Jani's at the mercy of her mind

[barracuda]

Thanks for that, nashvillebrook. That story has got to be difficult to share, but despite your statement about having no answers, I would just say that something in your life has given you an uncommon ability to look at your predicament with calmness and retrospection which I have to say I find admirable, and has put a more human face on this terrifying story, at least for me.

[Penguin]

Yea.

[nashvillebrook]

Thanks 'cuda. Calmness and retrospection, what little I have, is one of the good things about getting older. Not an intrinsic quality.

But, what's also weird is that I didn't immediately identify with the story. I've built up some armor, for sure. Moved away and stayed away as my (adopted) mother was adamant that I not come back with Joyce (bio-mom) and Justin always orbiting -- either living there or about to descend once again. It was a full time job for my adopted mother to keeping Justin in the system and/or make sure he got his meds when he was out. Joyce stayed drunk or hungover and in a constant state of "no access." You could have conversations with her -- she seemed normal -- but there was not a "core" person there to connect with. I think of her as Gollum.

When my mother died I found some letters he wrote to her from 'inside.' In one he requested that she find him a copy of Lovecraft's Necronomicon. Aside from the oddness/lame creepiness of that, it seems pretty amazing for someone with a 4th grade education. Obviously his interested was face value: he wanted to use the dark arts to assert some control over his life/environment, as there was absolutely nothing under his control -- least of all himself. I have no idea how this shook out. I pretty much doubt mother would supply him with it. She'd be interested enough to ask a librarian for it, for sure. And I bet that was a scene: an unkempt elderly woman requesting Lovecraft's Necronomicon at the Eau Gallie library.

Joyce would have been a child schizophrenic in the 50s in Cleearwater Beach. She terrorized the family. There's a story about running across all the roofs in on their side of the street (for attention, it was one of her favorite tricks). Her sister, Judy (my aunt who took me in when I was in the 11th grade) was smart, pretty, and super level-headed. The kind of kid who went to church, made all her clothes by hand, and got the hell out of Florida as soon as she possibly could.

Speaking of Clearwater, here's a tidbit: Joyce (bio-mom) was friends with L Ron Hubbard's daughter. The family referred to her - 'that Hubbard girl' b/c of her father's notoriety, so I don't even know her first name. They used to go out in the boat together and smoke and drink. I asked Joyce if she spent any time around L-Ron and she said she didn't b/c her friend hated her father. I didn't know enough about Scientology to ask any really decent questions. Like, I wonder if Hubbard didn't have mental illness in his close family, to explain it's projection into Scientology.

[justdrew]

yes, thanks for the perspective nashvillebrook, I guess I might as well set this whole thing aside, it's beyond me

[MacCruiskeen]

Nashvillebrook, thanks for that post. It certainly deserves a response, but forgive me if I give January Schofield's slow martyrdom priority, because her suffering is intense, ongoing and documented daily (by her father, who is causing it, with the assistance of the psychiatric profession). Somebody has to stop it soon or she's dead.

It is like having to watch a public execution.

------------------------------------------

January's father Michael Schofield has a weblog that can only be called frighteningly crazy. He obviously needs help. Equally obviously, he is an imminent danger to himself and others, especially his children. No one is helping him, or them. On the contrary: Many people are earning money by hindering him and by endangering or directly damaging them.

The title of that blog is 'JanuaryFirst', which it's tempting to regard as a deliberately sick joke. (It isn't.) The following extract is from the page entitled 'About Me' - and he is not joking.

The first line, in BIG letters, is nothing if not clear. Unfortunately it's also a) demonstrably untrue, and b) utterly insane:

I am her voice.

Daddy Knows Best. Who could deny it? The inarticulate dummy he announces he's going to speak for is January, his allegedly "schizophrenic" (sic) six-year-old daughter. He is her voice. He's decided that. So that's that.

But look what follows immediately upon Mr. Schofield's pretty damn high-handed claim:

I have many problems, but like spokes on the wheel of a 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra, they all meet at the same point. Jani (or Janni). The spelling of her name has changed during her time in UCLA. (How did that happen?) At any length (sic), my life is a series of spokes that always return to her. (Why, exactly? Is that good for her? Or for you?)

