Mirror, mirror on the wall.... (or, we need a couple of screws loose)

Oh dear. This is amazing. Zoe believes her head is too small for her body. Its called "Body Dimorphic Disorder" and she is on anti-psychotics for it. Trust the experts, right? More therapy.... good drugs... thats what she needs. NOT! 12-year-old little sister comes to us and says "Hey, I KNOW why Zoe thinks her head is too small.... it's the mirror in our room. It's like a funhouse mirror. Dad put the top screws into the wall too tight, so it's warped. It makes your head look small!" (Dad had put this mirror up in the girl's room about 2-3 years ago, and hasn't touched it since!) SO, dad fixed it the night before we brought Zoe home, and now it gives a MUCH truer image of head-size and shape. It was just a matter of loosening the screws.


Sadly, the damage has been done, and Zoe still believes her head is the wrong proportion. Its hard to remove a belief so easily that has stuck in your head for years.

Still a Rebel.... at 40!

Well, THANKFULLY family week at Remuda Ranch is over. It was brutal. The other families who shared our week only got to see our family through the eyes of our ill daughter. When it was their turn to tell us their opinions of our family, (mostly negative, in the sense that we try to hard) it was mercifully cut short by time constraints. My head and stomach are still churning from the experience. I came home unsure of how to parent, for every decision I made seemed to have such possibilities to be misconstrued, fall short, or be more than necessary.... depending on my intent and how the actions were received. In other words, I came home constantly second-guessing if I was doing the right thing. Do I let the child cry over spilt milk, and thus express negative emotions.... or do I try to help them learn optimism and risk the accusation of putting a good face on a situation that is false? Do I have standards for behavior and set the bar high.... or do I let the kids do what they feel like and risk latter that they resent me for not teaching them social niceties? Do I use nicknames, as we have always done, or are they demeaning? Needless to say, I cried for about 48 hours straight when I got home. Freaked out my kids. Took a walk on our country road in the pitch black night, praying for 4 miles that the wandering mountain lion or rattlesnake would relieve me of my misery. Came home unscathed and disappointed. It was a sucky 40th birthday. At moments, I thought how symmetrical it would be to have the same dates for birth and death on my tombstone.

BUT I am coming out of the fog. More on specifics latter. But I am humbled by the prayers of friends, and I want you to know that Zoe tells us she is 90% committed to recovery. If I had to go through hell and be humbled to give her a shot at regaining life, then I don't care if a bunch of families I'll never see again think I am a nutcase.

Reading...

I'd LIKE to be reading "The Brothers Karamazov." I'll probably take it with me for Family Week at Remuda next week. But, at present and for the forseeable future, I'm reading the above book and finding some comfort in it.... though not as much comfort as I find in "The Brothers Karamazov." Dostoevsky speaks to my heart of the evil in the world, and our part in it- our possibility, every moment until death- of our redemption if we just accept it. Hmmmm maybe these two book WILL have something in common.

No Question Left Behind: Teens Helping Teens: The Teen Dating Scene

No Question Left Behind: Teens Helping Teens: The Teen Dating Scene

Happy Birthday baby daughter!

My littlest girl turned 9! (The four babies after her were all boys, which I used too think quite unfair of God, but after dealing with oldest girl, I am GRATEFUL for boys!!!) Belle is a ray of sunshine, compassionate, intuitive, optimistic. Neat kid! Happy birthday, darling!

Punching bag

You can say all you want that anorexia is just as much a disease as, say, cancer..... but I have never herd a cancer patient blame her mother... say she has no attachment for her mother.... prefer that her mother kept out of her life. Cancer patients rally to their support systems. Anorexics push them away and use them as punching bags. Cancer is a disease we group together to fight, and we want the disease to lose. Anorexia is a disease that divides the family, and the patient herself wants it to be triumphant.

I feel like a punching bag. My dd's cool, calm, "stick-the-knife-in" pronouncements during therapy make me question if I am, or can ever be, a good parent to my remaining children. I hate second guessing myself, and dd seems to have some legitimate memories of times I failed her.

All parents fail. None are perfect. But why did it have to be THIS disease that came out?

Homeschooling causes eating disorders?

My dear daughter is obsessed with getting back to her social life. Her social life, and all the anxiety and obsession that come with being a "modern" teen in a non-Christian setting, was one of the things that launched her into an eating disorder. Yet just a few short months ago, she was so THANKFUL I had homeschooled her, and she hadn't had to deal with the hell of middle school.

So dad and mom say shes not going back to her old high school. What I got in reply was a diatribe against homeschooling- how poorly socialized she was, how she can't be "normal" and date and hang out with her friends 6 days a week, how unhealthy it is to grow up surrounded by (gasp!) FAMILY instead of peers. How homeschooling caused her E.D. basically.

I say bull. She had a superior moral education (wether she chooses to follow it is her choice). She had family who loved her. She got to spend extra time in intergenerational relationships (grandparents and younger siblings) and not be so peer obsessed. She had the freedom to develop interests beyond the Disney channel and the mall. She had time at park days, scout meetings, field trips, 4H and birthday parties with peers, but she didn't get to be engineered by their expectations of her.

I am sad to hear her say this. I hope one day, when she grows up, she'll change her tune. Till then, I need to remember I am talking to an eating disorder, and it won't let my daughter hear me. She's a hostage. But she's a willing one, and she is dying to disolve herself in the peer culture and lose her identity and the responsibility of being thoughtful and Christian in her actions.