Custody Hearing/G’s Issues

The cus­tody hear­ing is this morn­ing, 9 am I think. Good thoughts are great­ly appreciated.

On Mon­day, G’s doc­tor informed Sam’s ex-wife that 1) G is bipo­lar; 2) There are no “envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors” involved in bipo­lar dis­or­der; 3) Her weight gain is due to unmon­i­tored overeat­ing, not the Risperdal. 

The ex-wife was not hap­py, to say the least. She insists that G is ONLY “sick” when here, and implies that it’s all because of me. She wants to blame all of G’s alarm­ing weight gain over the last two months on the med­ica­tion. The child has gone up two full cloth­ing sizes since the end of May, and she has­n’t got­ten any taller. That tru­ly is exces­sive. But she’d been on the Risperdal for some time before leav­ing to vis­it her moth­er, and her weight had­n’t shot up then, so it isn’t the culprit.

G was already prone to binge eat­ing and hoard­ing food before tak­ing Risperdal. Risperdal can increase appetite. We were mon­i­tor­ing her intake very close­ly because of the com­pul­sive eat­ing pat­terns. While her moth­er insists that she knows every­thing the child has eat­en this sum­mer, that’s pret­ty obvi­ous­ly not the case—especially since both she and the kids describe a far more per­mis­sive envi­ron­ment there in all ways than what we have in our home.

G is tak­ing in far more calo­ries than I do on any giv­en day. For instance, we got the kids at about 12:30 on Sun­day. They report­ed that they’d just fin­ished a “huge” break­fast, and weren’t ready for lunch. By about 2, G was hun­gry. She ate two enor­mous fajitas—I could­n’t have eat­en one of those in one sit­ting. By 4:30 she was “starv­ing” again, and she ate at least two big ham­burg­ers that night for din­ner. She was fuss­ing after snacks in between. She eats far more than R does, and he’s a 14-year-old boy! She’s sev­er­al sizes larg­er than Katie in every­thing but length now, despite the fact that Katie is about 5 to 7 inch­es taller than she is. Those of you who know Katie know that she isn’t skin­ny, though she does have a long, lean build. Since G has a very small frame and has always been fair­ly small for her age, this isn’t just a mat­ter of diver­si­ty in body shapes and sizes.

I know all too well how unhealthy it is to have kids get­ting all freaked out about weight, and I cer­tain­ly don’t want to do or say any­thing that would lead to even more dys­func­tion­al eat­ing behav­iors on G’s part. But I am wor­ried about G’s weight, and I know all too well how poor eat­ing habits can lead to life­long prob­lems. She’s eat­ing emotionally-whenever she’s sad, tense, or bored her first instinct is to eat. We’ve tried talk­ing to her about those pat­terns, but she isn’t ready to hear what we’re saying.

To make mat­ters worse, she does­n’t enjoy any active pur­suits, pre­fer­ring to be seden­tary. Sam and I do, too, but I know those aren’t healthy pat­terns. I’ve always wished that I’d formed a habit of exer­cise and found some sport or oth­er pur­suit that I tru­ly enjoyed when I was a kid. That’s one of the things that Wayne and I real­ly want­ed for Katie, and I’m glad she does have such interests.

Hap­pi­ly, G con­tin­ues to be far less volatile than she was pre-Risperdal. Her moth­er is mak­ing big nois­es about tak­ing her to the clin­ic at Stanford—I think some­one was sup­posed to be impressed (did­n’t work). If G ends up liv­ing there, I feel fair­ly cer­tain that her moth­er will take her off the med­ica­tion imme­di­ate­ly. Poor kid. I know some­one who was diag­nosed as bipo­lar whose par­ents refused to allow her any treat­ment. She had to wait until she was 18 and could seek out treat­ment on her own, and that made those years more dif­fi­cult than they should have been.