Broken Trust

My six year old is smarter than me. For proof, I wish I could show calculations of complex math problems, but instead I have the following story. Earlier this week I noticed Chica Marie seemed to be able to take her pills with ease, as opposed to her long drawn-out gaging, sipping water, holding the pill in her mouth and eventually painfully swallowing it, while grimacing and complaining. When she announced, almost gleefully, that she was done taking her pills I was immediately suspicious. This morning my suspicions were confirmed. Generally, the morning routine is as follows: I get up and have breakfast first. While I’m preparing my meal I sit Chica Marie’s pills on the table with her gummy vitamin and a glass of water. Usually I wake her up around 7 but sometimes, like this morning, I let her sleep in because she got to bed later or had a rough night. So, this morning I woke her up around 7:30. I was changing Love Bug while she slowly changed out of her pajamas. Then, I returned to the bathroom to do my hair and make-up. She came into the bathroom to use the toilet and I reminded her to put on shoes when she left. I have the bathroom door open and it’s right outside the kitchen. I noticed Chica Marie was not sitting at the table performing her morning pill ritual. I called her name and she came out of her room. It was then I noticed the pills were missing. And, I had a deus ex machina moment and just knew she was hiding her pills in her room. I asked her to show me. Stuffed behind her dresser, nestled in a huge dust bunny, was a large handful of blue and white pills. I didn’t yell. I didn’t make her pick them up. I asked her why they were there and she told me she didn’t want to take them. I snapped a picture with my phone and calmly moved the dresser back into place. I closed her bedroom door and told her to take the pills I thought were still in her hand. At first, I was shocked by her smarts. So clever! And she had been doing this for some time, pulling the wool over my stupid, trusting, unsuspecting eyes. But, now, as I write this, I am angry. And tired, oh so very tired! I’m tired of her lying to me all. the. time. about everything! I’m tired of not being able to trust her, to never, ever trust her. I’m tired of feeling like I need to be a prison warden, checking every nook and cranny, lest she get the best of me. And I’m really tired of her not caring, of giving no f*ck at all, none. I’m tired of being out-smarted by a 6 year old because I want to believe my kids will do what they are asked to do. I don’t know how many pills are there. Picking them up and counting them is tonight’s chore. I don’t even want to talk to her about it because I’m either going to rage and rave like a maniac or sob uncontrollably and I honestly might do both simultaneously.

 

I’m reading the book “Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control” by Heather T. Forbes. It’s a book about trying to work with kids with trauma backgrounds using techniques different from those traditionally taught by mental health professionals. Each chapter in the book is about a different behavior commonly exhibited by a child with a trauma background. The first chapter was on lying and it expressed the best course of action for a child who lies is to ignore the lie but not the child. Parents who have a hard time dealing with the lies their child tells are said to have a painful past experience of someone lying to them, thus their anger over the lies are more related to this past issue than to their child and the whoppers they tell. What I feel the chapter was missing was the loss of trust that comes when someone lies to you. Trust is so important in any relationship, it is truly a foundation block to any relationship. If you lie to me, I cannot trust you, if I cannot trust you how can we have a close relationship? I don’t know if I ignored the lie this morning or just shut down emotionally and got us out the door to school and work. Chica Marie seemed unaffected by my discovery and almost proud that she had gotten away with this for so long. Never mind the multitude of consequences hiding pills could cause, including hurting herself.

 

I don’t know what to do. I know I’m failing big time in really meeting the emotional needs of this child. I’m failing at getting us out of this hideous cycle of anger, disappointment, lies and tantrums (and I mean both of us!). I know it’s on me to figure out how to make this better. I don’t feel like we have professional help, even though I have begged for it incessantly. I feel stuck and frustrated and I don’t know how to get us out of this.