A disasterous day recovered!

This morning was shitty. Icky humid weather changes have made my allergies scream, and I have been in that cloudy-headachey-fog for days now. While hauling out my trash, it spilled all over the place, and cleaning it up was no easy task. It started pouring at that moment, and I thought at 10 AM this morning, that I would call it a day and go back to bed. But no, I had an 11:00 meeting with a statistics consultant and HAD to be there. I sped to campus only to be waylaid by Dr. Elkins, and finally Helen and I showed up to our meeting.

The tide began to turn. The stats people were really enthusiastic about my dissertation and communicated their confidence that the analysis portion would be straightforward, even easy to accomplish. And they're gonna do that part for me! Helen and I got the confirmation from them that we designed a great study. Now let's hope the results turn out.

I celebrated at Camille's for lunch- I love the Bangkok Thai Chicken wrap, and then got a manicure/pedicure in preparation for the wedding weekend coming up. I did some work around the lab and then my play therapy client arrived at 3:30. I had bought us both bags of chips to snack on, since I was hungry again, but was notified by his mother that he was not allowed to partake because he had pitched such a horrendous fit in the car about wanting Cheetos. He was still sniffling when he arrived to the session. When we got in the room, he totally lost it. Major decompensation....throwing things, destroying the room, yelling "I hate my mom!" with a fervor that I had not yet seen before. He really didn't appreciate my setting some limits on his destructive behavior and turned his anger on me, trying to convince me that throwing blocks at the window as hard as he could was the "only" way he would stop being mad. This just went on and on without a break. He systematically found things to destroy, and the regression was painful to watch. For about 10 seconds there I doubted my ability to pull this kid out of it. You cannot argue with, convince, or divert these types of kids when they're in this state. There is no distracting them, changing the subject. His mind was 100% on the fact that he didn't get his Cheetos, and he hates his mother for it. For a child who has experienced abuse and neglect, this is an experience of deprivation, fear, and anger he is fighting with.

My training from various workshops told me to hang with him, get on his eye level, be very near him but not overly touchy, and empathize/reflect the vitality of his affect. I sat on the floor right next to his face saying the words "you were SO mad when your mom wouldn't let you have any Cheetos, you are SO mad right now. And it must seem like no one is letting you have what you want." Again and again and again. "It is ok to be angry. She's not going to stop caring for you because you're angry at her. I'm not going to stop caring for you because you're mad at me. It is ok to be angry." I felt for my videographer in the next room taking notes. I must have sounded like a broken record. In these moments, there are no solutions, the only recourse is to make the child feel as understood and as safe as possible, and give words to the actions that seem destructive and out of control. I soooo wished I had videotaped this session because it would be a perfect teaching tool down the road. 40 minutes into the session, my client had climbed on top of the cabinets and I was a little concerned that if he really wanted to destory something like the lights, he might be able to and getting him down would be tricky. So I looked for an opening, any affective opening (a smile, a laugh, something that wasn't yelling). I threw him a roll of paper towels to launch at the lights, knowing they wouldn't hurt anything. He caught the loose end of a towel and the rest unrolled. He laughed in surprise, so I laughed too, and challenged him to make the biggest snowball the world has ever seen. Even though he corrected me that it's a "paper towel ball" I had my opening. From there we threw the paper towels back and forth and got into a rhythm of connectedness and positive affect. He asked somewhat curiously if he could throw the scissors, tape, bandaids and first aid kit, and accepted that no, that would not be safe. He then (with a strangely pleasant and playful affect) asked if he could throw the extra sound screen machine from the top of the cabinet. I of course said no, that wasn't safe, but offered him the option to plug it in and listen to it. He climbed right down and plugged it into the wall. We laid on the floor with our faces next to each other listening to the whirring sounds of the machine when it was turned on. The storm had passed and he asked to play a game. He went right to the closet and selected a game called "Angry Animals." Five minutes into the game, he drew a card that said "You are special." He immediately wanted to reconnect with his mom and show her the card. So we went out to the parking lot so he could touch base, and she handled the whole thing beautifully. Despite the tantrums, the ugly words, and the defiance, he needed to refuel and experience that comfort from his mom. We finished up our game, hit up the prize box, and returned him to his mom at the end of the session. All told, I spent an hour and a half working with him and I was pretty exhausted. Luckily, my videographer had beat me to the punch in terms of cleaning up the room. We had to throw out some cracked plastic bins and return about a million little plastic figurines to their correct drawers, but in the end the room was returned to order.

I raced out to Hewitt to meet with a psychologist who's house and child I'll be sitting for over Memorial Day weekend, only to race back to Waco to meet Anthony for dinner and a Baylor baseball game. We heard the most fantastic baseball names: Beamer Weems (nickname, evidently "Bee Wee"), Shaver Hansen, Raynor Campbell. No lie. Those were their real names. A section of dedicated Baylor student-hecklers sat right behind the plate and goaded the Texas State hitters with statements such as "I hope you're not a SCHOLARSHIP athlete," and "Get me a bucket, I'm gonna throw up!" They screamed "LIAR!" at the umps, and chanted "Lau-ren, Lau-ren" when a Texas State player named Laurn was up to bat. Baylor won 7-2. My favorite part of the whole thing was when Baylor would score a run, the entire bench would get up and greet the runners on the field, usually without hats on. Let me tell you, the Baylor bench was lookin' cute. Nicely done, gentlemen!

I came home to find a brand new bag of cat food torn open by my greedy little beasts. After some light packing tonight, I'm going to hit the hay and get ready for my trip to San Francisco tomorrow!!!