A lot of sleep....

Today Faith did not wake up until 11am. She went to bed last night at 8pm. All day long...good mood...bad mood...feeling ok...feeling terrible...she spent about three hours on the couch this afternoon cuddling with her service dog Cass. She told me he cannot make the bad feelings go away but he helps her cope with them. She started writing a book, as she described it, the other day in Math class when she was not feeling good. She read the two pages she wrote so far to me and her mother tonight. It was pretty amazing. I am going to retype it tomorrow and post it on her. I am trying to talk her into writing her feelings on this blog. I think she will but I will have to retype them so that she can get more thoughts out, otherwise she will only type a few sentences at a time. She is only 11 and has not mastered typing yet. Hope everyone has a good night. I will type the beginning of the book on my next post. Kris

A tough day...

It has been a tough day for Faith. I am pretty sure it is because of the time change. Just like me she seems to get down in a funk when it gets dark so early and the weather gets bad. But for her it is just a miserable feeling she cannot stand and it overcomes her. It also has to do with a string of incidents at her school over the past couple of weeks. As I have posted a long time ago, we first realized Faith had something wrong with her when we moved to Fort Campbell and tried to enroll her in first grade. She had an incident with a counselor where we allowed the school to rip her out of Renae's arms to keep her in school, trusting them with their thoughts that she was just having separation issues. It was a very traumatic incident for her and she still has nightmares about it. One of her problems with her anxiety is she never wants to lose control like she did in that school those few days and never wants to suffer like she did then. We pulled her out of school and home schooled her that year while we figured out what was wrong with her. Well after a few years of hard work by dozens of doctors, counselors, teachers and administrators guess who is the counselor at Faith's school this year. She has been so brave this year and last week she did not want to do work while this counselor was in her classroom teaching something to the kids. He told her she had to do the work and she told him no and that she did not like him and did not have to do the work. Well he went off, not only freaking her out but also making numerous other children cry in the class and then topped it off by punishing the entire class. She ended up writing a letter explaining her feelings and how hurt she was by what he did long ago. This so called counselor has refused to apologize to her to help her get over this incident in her life. Regardless of whether he "remembers" her and what happened he has continued to treat her differently than the other kids and will not say the few little words that will help her. The entire school staff knows Faith and her story and no one can make him do the right thing, but it is what it is. We, along with her awesome teacher and principal, decided she and the other kids would leave the class while he was in there. However, Faith understands that she cannot base her life on other peoples actions and has stood firm on the fact that she wants to go back and be with her class when he is there. So she went back this week and he freaked out and said she was not allowed in the class, embarrassing her, making her feel really awkward and pissing me off. But again, this has affected her. I went to the school with Renae today and said without a doubt I will not let this man ruin four years worth of hard work by dozens of people and most importantly Faith. She has made tremendous strides this year, almost too fast for us to keep up with her. However each time she makes a step forward toward her goals, this man is bringing her two steps back. Right now she is curled up in her closet. It is not all his fault, it is just the way she feels. We can't take her to get help, the only thing doctors want to do is hospitalize her, and she cannot handle the suffering moods she is feeling. I think it may be a long winter. I think I have been rambling on and the other two kids are about to make me want to run away. It is hard to give them the attention they need when we are trying to control Faith and help her. Have a good evening.

I am back to blogging...

It had been over a month and we have had quite a bit of changes in our lives. We have moved out to the country on five acres. It has been a hard transition for Faith. We have wanted to move for a while to see how a PCS (primary change of station) or a cross country move would go. I am glad we did this first. It has been an eye opening experience for us. I will get into more depth and attempt to go back to daily posts again. We do have internet but it is almost like dial-up. So I just wanted to say hello from the Forchione Family and let you know I am back. Thanks to everyone for your support and I hope we can continue to open up doors for children who suffer from Mood Disorders. Kris

Back in school today....

Well it was a short cycle. Faith woke up this morning and went to school feeling well. The only complaint all day was a headache!! She came home and did her homework and is outside playing for a little while after dinner. I knew that is what it was...I feel the same sometimes. It is just a little scary because of all of our past experiences. She is such a trooper and has made it through too much to let this slow her down. Her and Cass even rode the bus home today with her little sister Abbi. Cass is too big to fit under the seats so he sat in the seat with her and looked out the window!!! How cool is that. I will have to ask her mother to take a picture of that!!! Tough 96 hours...but things are getting back to normal. Kris