and two steps back

Yesterday we took Tator to church with us for the first time in about 5 months. I think I blogged about her problems with church awhile ago. She hates it. She says she doesn't want to hear about God and that she doesn't believe in him.

Sitting in church with her has been a struggle. We give her paper and pencils to write with, I even used to take crayons and she still isn't happy. She has threw herself down on the floor before and crawled under the pews. She has kicked the people sitting in front of us from under the pew. She has pulled her dress up around her belly and sat, not caring at all about embarrassing herself, just trying to upset her dad and I. One Sunday morning she ran from us and it took us 20 minutes, 3 ushers and 1 Sunday School teacher to find her. The Sunday school teacher found her upstairs hiding in a dark hall way inside a dark closet.

Some Sunday mornings it has started before she's even out of her room. She will wake up very early and jump off her bed repeatedly. Or slam her dresser drawers. You get the picture. Awhile ago she woke up in the middle of the night for 4 Saturday nights in a row and she would jump off her bed, slam her register open and closed, slam dresser drawers, and growl like a wild animal. Telling her to go back to bed was pointless and trying to talk to her was our of the question. She would literally keep herself up all night.

We just continued to go and deal with the fighting. I remember going one morning taking her in without any shoes on because she had kicked her little brother so many times in the car we took them off her.

For the last 6 months Tator has raged daily, when we would get to Sunday it would just be easier to stay home with her. Neither Shawn or I would feel like fighting with her. I wanted to go to church and enjoy myself and Shawn always had enough to do at the new house that he would go and work taking her and I would go to church. Except I wouldn't enjoy myself, I would cry through the whole service because my husband was not there.

Then we started using respite and that gave us a chance to all go to church together. Of course, she would go to church with the respite provider, sit in the service and be fine. No surprise!

This week we decided we were going to try it again. She went and did well. I was not surprised, I know she is very capable of sitting through church, she had done it for many years up until now. As soon as we walked out of church I could tell by her body language that things were about to change. On the way home she had some attitude with the other kids, but she wasn't going to get out of line because she knew take out pizza was at stake.

She ate lunch and then was told she needed to go lay down in bed. This is something she does every weekend, she is totally used to. It gives all of us a break, plus the other kids all lay down.

I could tell as soon as I said it she was going to start. So I followed her upstaris as she yelled and carried on that she was not gong to lay down. She ran in and jumped on her bed. I told her if she didn't lay down I would be leaving and not tucking her in. I said this 2 more times then turned around walked out and shut the door. She then threw herself down and started to cry. She loudly cried this fake cry for awhile then started to very loudly kick her dresser. Then from that she progressed to slamming her dresser drawers and growling like a wild animal.

I just kept thinking she'd calm down.I did not want to have to go into her room, she is unreasonalble when she's like that. She kept being so loud and I knew she was going to wake Sissy so I finally went in. I tried talking to her to find out what was wrong she just kept jumping on her bed and telling me no she wasn't going to lay down. I tried to hold her and she started kicking me and hitting. She ended up kicking me pretty hard in the stomach and biting my wrist. So I left.

She ended up jumping on her bed and yelling for a couple hours. Then came down and spent some time sitting in the living room with dad. Then I gave her supper and put her back to bed.

Tonight she wrote sentences for kicking and biting me.