I haven’t been here in 2 1/2 years and a lot has happened.
As we all know, Covid happened. My life became really boring and I could possibly be classified as a hermit now. I’m not afraid of going outside…..I just don’t want to. I miss my friends, but going anywhere seems like so much work now. I do drag myself out and about to see my vaccinated friends, but…..lately it’s been more difficult to do that. BUT, I did start anti-depressants in early August and I’m feeling better.
Yay!
I am worried about my child. A few weeks ago she started to not want anything to do with her dad. See, we decided to put her in independent study until a vaccine was made available for children under 12, and this was a decision both of us made. It was a nice routine. She would get up and get ready in the morning and her father would pick her up; Not long after school started, she started not want to go to her dad’s.
I’m not talking just the pouty face look and then shuffling grudgingly out the door. I’m talking tears. I’m talking she wouldn’t move out the door. I’m talking BEGGING me not to make her go to her dad’s. It wasn’t immediate, but started slowly and got worse as the weeks went on.
It got so bad that this past Thursday I made the executive decision to pull her from independent study and put her back in school. I always wanted her to be there but I kept holding out for a child’s vaccine (which might be available by the end of October, according to the news this morning). It started to feel like it was too traumatic for her to go over there and felt awful about the thought of sending her back. She stayed with me on Friday and did her home school and yesterday she started back at her elementary school.
She was all smiles yesterday. It was a beautiful sight. Then today her daddy picked her up for school and she didn’t want to go with him. And after school when he went to pick her up she called me and begged me to come get her. She didn’t go to him until I promised her that he would bring her straight to me.
I’ve asked ALL the hard questions. All of them. Her father has never mistreated her physically in any way. I’ve never heard him mistreat her verbally either. He doesn’t yell at her, although he might speak to her in a stern tone which I’ve heard him use before once on her brothers, and it scared me for a second. He’s not an aggressive person so to hear this sound come from him was startling.
Now, I’m not there so I don’t know what goes on over there but she insists that nothing has ever happened yet she’s scared of her father. I wonder if the schools being closed for covid and then enrolling her in independent studies, as well as her going over to his place every week day over summer while I worked, just was too much time together and that they need a break. I can understand that, but it’s the FEAR that I don’t understand.
Her father loves her and my gut says that nothing is happening, which makes this situation all the more confusing. I feel bad for her father because it’s breaking his heart. I know if she treats me this way down the road, my heart would break too. I didn’t go through this with my parents. I mean, I was always a “Daddy’s Girl” but I loved my Mommy too. I was never afraid of them. I think around 12 it became “uncool” to be seen with your parents but she’s not there yet.
I believe it is very important for a child to have both a strong mother and father presence in their lives, but she’s shutting her dad out for a reason she doesn’t even understand. She has mentioned that he’s bad for her self esteem but she also says he’s never called her names or ever implied that she was in any way stupid or ugly, for example. She did say that he told her she wasn’t trying because she got a bad grade on a test, and she was upset because she felt she really tried. I asked her if she had asked her Daddy for help because a bad grade usually means that one is either not paying attention to the material OR is having trouble with the material. I told her that since her Daddy knows how smart she is that he may assume that since she got such a bad grade, and didn’t ask him for help, she didn’t really go over the material before the quiz so, in effect, she didn’t try.
I don’t know how the conversation went, all I know what she said and she just said that today.
Her father and I have an appointment to meet with her new therapist tomorrow and this is going to be that main point of discussion before she starts treatment with her. I’m hoping she’ll be able to help her figure out what is going on so we can figure out how to move forward.