This week started out with an appointment with the psychologist for Kendall. We see the psychologist once every two weeks right now. This appointment was a little different, Kendall wasn't so great with her eye contact this time and normally that is something the psychologist comments on as to how great Kendall is about that since it's not so easy for someone with Aspergers that tends to be a little socially withdrawn. I think a lot of this no eye contact was a result from seeing a man in Wal-Mart. Kendall and I were Christmas shopping and a man spoke to us and ask Kendall how she was doing. Kendall replied with, "I'm good, how are you?" He told her, "I am great!" and then mumbled lots of words really fast and Kendall realized they had something in common... neither classified as "normal". Kendall normally doesn't notice that she is not just like everyone else, but for some reason she noticed this time. This bothered her emotionally. She felt sorry for him and withdrew herself socially so that no one noticed she was different too. In a way I feel like this was progress for Kendall because she showed emotion for someone else but at the same time this caused some regression for Kendall. We had a long discussion about the fact that if we really looked hard... most people aren't what we seem to think is "normal" and it takes all kinds of people to make the world go around. It took Kendall a couple of days to get back to herself and be our typical Kendall. This week other than that has been pretty calm and collected with not a lot of emotional breakdowns or any high anxiety moments. Anxiety is a big problem for Kendall, no medications seem to work for this with her so we gave up and are medication free for about a year now. Our big test of the week for anxiety was Thursday night... Madison, our other daughter that is 7, had a Christmas program at school. This meant Kendall would have to sit around people she didn't know and lots of them. I have to say though, she did great. After an hour of sitting and listening to 2nd graders sing, Kendall was still calm and hadn't had a panic attack. She had just started to tell me she was ready to go home a couple of times and normally the anxiety would have hit before we even got there. We were very proud of her, to us this was a big accomplishment.
We are at her Granny and Papa's house for the weekend, Kendall loves to be here, but for some reason she seems to try everyone a little more when we are here. It seems sometimes that her favorite place is one she needs to make chaotic. So far she hasn't kept up any negative behaviors to cause arguments with the adults though. The only problem we have had was over a coloring book. I don't know how typical of Aspergers this is, but if Kendall makes her mind up about something being hers, it's hers. This was the case with the coloring book. It did of course belong to Madison but Kendall just knows Madison had erased her name out of it. After about 15 minutes of them arguing with each other, Madison gave in and let Kendall color a picture but did not allow herself to be called a liar about who the book actually belonged to. We all know it was Madison's but still in Kendall's mind it was hers and her name had been erased. Does this happen with Aspies often? Or just at my house?
Kendall and Madison are both in bed asleep now, and sleep is a very rare thing for Kendall. I cannot for the life of me see how she survives on so little sleep. There are nights that Kendall doesn't sleep at all and wont nap during the day either. This goes on for several nights in a row at times. I get so tired after several nights of little or no sleep. I am going to go catch up on some sleep while she is sleeping well and will post again before we leave to go home tomorrow about how the rest of the weekend went.
Have a good night!
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