Terror in the night

Poor Katelyn had the very worst scare of her life (and she has lots of scares!) in the wee hours of this morning.  I heard her go to the bathroom and go back into her room.  Then there was a strangled sort of scream and she started screeching for me.  I went in to see what was wrong and she said, "The window! There's words on the window!."  Sure enough, through the glow of the nighttime light you could clearly read, "U will die!" written on the window with someone's finger sometime when the window had been foggy. When she came back in her room it was directly in her eye line, and she can read now, so she understood immediately!  She was absolutely out of her mind terrified, wouldn't even walk past the window to go into my room to sleep. I have to admit, it was awfully creepy in the middle of the night, even though I knew it had to have been Melanie and not any sort of ghoul.

She came in my bed, but was so shook up she couldn't settle down and go back to sleep, just tossed and turned and whimpered.  About 2 hours later she screams again, certain she saw something moving in my open closet. I convince her there's nothing, but she is back on high alert again. Maybe half an hours later an absolutely blood curdling scream as she sat bolt upright in the bed, grabbing for me.  "Turn on the light! Turn on the light!"  then  "I heard a voice!! There was a really deep voice talking to me!!"

She was absolutely, terrified and convinced she'd heard something and I just didn't believe her.  She sat wide-eyed and trembling, looking all around, and couldn't even stand to lay down again, being in total fight-or-flight mode and feeling too vulnerable if she lay down.  

When she finally could lay down again she was stiff and trembling, and plastered herself to me.  She insisted we keep the light on and was afraid to try to go back to sleep in case she had more bad thoughts.  To take her mind off it, I tried to get her to think about the Twins game we're going to tonight, her first. Talked her through visualizing walking in the gates and finding our seats, seeing all the people and smelling the foods.  That finally helped, she got on a roll talking about it, and then kept talking. I let her keep talking to keep her mind occupied and she finally fell asleep around 6 am.  I was going to let her sleep in and go to school late if she stayed asleep, but she popped up about 7:30 and was eager to get ready for the day.  Hopefully her meds will carry her through most of the day before she collapses of exhaustion.  Don't know what to expect for the game tonight.

Diggin' the Dirt

The girls are getting a chance to try their hands at some gardening this year in my father's garden.  They planted peppers and tomatoes, as well as marigolds.  Katie prefers to take her sandals off and go barefoot in the dirt, but is then extremely cautious about where/how she steps, which exacerbates her issues with balance.  She came across a worm while digging and practically FLEW out of the garden, so fearful is she of the creepy, crawlies (especially since a certain sister told her some of them bite!)

Hadn't even thought about how her poor awareness of her position in space could influence her overall sense of direction, but the poor sweetheart had a very upsetting experience at Granddad's when she went inside to use the bathroom.  She made it inside successfully, but on coming back out she lost her way and couldn't find us again.  She finally called out for me and I could shout out so she could see us, but by then she was terrified and sobbing, thinking she'd been abandoned.  She said every way she went the fence was there and she just didn't know where we were.  I had to hold her tight for quite a while before she could settle back down, and it brought the evening to definite end for her as she had no further interest in activities after that.

Fear Where Others Find Fun

Picture an average kindergartener going to a cousin's birthday party.  She looks forward to it with great anticipation, but problems arise where there is supposed to be fun.  The party is at Pump-It-Up, an indoor inflatable play place, and for extra fun, it's a glow-in-the-dark party, so the lights are off and instead there are star-like sparkles and disco lights flashing.  It looks really cool and the pumpin' music completes the scene.  While the cousin and his friends tumble down the inflatable slide and bounce houses, Katelyn is paralyzed with fear.  She cries and clings to me, insisting on being held, and begging to go home.


Katie has always had a serious fear of the dark.  Having difficulty with vestibular input, she can't sense where her body is in relation to her surroundings, so she usually relies on her sight to clue her in, but can't in the dark.  She finds the flashing lights disorienting  The music everyone else finds fun feels like an assault to her sensitive ears, as do the screams and squeals of fun from all the other kids.  While Katie loves the proprioceptive input of bouncing and jumping, she only feels safe doing it on her own terms, with no one else around to bump into her or wiggle the inflatable unpredictably.  At a party, though, she can't get the bounce house all to herself, so she just sits in the corner of it and screams if anyone else gets too boisterous.  Every movement feels to her like being tossed on a stormy sea.  She is in perpetual fight-or-flight mode as her body tells her she is in great danger.

