Thanks for these responses! Weary, I will have to track down your posts. It sounds great to have someone knowledgeable to talk to! We've tried suggesting she take deep breaths but we just get a, "I don't want to take deep breaths!" back. :/ But working with someone as you are doing seems like it would be helpful.
I do feel like I need someone to talk to about it. I'm really a talker. When she was a baby I had a few other moms with "difficult" babies with whom I could talk, but we moved out of state. At first I talked to the other moms about it but it became clear after a while that the issues my daughter had were worse than what they were dealing with. I started to feel that my talking with the other parents was hurting my daughter because they might begin to think of her as "troubled" and not want to associate with her. So I've shut up since then. It's hard though because I feel like other parents judge us by her behavior. I want to say, "Look, I've got two other kids who are angels. It's not our parenting, it's that genetically she has some emotional issues and we are trying to help her as best we can." Instead I act like what she is doing at that moment is an aberration and very out of character for her when in fact she's like that every day. Honestly, I don't know how to handle parents who only have normal kids.
