B. I'm not sure who would take her.  She's, let's just say, burned some bridges.  The only way I calmed myself down was to do deep breathing and pull a Scarlett O'Hara and vow to think about it in the morning.

And, of course, by morning I had realized you probably shouldn't tell nine and a half, almost ten year olds that they are so bad you are giving them up for adoption.  But what I did tell her was this: You cannot act like that.  You need to be more reasonable.  Being reasonable is not going to be any more difficult, nor is it going to make your life any less fun.  And she was reasonable this morning.  Mostly, I think, from exhaustion.  She had a late night of screaming. I have no illusions any more.  We see the new psychiatrist Saturday.  I'll bring the goldfish crackers.

And I acknowledge that this blog post is not over.  That, in fact, this blog post would only cover it all if it were a book.  Or a few weeks under constant surveillance by psychiatric staff who just kept telling me to talk through the pain.  And if I were to go on I'd point to this: my older daughter ain't no angel.  Let yesterday be evidence, when she spent the three dollars I gave her to pay her library fine on baked goods.  "Accidentally."  I often worry that her desire to be loved will lead her to very, very bad places.  And in those moments I feel relieved because, as many worries as I have about my current youngest, fear that she will be led into anything she doesn't want to do isn't one of them. And I would probably talk about how we're having another one.  Not just another human-- another girl.  Many years of fears and refusals, and somehow I got to a place where I thought it might, just might, be OK.  And maybe it will be.  But somehow I doubt it.