Washable Workwear Wednesday: Bliss Silk Dolman Top

My husband and I are both permanent WFH. He is on Zoom all day and is extremely loud so I can hear everything he says. I have noticed that he is constantly talking about himself, where he grew up, etc. I never hear him ask anyone else about themselves, or other people talking about themselves. And he seems to be spending more time talking about himself than about the work. This is weird, right? It seems so self-centered and irrelevant.

I think I need a career coach. For about a year now, I’ve been bouncing back and forth between fantasizing about stepping back at work to spend more time at home and wanting to really lean in and accomplish something meaningful with my legal career. I don’t know what I really want, but I’m clearly not happy with my current situation. Any recommendations for someone that can help me get unstuck and figure out a path forward?

Thank you in advance for reading my novel. We are trying to get help with our 1st grader and have been going in circles. I am hoping someone might recognize some of these behaviors and can put a name to the issue, which we can then use with a therapist.

Our daughter is a young, fidgety first grader who occasionally has the personality of an energetic 6 year old boy (that sort of annoying, run around type behavior). She was screened for ADHD at our request. She technically meets the criteria but only on her worst days– and even then it’s sort of subjective (eg. when DH filled out the parent version of the screener, she met the criteria, when I did it she didn’t, and it had to do with our perspective on “occasionally” vs “often”). She did not technically meet the criteria based on her teacher evaluation, nor was she flagged by the school. I consulted with the SPED department and they told us they took a look at her records and spoke with her teacher after we asked and she “might be a borderline case but we see no reason to intervene.” This is in a district where they are fast to flag kids with attention issues.

So with that as background because I have come up with “ADHD meltdown” in my googling and that’s what the first therapist suggested, the actual behavioral issue we have at home is that when she is tired (and it’s worse when she’s tired and hungry) she has uncontrolled, wildly inappropriate for her age, “fits.” They aren’t really tantrums, exactly– it’s like her entire prefrontal cortex stops regulating her control. She gets fixated on fighting back with whatever is being asked of her (this will typically be something like eating dinner, taking a bath with her sister instead of taking one alone, doing a chore, really anything she objects to in the moment when she is in one of these moods)…and then it takes a nosedive. She will do things that seem to be attention seeking, like start throwing the food off her plate onto the floor, or kicking the bathtub, or taking a toy and banging it against the wall– stuff she knows she shouldn’t do but seems to be doing it for the reaction. This goes on and on for up to several hours. She gets this sort of glazed look in her eye and the whole time it’s like “just ahead and f*cking try me”. She has never been violent towards anyone, but will throw things, slam doors, stomp, etc. Cooling off doesn’t help her.

We’ve done PCIT for ADHD style meltdowns, we’ve read The Explosive Child…I feel like those are both things that give us techniques that can occasionally help but are not targeted at the exact problem. DH and I are at the point where we are not-so-jokingly considering wearing body cameras because she’s truly like Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde. 80% of the time she’s a regular, awesome, extremely bright and fun kid. 18% of the time she’s really squirrelly and fidgety and can be hard to transition from one activity to another. 2% of the time, and ONLY when tired or tired/hungry and/or tired and has to pee she acts like a child with severe, uncontrollable behavioral issues. The two therapists we’ve seen so far (one virtually when this really got bad when she was 4 during COVID, and one we’ve seen live for about 8 months) focus this on inattention but they don’t really grasp the severity of her meltdowns and give us techniques that would work with someone who had some grasp on their own self control.

What works to bring her out of the meltdowns [can take 30 minutes to several hours] is to get her so distracted she forgets she’s having a meltdown. That’s it. No other technique we’ve been given or have attempted works. When we attempted the “ignore it” approach she became dangerous to herself for attention (started walking into walls, bouncing like a pinball in the hallway and nearly fell down the stairs). We try to lean into it with silly, and it is like pouring gasoline on the fire. I’ve gotten really good at seeing them coming and getting her fed and focused on something so she doesn’t have time to get wound up, and this helps tremendously. It also works when I make it about me (“I’m really upset. I need to calm down. Any ideas?” If she’s not completely over the edge she gets distracted helping me and in the process it gets her calm too). Also, this ONLY ever happens with me or my husband. She never acts like this with grandparents or babysitters (but will have a full meltdown when we return if one was brewing).

So, I’m not really asking for help, because I know we need professional help, but I am not having luck with the professionals we’ve found so far. Her ped offered to put her on meds for adhd (neither her teacher nor we think she needs them right now) and suggested melatonin to help her go to bed (this was a hilarious fail, it tripled the problem because she felt EXTRA tired but couldn’t fall asleep so had these meltdowns like 3x per week!). The therapist we are working with means well but I think she’s solving the wrong problem because I’m not able to explain how utterly irrational she gets.

There is a little boy in her class at school who acts basically exactly like she does when she’s having a meltdown and I wish it were appropriate to ask what his behavior is called. He has a full time para and she’s amazing.

Taking suggestions on sister names for Emilia. Preferably easy to pronounce in Romance languages. Thanks for helping me brainstorm!