jessica

on sunday night Jessica (11) also threw a huge tantrum. she was here in the office building watching tv in the dining room, which is actually completely forbidden....but everyone makes exceptions for her. she is the deaf/mute girl and its impossible to control her anyway, she basically does what she wants. since she goes to a boarding school during the week, she is only here on the weekends and somehow there is no way to punish her for not doing what she is supposed to. Her center of life is supposed to be her boarding school, and the hogar is just supposed to be a help to the school, but that has been changing, her center of life is the hogar now. partly because her sister is now here, i guess. also, because we've been taking sign courses, she can communicate better with the tias, she is a little bit less of an outsider.

anyway, at 9 pm Tia Flor came to turn off the tv and send her to bed, but she freaked out and locked herself into the Sala de Estudio. So Tia Flor had to get the keys from the director to unlock the room. Jessica then escaped and went outside, where she then wandered around in the pouring rain and tried to test whether she fits through the bars of the fence to escape.

It took 3 people to forceably drag her into the building, then she was kicking and screaming on the floor. She can't talk, but she can make sounds, when she crys she makes a weird moaning/howling sound. They couldn't really move her, so they just held her down on the floor, hoping that she would get tired out and calm down. After about half an hour I didn't hear her anymore, so I guess they had taken her back to the house.
But a few minute later, she was out front again, this time only in her socks, standing in the rain. Then she took off her socks and was running around barefoot. They called an ambulance and got 2 paramedics to take her inside again. They said that her symptoms were typical of a nervous breakdown and took her to the hospital. There they said that it's possible that she has schizophrenia, but didn't want to give her any drugs because of her age. In any case, they need to get her checked out, they have found a neurologist who speaks sign language. Obviously,, her treatment is going to be expensive and the Hogar will have to pay for it. Which is really bad timing because at the moment the Hogar is going through a financial crisis...more on that later.

Last week she was in such a good mood and really well behaved. She had just won a gold medal in some Special Olympics in Santiago, in running, and was super nice to everyone. Generally though, she is badly behaved. You can't yell at her because she can't hear, and if she wants to ignore you she just looks away, then you can't communicate with her at all anymore.

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