Frisky Sheep

Most days I think I deal with my youngest daughter’s mental illness pretty well.  Most days I try to deal with her issues with love and humor.  I think she goes to bed feeling loved most of the time and that is huge progress, but we have had a rough couple weeks.  This morning I lost my lovin feeling and my humor and joined my daughter in being spitting mad. 

This afternoon everything was fine.  Pre-teen daughter likes to take care of the sheep by herself in the afternoon.  Normally they walk into their night enclosure without any problems BUT this weekend we moved the sheep.  They are in nice grass and weeds with big rocks that the sheep can jump on.  They are in sheep heaven!  They have not been eating the hay and fodder we give them.  Today the sheep seemed to tease Pre-teen Daughter and she started screaming at them.  Screaming at animals doesn't work.  The sheep thought it was another reason to run around and jump off rocks. 

Pre-teen Daughter screamed at her brothers to help and they asked her to ask nicely, that didn't help at all!  After watching his sister get more and more frustrated Stick Boy tried to go help her, but she kept screaming so he started waving sticks and jumping up and down.  This doesn't exactly get the sheep to go where you want them or calm down your screaming sister. 

My husband called me because I was at the top of the property and didn't hear the commotion.  We got Pre-Teen daughter to stop screaming and walk away, stopped stick boy from scaring the sheep, then Darling Husband and I cornered Blackwell (our biggest and sweetest sheep) I got the halter on her and walked her into the night enclosure the rest of the sheep followed like, well, sheep. 

We went back into the house and it took me over an hour to calm down Pre-teen Daughter.  I think I got her into bed feeling loved but I am exhausted.

This is how we move the sheep's night time enclosure from one area into another.  I asked to have it on wheels but Darling Husband thinks this is easier.

Mental Illness

Our family is a family that suffers with Mental Illness.  We met our beautiful 11 year old daughter when she was 4 ½, she had been through a lot in those few years.  It was very clear that my daughter would have a lot of needs from the beginning.  Like a lot of adoptive parents we believed that love, consistency, counseling, care, and more love would heal our daughter.  We were wrong.  Mental illness in children is so hard to treat.  Finding a Dr. willing to work with children younger than 13 is difficult our area has waiting lists.  We have been lucky, our daughter has responded well to medications and is doing so much better than she was 2 years ago.  We are lucky, so many of our friends are not so lucky.  Mental illness like any chronic illness affects not just the person but the whole family. 

When we decided to get sheep and cattle we had to consider how our daughter would respond to the extra animals to care for and extra demands on her parents’ time.  Could we handle the extra chores and meet our daughter’s needs when she has a break down?  She was doing amazingly well and we decided to go for it.  So far it has been an amazing experience.  Our Pre-Teen Daughter and Stick Boy are seeing responses to their actions from the sheep and cattle.  It is on a much larger scale than the cats and dog give them.  When the sheep do not respond like we expect them to while we are herding them and Pre-Teen starts screaming at them the sheep run then we have to calm ourselves down, and calmly gather the sheep it may take an extra half an hour but the sheep need to be kept safe.  We are learning to calm down faster and not always scream our frustration.  We are trying to get the new cattle used to us and Pre-Teen gets mad that Hope, the young heifer, is very skittish and wants to run from her.  Hope seems to feel her frustration and the more rushed Pre-Teen is the further Hope runs from her.  We are learning patience.  Mostly we are learning our actions have bigger consequences than just our little world. 

Counseling, medication, and the new ranching lifestyle all are to be improving our daughter’s life.  

We are blessed.