Parent Journal 2023

 S unday night:  The next day (Monday 22 May), AB took ZGB to school. (ZGB was concerned about K of course; in the past, ZGB agreed to draw a picture to cheer her up). Then AB, K, and LGB stayed at home. K's mood was upbeat. During the day LGB and AB asked her to explain

  Sunday afternoon:  On Sunday, we returned from our meeting with PF. K answered the door happily, but we asked her to sit down for a serious discussion. When we mentioned that she would not be able to return to school, she hid her head for a long time. AB and LGB sat next to her for several minutes. We asked her what was going on, but she was silent. Usually she would say “I don’t know” but this time she was speechless. After a while she went to her room and hid under the bed. LGB tried to come up with some ways to get K to open up. LGB drew a “flowchart” for K, starting with an example: “Do you like cats or dogs”? “Do you like meows or purrs”? Do you like soft purrs or loud purrs”? Once K understood the task, LGB presented a second flow chart. “I like school” / “I don’t like school” / “I sometimes like school”.  K at this point was communicating by writing, not speaking. K wrote, “There was not enoughf options.” LGB asked if K “sometimes liked school” and perhaps she no...

Friday evening After receiving a message from PF that he would like to speak with us over the weekend concerning an incident at school, L became worried. She asked K if there was anything that happened that would necessitate us meeting on a weekend. “I don’t know”, she said. LGB asked K if she had been hurt, or hurt someone. K shrugged. K then said, “it didn’t happen yesterday, or even last week, or even last year. And it was one of the graduates,” she offered. LGB pressed K for more information, and K said “I don’t want to talk about it”.

  Around 5 May during pick up at King Alfred’s I asked PF how things were going, and he responded effusively, saying how great things were. I was very happy that our approach at home seemed to be paying off. A few things happened after 5 May: K began her menstrual cycle on 10 May LG left town on business 11 May, returning late at night 18 May, PF fell ill on Thursday, 18 May. On Friday when AB picked up K at the beach, there was no indication that anything concerning had happened.

On 5 April, we had a parent meeting with PF and were surprised to hear that K had emotional outbursts every day. That behaviour is very different than at home. During that meeting, we discussed some triggers, and focused on frustration finishing work. As parents, we also notice that K will refuse help with a meticulous task when it’s obvious she is struggling, and her reaction seems out of proportion with the task at hand (i.e. threading a needle, building with Lego, etc.). We also discussed finding a counselor, but having sought support for our son ZGB, we knew this would not be an easy task. As we were of the mind that we needed to work on “emotional outbursts”, we set out to work on this with K at home, and keep an eye on things if it turned out she did need professional help.

From 5 April through roughly 10 May, that was our work at home. LGB set out to build a house of cards with K and closely observe how she reacted to the collapsing structure as we tried again and again to steady it and add on “floors”. In an effort to keep things lighthearted, I remarked on K's grunts of frustration and asked how she felt along the way. I encouraged her to keep going and she never really got too upset. Over the same period of time when there were situations slowly escalating I might ask, “what would you do in this moment at school?” or, “is this the kind of thing that gets you upset at school”? She would usually say, “no”, or “I don’t know”.