BPDFamily.com

About a month ago, my wife asked me, "are you ready to eat your words" about my earlier expression of concern that she would lose control of herself when the kids got her angry during summer vacation.  It's the first time in a while that she has been home alone with them for an extended period of time because she has had summer jobs during previous years.

I have already posted some info about the problems that arose during our recent family vacation.  Fortunately, I was able to avoid getting into direct conflict with her most of the time, and I believe that I helped calm her down and thus prevented some potential blow ups with the kids.  Our daughter's AHDH and OCD have been getting worse lately, creating the potential for more conflict.

I got a call around noon today about how horrible the kids were being.  She was really upset.  She had taken them to the post office to get their passports renewed.  My daughter somehow got ink "all over herself" including her chin in the passport photo.  The kids were fighting then as well as when they went to get lunch.  She is additionally stressed because she was planning to set up her new classroom today and was not able to make it because the passports took so long.

Given the intensity of some of her reactions to the kids, and my belief that things would have escalated further if I had not been there to intervene, I am certainly not "ready to eat" my words.

On the positive side, she has mostly avoided redirecting the anger at the kids onto me.  This did happen a bit, but no where near the extent that it did a few years ago when were driving back from a camping trip.  She also did not demand that I come home from work, something I was/am afraid could happen.  (She repeatedly did so when our son was an infant, even though I was a new faculty member and should have been putting in 60 hours a week.)  I some of this progress is due to her efforts to control her anger, but it is also due to me changing my responses to her anger and not letting myself fall into the trap of arguing with her.

I tried to make sure that she would try to separate the kids for the rest of the day--taking our daughter on errands while our son stays at home.  She interpreted this as a reward and sarcastically asked, "Sure, why not let him stay home and play video games?"  She walked that back and apologized for the sarcasm, so it looks like she will let him stay home.

Our daughter is supposed to stay with me at my office on Friday morning as my wife gets ready for the first day of teaching.  I am very worried, given that our daughter has been throwing explosive fits, refusing to listen (even in dangerous situations such as wading into the ocean at a beach labeled "No Swimming!  No Wading! Dangerous Currents!"  She has also been getting into more trouble and does not respect other people's space or property.

We spoke with our daughter's school yesterday about her latest assessment and our next steps.  I set up an appointment for a consultation with her pediatrician about possible ADHD medication and whether her worsening OCD is realted to PANDAS--She has had a lot of strep throat and had one case of lime disease last summer.  My wife goes back and forth about medication for our daughter, which is better than her refusal to consider it in the past.  Now, however, she also worried that our daughter will not cooperate if the doctor does recommend it.  (Over vacation our son was diagnosed with a painful case of swimmer's ear.  Despite the pain, it was still hard to get him to use the drops--even half of the number of daily doses he needed.  He just wanted to keep taking ibuprofen.)

Although she didn't get things perfectly, it sounds like she is really trying to handle things better. How did her reaction to the kids this summer rate in comparison to her usual reaction to the kids?

Even though you wife seems to making it a competition about "eating your words", what could you do now to not make it a competition? Would apologizing for making the pre-accusation plus complementing on the times that she did handle things well help remove the hurt she feels from that statement?

I know my H gets really offended when I make accusations about the way I think he WILL act. Makes sense. I absolutely hate it when he does the same to me. Usually if I just apologize for trying to put him into a behavioral box it relieves his stress and tension about the situation. It hurts him to know that I automatically assume negative behavior from him.

The "preaccusation" was in the context of her wailing on me for not doing something dangerous while driving.  This was in part redirecting her rage against me--she had been furious at our son for running late for his graduation.  So it was more of a "Things are really bad right now.  I am afraid of what will happen."