The Ugly Truth

Yesterday afternoon was hard. Madeline’s behavior went downhill all afternoon. I took her with me to pick up a few gifts at Pier One while John David was at swim practice, big mistake number one. She was begging for different things, showed some bad behavior, grunting at me, scowling at me ect but we kept it under control, both of us. I knew she was tired so instead of going home I drove around while she fell asleep. Ahhhh…..she slept for about 40 minutes, through picking up John David until we got to the gym for his basketball scrimmage…….it was wayyyyy downhill after that. Sigh, big sigh! We walked into the gym and were getting on the bleachers when a Dad said something to her…..she scowled at him and grunted……I told her to look at me so we could talk….she would not….I counted down to no avail. It was on…….the fight. I picked her up to take her out of the gym to talk with her and she lost it…….hitting me, saying “I hate you” ect. can’t even remember all the name calling. I kept my cool and was very firm, took her outside to the car and planned on sitting in the front while she sat in the back and could calm down. It got worse……she started hitting me, name calling, I hate everyone she could think of….so I went with our old technique and held her. That is so much harder now since she is bigger and harder to control. She bit me, screaming that she had to tee tee. Took her back inside to use bathroom, she yelled at me the whole time she was using the bathroom. I carried her back out to the car, I was ready to beat her up at this point, trying so hard to keep my cool and it was fading fast. She tried to run away from me, I grabbed her, yelled at her to never do that again, put her in the car and drove home with her screaming that she hated me, God, Jesus, Julianne, Janie. I was trying so hard not to yell that all right back at her, instead I  kept telling her that I hated her behavior…I lost it big…I was crying by then. I marched her in the house, put her on the bottom stair and told her to sit there until she was ready to talk nicely. She did! But kept yelling at me. I’m sure I said A LOT more wrong things to her during this entire rage, it has blurred into one big glob. In about 5 minutes she said she was ready and cried big tears and told me EVERY LITTLE THING she did wrong. She really seems so sad and sorry for her behavior.
 I am at a loss. While I know we used to go through this almost daily, I thought we were beyond the ugliness of biting and hitting! I am heart broken over her brokeness. I’m just so very sad that her reality is to become threatened and lash out at the one who loves her the most. Will she ever get past this? Will I ever learn to handle it better? I need to document this to see an improvement some day. Like I said, I am at a loss.