Driving to the university where Aurora could be tested to see if she qualified for Parent Child Interactive Therapy took about 30 minutes. I was hesitantly hopeful that maybe we would be able to get the help we needed…if we could survive the drive there.
“I’m not talking to anyone that I don’t want to talk to,” Aurora said from the back seat. I had left my younger two children with a babysitter and my oldest was at school.
“Ok,” I shrugged a response.
“DON’T SAY OK!” Aurora shrieked.
I sighed. “I mean ‘Alright,” I replied with another shrug.
Her reaction may seem a bit extreme, and it was. But I understood it a little. You see, Aurora had a tendency to say things that she came up with in her head whether they were true or not. Regardless of their truthfulness, however, she would argue her statements until she exploded in frustration.
For example, one day she stated, “Spiders are insects. They are just a special kind of insect that has eight legs.”
I had learned that arguing this point with her would not convince her that she was wrong. It was much, much easier to just say, “Ok.” Ok is noncommittal. I try really hard to always be truthful with my children, so saying, “You’re right,” was impossible. Spiders are not insects. But nor was I willing to start an argument. She would argue anything. ALL THE TIME. “Ok” became my automatic response to Aurora’s statements.
“I wasn’t actually born in winter. January is kind of like early spring.”
“OK.”
“Dogs are cuter than cats because they are nicer to people.”
“Ok.”
“I don’t actually sleep at night. I just sit in my bed all night with my eyes closed.”
“Ok.”
I have worked really hard to train my other children to respond in kind. When Aurora said, “Spiders are insects,” I responded with, “Ok,” but Matthew immediately retorted, “Actually spiders are arachnids.”
“They can be insects, too,” Aurora said with sass and a glare.
Matthew began to argue, but I stopped him. “You don’t have to argue,” I said. “Just say, ‘Ok’.”
“But she’s wrong,” he said.
“I don’t care. She heard what you said. Let it go now.”
This has been so incredibly hard for all of us to learn.
And it kind of backfired for a while. I said Ok so many times that Aurora started getting annoyed. Her brilliant but untrue statements were not being met with the appreciation she wanted, so she banned me and Ike from using the word Ok. Every time we forgot and said Ok, she would shriek, “Don’t say Ok.”
This lasted for months. I learned to use other responses like alright, wow, and that’s interesting.
You may be wondering if she is going to grow up believing all these falsehoods. Maybe. Probably not. What you have to understand is that in her ODD mind, she is the highest authority on every subject. Not me. Especially not me. She doesn’t learn through correction. She learns through her own experience and by figuring things out on her own. (And sometimes through books. I think she still trusts books.)
Anyway, we eventually made it to the hospital for Aurora’s testing without an explosion, despite my “Ok” slip. The social workers took her into a room to interview her while I sat and filled out a LOT of paperwork. The paperwork was the real testing.
The drive home took 45 minutes in early rush hour traffic.
They contacted me pretty quickly. She definitely qualified for the therapy, but it could only be done at the university hospital. I hadn’t realized that part. They wanted her to be there with me and my husband and no siblings once a week. In order to do this, I would have to get a babysitter, my husband would have to leave work early, and we would have to drive over an hour to make it work. It would be really hard on everybody. I needed a different solution.
The hospital set us up with a social worker much closer to our home where she could attend more traditional therapy sessions. We went to one appointment with this man. He had Aurora sit in the hall by herself while I went in a separate room to talk to him. Inside my head I was already thinking, “Did you not read her information at all? You can’t just leave this six-year-old in the hall by herself in a place she has never been with nothing to do.” Not smart.
Nothing bad happened. But we didn’t go back.
I started searching for another therapist. I got really lucky that the next person we tried was really helpful in many ways.
Aurora began attending therapy once a week for about seven months. Then she started going once a month for another six months or so.
Her therapist’s main goal was to help Aurora identify her many emotions. You see, ODD kids often have trouble differentiating between their negative emotions (and even some positive emotions). Aurora expressed all negative emotions as anger. If she was tired, hungry, embarrassed, sad, jealous, or frightened she lashed out in anger. Sometimes if she got really excited about something she would get kind of manic and out of control. Then she would get angry when we tried to calm her down. Her therapist helped her to name the emotions and practice appropriate ways to express those emotions. Did it work? Well…like almost every treatment or experiment we have tried, it’s hard to tell. She improved in some areas. I think she got better at identifying her emotions, but it usually didn’t really stop her from losing control of them. That takes lots and lots of practice. So we practiced.