One of the things I hadn't really brought up here in the last few months, and really for no other reason than I was simply working to figure things out and hadn't solidified my thoughts yet, was the concept of my daughter starting preschool. KJ went to preschool for two years. Jack went to preschool for two days. Marin, I assumed, would begin preschool in late August of this year. Homeschoolers or not, I really like formal preschool. I like the early social interaction in a playfully educational setting, I like the projects and the stories, I like the general environment. I was once a preschool teacher and it was a positively swell place to spend my days.
As I have watched Marin emerge from her babyhood, there are a few things that stand out about her. First, she is quite independent. She knows what is going on around here all of the time, and she has the determination and confidence to jump right in when she thinks she can handle something. She cooks meals with me, cleans up her own messes, and tells her two older brothers like it is. It is really fun to watch her work at her own pace, as I welcome the ways in which she chooses to exert her independence, and also every way she is still a baby. She is often so sweet, rubbing the palms of her little hands on my cheeks as she says she loves me, and dancing while Kevin plays the acoustic guitar on the edge of our bed. All of these things make it a great time to be her mom, and these were also some of the reasons I thought she might benefit from starting preschool a little earlier than her brothers did. She could have her own friends, then, instead of always being the littlest sister in the group of homeschoolers, and she could "do her work" as she always asked for when KJ and Jack sit down to do theirs. I wanted to give her the opportunity to expand her little self in a larger setting, and as an added benefit, the boys and I would gain two quiet hours each morning in between drop-off and pick up where we could conquer the "tough" work of the day-- reading about the Renaissance or classifying living species into categories and sub-categories. No more occupying her with Peppa Pig on tv or the box of dry beans and rice or play-doh, while I crammed in as much as I could with the boys while her attention was diverted. We could each have something appropriate to put our energy into.
We are in week three of preschool now, and back to homeschool after Christmas break. Marin is taking her time to transition in, and her new teachers have been great about letting her do as much or as little as she is ready for. I took my time during the late months of last year to find the best fit for her, and I kept coming back around to Montessori being it. The self-guided pace is exactly the way we homeschool, and the atmosphere is structured, but not in a way that would squash personal development. There are quite a few kids in class that are Mar's age and even younger, so I don't feel like there is any pressure for her to be more of a "school kid" than she is ready for. She sings Wheels on the Bus, draws pictures, enjoys snacks. So far, so good.
The other thing, about this particular moment we are in, seems to be all about eruption. Not knowing exactly how to address it, where to file it, or how to put something like this out there delicately, up until now I have never discussed here, that my girl is struggling. From the time she was about a year old and learned to do it, Marin has been tugging at her clothes and fighting the very idea of dressing in the first place, and most often spends her days mostly without them. Early on I assumed this would be a passing phase, or even something funny she was just going through. I just let her be as much as I could, and worked around the little quirks she seemed to have about gym shoes and socks, diapers and having anything done to her hair. She melted down, almost always, when it was time to get dressed to leave the house, or get ready for bed. It became stressful, and I tried everything I could think of to curb the meltdowns, just waiting for her to outgrow this silliness. I praised her like crazy on rare occasions where we made it out of the house and to the car without a fight. I distracted her. I gave her choices, allowed her to wear what she wanted. I got strict with her. I got frustrated and yelled my head off sometimes because I felt I could not handle yet another meltdown.
I tried preparing her to dress in the morning, or giving her time to ride the panic out, but I learned pretty quickly to wait, until almost the last minute before we were leaving somewhere, to dress my daughter. From the minute she knows clothes are coming, she freaks out. Things escalate very quickly, then, from anxiety to full-on temper tantrum. I move from one article of clothing to the next as she kicks and screams-- yes, every time we leave the house, as many times a day as we leave the house, for almost two years now. Our neighbors have watched me carry her to the car, red, flailing and screaming, more times than I care to think about. The colder it is and the more clothing that is required, the worse it is. Coats are near impossible, and zippers, hats and gloves out of the question. Fixing her hair is hardly worth the battle, and thus her recent short haircut. Even worse is putting the five point harness of her car seat on her, because she will carry the tantrum on in the car, for every car ride, for up to thirty or more minutes, depending on where we are going. She simply cannot tolerate anything restrictive or setting up against her skin. There is no distracting her, there is no reasoning with her, there is no punishment or reward that has worked to change this every-day scenario. Every homeschool outing and every drive to church begins like this for us, as does every summer camp and preschool drop-off, and every playdate.