I have committed myself to telling Jani's story, or is it our story? (You tell us. But the answer is obvious.) That is the first question to answer. Jani obviously cannot narrate her own story (Yes she can, but you won't let her.) , although I hope one day she will. In every story, though, there must (??) be a surrogate for the reader, a character for whom the reader projects himself/herself onto. (The author of these bizarre lines describes himself elsewhere as a college lecturer in English.) If as a writer I tried to project you as the reader into Jani, the story would fail. First, because Jani is/has been psychotic (sic) through much of it and second because I am not that good of a writer. No, this is our story, Susan and my own. (Now he is his wife's voice too.) As the reader, you will project yourself onto us. You will feel what we felt, because I can describe that. I cannot describe what Jani feels and neither can medical science. So Susan and I are the main characters and so my job is to allow you to project yourself into me and feel all the fear I have felt and still feel, even as I write this.


So we got that squared away. This is our story. (I.e., his and his wife's.) Jani is the driving force, but the story will told through my eyes. ...

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... ut_Me.html[/quote]

Can it get any more obvious? It can. Believe it or not, that's not the worst of his blog. The man is clearly very deeply disturbed. He doesn't even notice the most glaring contradictions in his own chosen and considered self-presentation. He is deeply insecure. He yearns to control everyone around him. He is completely self-obsessed. He has practically no self-insight, and zero insight into his daughter's unhappiness and its most blatantly obvious causes. Like his wife, he is frightened of his child's imagination. He swings from smothering her with obsessive attention to ignoring her most basic wishes and needs.

He has attempted suicide, is on "medication" for "depression" (whatever that is, exactly), is unemployed and running out of money. He says repeatedly that he fears insanity, and not for no reason. He is visibly falling to pieces, and no one is helping him.

He is obsessed with the idea that January is going to die, yet allows her to be "medicated" (sic) with a drug that "causes AIDS" (sic), as well as numerous other drugs that cause seizures and other very unpleasant "side-effects". His wife wonders, and not for no reason, if they are not in fact killing that child.

He has also beaten that child on several occasions, sometimes severely, as he himself admits quite openly on that very same blog. Besides actually hitting January ("with all my strength") , he has also dragged her by the feet into her room on at least two separate occasions (I have only managed to read five of his innumerable blog entries so far), and then locked the door.

The child is now six years old, but this has been going on for years.

We tried everything. Positive reinforcement. Negative reinforcement. Hitting her back (I won't tell you how many people told us that all she needed was a good beating). We took all her toys away. We gave her toys away. We tried starving her. We did EVERYTHING we could to try and break her. Nothing worked.

Perhaps even worse than the physical abuse is the emotional abuse and neglect, which is truly terrifying and which is too frequently and variously documented (by him) as to be summarisable. It is clearly the major cause of January's so-called "tantrums".


Photo of January, from the blogpage quoted.

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Question to the board: How would YOU respond to that treatment if it went on for years and you couldn't escape? Might you "throw a tantrum" (sic!)? Might you weep and wail, and break things? Might you hit back, bravely? Might you tell your tormentor you hated him? Might you beg for love? Might you eventually retreat, more and more, into a comforting imaginary world?

Well, then, you're a schizophrenic.

TAKE YOUR MEDS.

[agitprop]

The child may also have some contact with a different reality, but most children do and grow out of it. Not all children can become shaman! It is a phase, and although I admit that it's hard to tell (and I'm not trained to do it in any case), children who will become "shaman" seem to be somewhat more functional than this girl. Note also that it is possible to have contact with the "spirit world" and still be mentally ill, so....

Many little points call my attention in this story to the fact that the parents are probaly also not capable of seeing alternatives, many of which can be pursued at the same time as the conventional drug treatments. It is not normal (at least not in my book) for a six year child to eat at Burger King's every day. My sister had tremendous results with diet, herbs and vitamins. Certainly not enough to be taken off drugs, but still, great results. I am the first to dislike drugs, but I have to say that in the end, my sister is a lot better with them than without. But it took 10 years to find the good combo and dosage.

This article simply does not say enough about the case for us to make informed guesses, so we should just "talk for talk's sake" rather than discuss it directly. I still feel there's something wrong with the parents, though. But this doesn't say much. I think there's something wrong with most parents I meet, anyway, so....

I have a schizophrenic sibling too. Jani actually doesn't strike me as being schizophrenic, but severely hypomanic. She will likely go on to have an extreme case of manic depression. The tip off was the part where she tried to scratch her dad's eyes out after telling him she loved him, then no memory of it. Typical seizure activity of mania.

http://www.bipolarworld.net/Phelps/ph_2000/ph8.htm

Kid's been misdiagnosed. Seizures of this kind associated with fronto temporal lobe problems. She needs a whole team of specialists, theologians, sleep disorder specialists, and an exorcist or two thrown in for good measure.

Diet is really important for people with schizophrenia, but I'm with you. It's not the total answer. It's partly a genetic predisposition

[agitprop]

January's father Michael Schofield has a weblog that can only be called frighteningly crazy.

