p9. Send up a flag and grab the poop kit.

I remember one of the first rashes Da broke out with. She looked like a mass of blotchy hives, which we later learned, was a reaction to penicillin.

This led me to think about a bunch of little things I might have forgotten about her when she was very young.

The other day I was speaking with another one of my daughters, for some reason we were discussing the psych/educational testing they did with Da when she was in the second or third grade. I started laughing so hard remembering when they asked her to draw a self-portrait. Now I know one thing they look for is small details, like the indication of a neck, but she had drawn two people in her self-portrait. Being the daughter of an artist, of course it was a wonderful drawing, but the therapist told me she said, “Da, this is you, but who is this?” well Da replied with total indignation that the lady did not know who the other person was… “It’s my date!” Send up a flag!

In addition to the destruction and lack of sleep she displayed daily, Da did some pretty strange things as a small child. One could say she was lost in Freud’s oral and anal stages. I believed she sucked her thumb way longer than most kids. But it was the other area that drove us crazy.

Some kids wet the bed longer than others, Da would continue to do this to the point when she was invited to a slumber party (although this be rarely), she just pulled out a diaper and say, “okay you guys can laugh if you want, but I have to wear this”. Her attitude has always been encouraging. In third grade she came home with a different uniform than the one she left with, I learned later in the day, she just sat at her desk and left a puddle. The teacher who we really liked told me she (the teacher) just stood there in shock. The next day I told her she could go to school and be hurt when the other kids laughed, but she really needed to think about how funny and surprising it kind of was, and it might be best to laugh right along with them. She handled it great.

It was the poop thing that made us nuts.

When she was in kindergarten we had the poop kit, this would be like what most people would have for their dogs – we had one for our daughter. She either pooped a lot or got a kick out of pooping in strange places. We would keep old baby wipe boxes in the rec room for small toys, and the first time I remember, we about died when we opened a box, and an old deposit had been made to the poop fairy. Yuck! She also must have loved entertaining the other neighborhood kids with her pooping expertise, because this is why we had the kit – what’s a mother to do? After she would leave her mark in a yard, and I would get the dreaded call from the parent in charge. Da would get the kit and we would go on scooper patrol. One would think a little humiliation would not be so emotionally harmful, but might get her to stop this most unacceptable behavior. Luckily I don’t remember this happening a ton of times, but once was enough.

This is a good example of how other parents think your parenting skills are lacking and need attention. I doubt they got the fact that she must have needed attention.

Young kids with bipolar disorder wear their friends out quickly.

I was once told that all the kids liked Da, they just didn’t know what to do with her, or how to keep up. She was a pretty lonely kid by her adult years; it must make it even that much harder. I know its heart breaking for a parent to see their child excluded; you want to make things so right.