Bedtime is just as bad, and sometimes worse because The Tired is involved. Sleeping in pajamas has been a no-go for a very long time, and pull-ups the fight of a lifetime. She doesn't tolerate blankets, and after spending so many months of fighting about keeping the nighttime pull-up on, we gave up. She is on her third mattress, and there have been days and weeks we've even given up on the concept of sheets, if only to change and wash them every single day.
I tried for so long to just handle it. I so rarely even brought it up to people, for fear that I would make my poor girl look like a screaming lunatic. By the time we arrive at our destination, generally, she knows that she will be free of her car seat buckles and able to at least remove her coat and on to the activity, and she gets some relief. She is as sweet as can be, a truly adorable kid, when we are not in these moments. At her two year pediatrician appointment, I brought the clothing thing up. I still assumed she was being an obstinate toddler and would outgrow it, and our doctor thought the same. By her three year visit late this summer I was tired, and I stressed to our pediatrician how difficult a situation this is, having our child constantly melting down about clothing and screaming for us to FIX IT and get it away from her skin. The doctor suggested we have her fix it, only, and she would learn to deal with whatever she was going through. It seemed to get worse instead of better after that, and one night I confided in two of my homeschool mom friends, completely opening up about how awful this has become, for all of us to live with this constant problem. They suggested I find underwear without any sort of edging, and let her wear sweatpants every day if that was what she could tolerate, and for goodness sakes, call the doctor again. They near simultaneously said it sounded like a sensory problem, something I had considered before, but had pushed away when our pediatrician suggested we ride it out.
I felt so relieved. I felt awful, too, like I was ratting my sweet little girl out, but my friends were so understanding and helpful. Of course things like skirts with tights, gym shoes and braided hair had been out of the picture for so long I'd forgotten them, but I moved on to the most simple clothing I could find. I have allowed her to choose her clothing every day since, even when it means mis-matching, even though it always means the same pair of shoes, one size too big so she will agree to socks. I allow her to wear last year's play coat everywhere now, instead of the pretty new one I had bought for this year, because there is no elastic at the wrists of the play coat and that is one less thing to get worked up about. We don't zip her coat. Even now, in the winter, unless we are outside for an extended amount of time and I become willing to battle if we must. We still deal with meltdowns, every day in the car and most nights at bedtime.
I did call our doctor back that week, and somehow ended up speaking with another doctor in the practice, who agreed that it sounded like something sensory was going on. We received our referral and were placed on waiting lists at several different clinics for an evaluation. Finally, after more than two months on waiting lists, we received a call from a clinic and on Monday, Marin had her evaluation. And she does indeed suffer from Sensory Processing Disorder, where her brain is having difficulty regulating her sense of touch, creating inappropriate responses to perfectly normal things like clothing.
And there are ways to help her.
To say that I feel that a weight has been lifted is an understatement-- even by the medical validation alone. My beautiful blue-eyed, blond haired little girl is not badly behaved. She has a real problem and she is going to get help. Just a few days in, I am reading everything I can about SPD and pressure massage and serotonin release. We've now had our first pow-wow with our new occupational therapist, and she has lots of ideas for how we can begin working to calm my daughter and teach her nervous system what is okay. I continue to be frustrated in the car, this morning even, on our way to school. The screaming and the squirming out of her buckles and removing her coat in the middle of January while I drive, causing me to pull over and re-buckle her... though forget it about the damn coat, at least until we arrive.
Somehow we are really going to fix it. I am so thankful for that.
