Who needs it? At least that’s the new motto around here. I spent the weekend at my Partners in Policymaking class, and by all reports all was fine on the homefront for the vast majority of the weekend. Except…(isn’t there always an except?)

LuLu and Super Dad had a disagreement about where LuLu was going to sit at church. When you rewind the tape it sounds more like they had a misunderstanding (LuLu misunderstood and escalated), and the trouble began. This is not unusual at our house and is part and parcel of our complex daughter’s complex combination of disabilities. The result is best described as Hurricane LuLu.

Once Hurricane LuLu arrives, you can do little but batten down the hatches and take cover. (The same is true for LuLu internally I think – she’s struggling to find a way to release the anxiety and make the storm blow over to reach a calm.) You can call it what you want – Intermittent Explosive Disorder, extreme anxiety resulting from her OCD, a complete meltdown that many people on the autistic spectrum have. Doesn’t matter how you define it, the results are the same. Something gets destroyed or damaged. LuLu is always regretful.

Yesterday, it was LuLu’s hair. Her already SHORT hairstyle (from a slight storm last spring that resulted in one strategic whack of her locks), was chopped to smithereens! We had no choice but to “erase and start over.” So, I located a friend who had electric clippers and does her husband’s hair. She quickly agreed to get things all evened out (and sadly had to use the closest setting to make that happen.

So now LuLu looks a great deal like Demi Moore in GI Jane. It’s shocking, attention-getting and further separates LuLu from the crowd. It is not what she needs (or we want for her). It just points out how different she is from everyone else. And all this has occurred at a time when she was just starting to be successful in social interaction with peers at church.

The action, for the record, was not an attention-getting or shock-provoking act, from my understanding of LuLu’s inner workings. It was purely a release of the explosive anger she has as a result of her anxiety and OCD. Yes, an extreme method of release, but a method of release just the same. She felt better…relieved…afterwards.

But I can’t ignore that it was an act of self-mutilation, self-hurting. This is evident. One of my obvious first moves was to call her therapist. It was important to get professional involvement in what this hurricane had brought in.

Of course this aspect frightens me. LuLu has always had self-injurious behaviors, specifically she scratches herself and picks her skin in a big way (were not just talking nail-biting here). Yes, cutting and self-mutilation cross my mind as she speeds toward being a teenager. Eating disorders loom heavy in my mind as well.

But I can’t borrow that trouble…there is more than enough trouble for today.

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