Symptom- Bothered/distracted by background environmental sounds; i.e., lawn mowing or outdoor construction.

It's funny to me how some of the things they list just as examples fit Kate exactly.  Living in a apartment complex, there is a rather larger mower used by the groundskeeper which can be heard from a long way off.  As soon as she hears it Katie insists on closing all the windows and turning up the TV to cover up the sound.  It's not just that it's loud though, she's actually afraid of it and refuses to go outside while it's running.

Last summer the complex had all the apartment balconies replaced, creating very close construction noises.  She was terrified by their footsteps on the roof, but the couple days they were actually working on our own deck we had to leave the house.  She was in perpetual fight-or-flight mode from the moment they arrived 'til they went home for the night.  Even seeing what they were doing that made all the noise didn't help any, she just couldn't cope.  Simple little things you never even think of with typical children.

Symptoms: Fearful of the sound of a flushing toilet (especially in a public restroom), vacuum, hairdryer or dog barking. Excessively startled by loud or unexpected sounds.

All of the above!  For a long time Kate refused to flush the toilet when she went, and still skips it quite frequently.  But public restrooms are by far the worst.  The hollow sound in multi-stall restrooms seems to echo and amplify the sound, causing her to scream.   

These newer automatic flushing toilets add a whole new element of fear, as she's so small the sensor seems to lose her and they wind up flushing while she's still sitting!  Oh the horror!  The force with which they flush has her convinced she's about to be sucked right down. At the library one day she had to go, but it kept flushing prematurely, so she's hop off and claim to be done, but then still have to go about 5 minutes later, so we'd try again, but she'd get freaked before she was finished, again...after about 4-5 attempts we just had to go home so she could finish going in peace.

Hand dryers in restrooms are another source of panic, primarily because of the noise, but also because of the hot blast of air.  She also hides when I use my hairdryer and the vacuum.

We got a beagle a year ago, and thankfully she's not too much of a barker, because Katie screams and practically jumps out of her skin at every little yelp, and nearly hyperventilates if Tess actually barks.  This extreme reaction to loud sounds was one of the first things that got me thinking of SPD.  Sometimes it's not even that a sound is too loud as much as if it's unexpected.  Where another kids might jump, Katie's whole body convulses and she's in tears.

Symptoms- Distracted (bothered) by sounds not normally noticed by others.

•   Kate can be acutely aware of the humming of some electronics or ticking of clocks and can find it hard to ignore them once she has noticed.  Frequently an excuse for not being able to fall asleep.  She is terrifies of bugs, and nearly had a heart attack when she could hear a fly near her bedroom window that I could not locate and kill.

Bathing Battles

In her journal I wrote that Katie enjoyed water play throughout the summer before her second birthday.  I can't remember when or how things started to go south, but within in a few months bath time became an all out war.   Katie developed an intense dread of bathing, an abject terror of the water or even the suggestion of it.  I wondered if something traumatic happened at their dad's house to cause the sheer terror, but I never heard of anything.

When bath time came around Kate would absolutely LOSE IT!  I always ran the water before she came into the bathroom to avoid the rushing water being loud and frightening, and I never filled it very full at all.  But the minute Kate saw the tub she just freaked out.  As I lifted her over the edge of the tub she'd pull her legs all the way up to her body in a tiny ball to avoid any part of her touching the water.  She'd cling to me, scratching and clawing and trying to climb out of the tub, screaming frantically for her life. It was unbelievable!  Heartbreaking!  As if I was dropping her into acid or boiling water!  My ears would ring for half an hour after it was over.  And it took her almost that long to recover from the sobbing and hyperventilating.

Thankfully Katie had very little hair, so it didn't need frequent shampooing.  I resorted to basically just giving her sponge baths, saving tub baths for rare occasions.  When we moved to our apartment I hoped maybe things might be a bit better, (maybe Mom's bathroom had something to do with the terror?) but no such luck.  Every time I gave her a bath I feared a knock on the door from child services, imaging what it must sound like to the neighbors.  Gradually, the terror of the water itself ebbed, as long as I kept it very shallow, but shampooing continued to be a nightmare.  She developed horrible cradle cap because I just could not wash her hair frequently enough or well enough.  It became really disgusting and embarrassing.