My daughter has comorbid conditions. According to Thesaurus.com, synonyms of the word morbid are horrifying, gloomy, nasty, sickly. I guess comorbid means she’s doubly horrifying? Actually, it means she has two or more simultaneous medical disorders. I naively thought that when she was evaluated at the behavioral health clinic, we would receive a single diagnosis or explanation that would cover the scope of her aberrant behaviors. Silly me! Apparently you can have multiple mental disorders at once: comorbidity. Autism explains why my daughter hasn’t developed at the same rate as the other kids her age, or why she doesn’t play like they do, or why she is sensitive to sounds or other stimuli, or why she has meltdowns when things don’t go her way. It doesn’t explain why she can’t sit still, why she squirms and fidgets, why she can’t hold her thoughts, why she interrupts, why she leaves things unfinished, or why she is disorganized and messy. That would be ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). The nighttime fears and general worries? Anxiety. The extreme fear and anxiety of thunderstorms? Specific Phobia. The poor handwriting? Dysgraphia. I’m sure we could dig up a few more things if we wanted. At least we got a lot for our $1000+ testing.
If other parents told me a whole list of things that were wrong with their child, I would think they were nuts. I would think they were hypochondriacs. I would think, “Leave that child alone. Let him be. Let her be herself.” Well, it’s funny how experience always changes your perspective. It’s amazing how helpless and desperate you feel when your child can’t calm down and is holding her head and is hysterical because of the storm outside, or when you spend night after night for months sleeping on the floor in her room and she still can’t relax and sleep through the night, or when she won’t use the bathroom at the theater (or park or zoo or store or library) because the automatic flushing terrifies her and you have to go into the stall with her to cover up the sensor, or when you try to explain something to her and you have to redirect her multiple times and you wonder if she heard anything you said...
When MG was diagnosed at 8 years old with this laundry list, I didn’t feel angry or sad or nuts. I felt relieved and understood and grateful. That list is our road map of understanding & helping our daughter and having compassion.
I think its very easy to look at people from the outside and see how 'normal' they are but truth is that everyone is dealing with something. Sometimes getting a diagnosis makes us feel better because it helps explain why we're not as normal as we think someone else is but its all just perception.
ReplyDeleteMaybe there's a spectrum of behavior that we've collectively determined to be acceptable in public and we think there's something wrong with someone else who is on the fringe or the outside of that spectrum but really they're just different. I'm sure everyone has some sort of behavior that would be considered abnormal or outside the spectrum if it were displayed in public but they have the benefit of not having/needing to express that in public or the situation where its exposed is usually in private or just infrequent.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. You make a good point. But perhaps the question isn't whether you're normal or not, but how well can you function within your family or society? I don't care what the collection of behaviors is called or if she's different, but I do care that my daughter and our family can have a healthy, uplifting day to day life and that she is able to cope in society at large. Sometimes that means making others aware of what her struggles are so they can meet her with understanding rather than judgment and recoil. Some struggles are very public or visible as you suggest, others are more private. Wouldn't it be nice if we gave everyone the benefit of the doubt and were able to appreciate them for who they are?
DeleteIn a few years I bet you would be qualified to be child psychologist with all the research you are doing on different mental conditions. That is a long list of diagnosis-es. I think it helps to have a word and description of a mental disorder, because that is usually followed by how to deal with it. I can only hope as she gets older she will "grow out" of some of the anxiety.
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely been an education. When we first started down this road there were so many new words and concepts I hadn't considered before. I've had to become literate in a new language.
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