Hope's Awful, Terrible, No-good Day

Our new "normal" with Hope hasn't been easy. In the last 24 hours hours, Hope has out done herself.  She has pinched and kicked me, tried to poke my eye out with a pencil and bit me while I was confiscating the pencil. I received an email from her teacher saying her behavior has been difficult for the last month. She tried ignoring the behavior and depriving Hope of her end of the day prize. It didn't work. (Mind you, Hope is in a class run by a respected children psychiatric hospital). Today Hope gave everyone mean and nasty looks, stuck out her tongue at an adult, rolled her eyes at everyone, crumbled up her seat work, announced that she was not doing any work and followed through with that. The teacher EVEN tried putting her in the timeout room for 5 minutes (Gasp!). She wants to meet with us.

After school yesterday, we went to therapy, like we always do on Tuesdays. Hope went first, then GB. The therapist never came out to get Hope for their sibling session. Afterward, the therapist told the Dad that she chose not to have the sibling session because she didn't want to subject GB to Hope's mean and nasty behavior. The therapist was visibly shaken.

I spoke with the MHA about respite for Hope. They are concerned that none of their regular respite workers would be able to handle Hope and keep her and everyone else safe. They want us to consider their more intensive program, aimed at children in danger of being placed. I deferred the rest of the conversation until after we see the psychiatrist on Monday.

As for the highlight of my day, I got an email that the 5 point harness is in the mail! God is good! (And so are friends!)