Sounds like a couple of very desperate parents with a violent crazy kid to me. Think you could do better? Ever lived with a violent mentally ill person? Dude, if this kid was born to just about anyone else she'd be institutionalized permanently or pitched off a cliff.

[MacCruiskeen]

She needs a whole team of specialists, theologians, sleep disorder specialists, and an exorcist or two thrown in for good measure.

No she doesn't. She needs a sane family, no more and no less.

[MacCruiskeen]

January's father Michael Schofield has a weblog that can only be called frighteningly crazy.

Sounds like a couple of very desperate parents with a violent crazy kid to me. Think you could do better?

Yes. So could anyone sane.

Ever lived with a violent mentally ill person?

No. (What do you want, just a medal? Or unquestioning obedience?)

Nor have I ever made a tiny child violent or "mentally ill" (sic), least of all by beating her, abusing her and depriving her for years. See my post above, and see the blog in which Michael Schofield describes doing so, at interminable length and in gruesome detail.

All this you simply ignore, because it's easier for you that way.

Dude, if this kid was born to just about anyone else she'd be institutionalized permanently or pitched off a cliff.

If that's supposed to be The Voice of Reason, then I'm afraid it just comes off sounding like callow tough-talk and brutal indifference, which it is. You clearly have a future as a psychiatrist. (The money's good, apparently.)

[Maddy]

So her father, a failed teacher out of work, and more than likely (like many teachers) an aspiring writer, is blogging this horror story possibly in hopes of making some money some where down the road, at his daughter's expense (possibly after these people have destroyed her)? Am I reading this correctly?

Sorry I can't read the blog. Can't. Literally. I'd just start crying. You can't read through blurred vision. I'm already so angry I can't see straight.

Also, nashvillebrook, you're a very strong person. Thank you for sharing your personal insight into something so traumatic.

[agitprop]

Macruiseken, You have to construct more than one mental model of reality when it comes to the child parent relationship. Not all children with serious problems end up that way because they are "abused by their parents" You're getting cause and effect totally confused here. The father is being honest. If he was truly an abusive personality type, he wouldn't admit the lengths to which he's gone to to try to remedy a horrible situation.

[agitprop]

So her father, a failed teacher out of work, and more than likely (like many teachers) an aspiring writer, is blogging this horror story possibly in hopes of making some money some where down the road, at his daughter's expense (possibly after these people have destroyed her)? Am I reading this correctly?

Sorry I can't read the blog. Can't. Literally. I'd just start crying. You can't read through blurred vision. I'm already so angry I can't see straight.

Also, nashvillebrook, you're a very strong person. Thank you for sharing your personal insight into something so traumatic.

Grow up.

[Maddy]

Sorry, agitprop, I can't hear people who support abusers with my fingers in my ears.

[agitprop]

Sorry, agitprop, I can't hear people who support abusers with my fingers in my ears.

What would you do to support this little girl? Remove her from her parents? If that's what your remedy is, YOU are supporting abuse. Pretty little blonde haired girl. Seeing as she hallucinates, do you think anyone will believe her if her foster dad molests her? You people have to think, you know? You have to quit with the knee jerk reactions and THINK.

[Nordic]

Sounds like a couple of very desperate parents with a violent crazy kid to me. Think you could do better?

Yes. So could anyone sane.

Ever lived with a violent mentally ill person?

No. (What do you want, just a medal? Or unquestioning obedience?)

[/quote]
See, now here is the problem in this thread. Those of us who HAVE lived with violently mentally ill people all nod our heads and can understand where this father is coming from, even if we agree that he's pretty fucked up and needs some serious help himself.

Those who have NOT lived with a violently mentally ill person are astoundingly judgemental about something with which they have no experience.

To those of us who have this experience, this is extremely annoying and I have to say we're all showing a remarkable amount of patience in dealing with the judgmental folks with no experience.

But dealing with violently mentally ill people in your family will give you a tremendous amount of patience.

I agree this girl sounds very bipolar. I am also intrigued by the mention (somewhere, maybe I read it in the blog) that her thyroid was low.

A low thyroid can make a person seem completely insane. If that person is bipolar (and here I'm getting to my own experience, with someone who has both Hashimoto's Disease (very low thyroid) and bipolar disorder, having a low thyroid while being bipolar at the same time MIXED WITH psych meds can make a person completely and utterly uncontrollably insane.

Those of you up there on your high horse, with absolutely no real-life experience with this stuff .... PLEASE calm down and listen to those who have had this experience.

You might actually learn something.