My failure as a foster mom

sometimes when things are going well the stress is too great. the lies in their mind tell them that they don't deserve to be safe, happy, loved, taken care of, etc, etc. ad nauseum. they just don't believe it. Bubba is one of those kids. he used to harm our little dogs with great regularity, but only when he was feeling particularly close to us. that meant he was being "unfaithful" to Barbie. that meant he'd better do something quick to make emotional distance between us and him. the fastest way was to grind Tony's paw under his foot or kick Molly or pull a tail or twist an ear. it didn't matter to him--he just did whatever he could to make any of them yelp. his meanness wasn't confined to the animals--he'd punish Flowergirl as well. she was smaller and nonverbal. it was a constant supervision thing. his consequence was that he was told that we did not yet trust him with the animals or his sister alone, therefore he would not be allowed to play anywhere that we could not directly see him. he hated it. it worked. knowing that her birthday was very soon, i'm going to bet she had to act out. i bet she didn't feel like she deserved a happy birthday to her. she probably feels like she is bad incarnate. that's what abuse and neglect do to kids. and if she doesn't deserve it, she was determined to sabotage it. Bubba still does it sometimes even after 4 years with us. it's hard. you failed no one--not you, your pet, or your foster child. you got blind-sided by an unexpected action. the hardest part right now is going to be helping your fd deny the garbage inside of her that caused her to act out on something smaller and weaker than herself. right now you feel shock, hurt and anger. those feelings are overriding your feelings of love for her. you are also reeling from the sudden loss of trust as well as your empathy for your poor kitty. again, these strong feelings have taken over and blocked out the love. it's still in there. love is a CHOICE in this instance. she is practically screaming at you to love her but don't love her too much. you have to decide is this something that you can live with and choose to love her or is this too much for you to get beyond. honestly, there were many times with Bubba that i thought that there was no way i could continue to let him live with me because _________ just wasn't normal. and it wasn't! but. what i did was say to myself--and to him--i still choose to love you, but i don't like your behavior so much that right now i'm having a hard time feeling good about being with you. i will need to work on my tender feelings and you will need to work on not harming our pets. then i would set the consequence of no contact and constant supervision. after that, i would set my own consequence of deliberately being tender with him-rocking, hugs, stories, lap sitting, whatever. i have found that when he is at his most disgusting is precisely the time he needs me to be the most loving. he doubts his worth and shows me in shocking ways. my job is to create the road by which he can return to me. sometimes that is a very, very rough thing for me to do. it would not be inappropriate to lower her birthday celebration. she chose that when she hurt the cat. but she is also trying very hard to see if you really love her or are you going to "go away" just like her other mom. it doesn't make any difference to her brain if she instigated it. as counter-intuitive as this feels, she really needs you to keep on loving her through this. this is a test. and it's probably the first step past the honeymoon--it's likely to get worse before it gets better. just don't beat yourself up--we all do the best we can with what we've been given. all of us. God be with you through this time.