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I have permanent custody of my cousin's daughter. He passed away. Her mother is a heroine addict. I have had her without interruption since 27 months. She had extreme symptoms of aggression and almost constant screaming when she came to live with me. I worked hard through counseling to bond with her and I thought we had established a bond. Her behavior had ceased for a long time. She appeared somewhat normal from day to day and had screaming rages only a few times in the last year.
We recently relocated. Her behavior has regressed and escalated to a violent and scary level. She has left bruises on my older daughter, throws rocks at our vehicles, abuses our animals, and is innapropriatly "bonding" in a fast and brief manner with any adult that will give her the time of day. She behaves in a manipulatively sweet manner to get what she wants, and then within a few weeks of knowing her new "friends" she becomes abusive and pushes them away.
I have recently read that with disinhibited attachment disorder children feel threatened by sensitive caregivers because their past trauma from dysfunctional caregivers distorts their image of love. She was repeatedly abandoned by her mother and father from the infancy stages to her final arrival to me. The article I read by David Howe said that these children will grow increasingly aggressive toward a loving caregiver as a self preservation method. i am scared to see how this develops and I need supporty. I can relate to other mother's feelings of despair and frustration. I am at the end of my rope and need help handling her.
She is hitting me, kicking me, saying mean, and threatening things, and really seems to have transferred her anger from her other "mom's" who had her, to Myself and my daughter, who is 10. We are stressed to the max. I am a little depressed just thinking of waking up to deal again with her daily violence. i get anxiety when picking her up from her grandmother's and find myself regretting taking her in without the resources and financial stability to handle her. I chose to take her from a place of grief, love for my cousin, and fear for her safety. I am really scared for us right now. Any words from understanding folk?
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It does sound like the usual attachment issues and your turmoil does sound like what parents go through who deal with this. Been there, done that, hope its done. I find it strange that there were several years of good before going bad again, but I have heard of that in another family too. That family had no obvious trigger like yours did. The bubble burst on them at about the same age. A good attachment therapist would be a good idea. If you aren't already well versed in parenting with attachment issues from your prior experiences then some heavy reading would probably be a good idea as well.
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It sounds to me like the move triggered the emotions to come up again. I'd get back to therapy and work through it again. I also wonder if there are drug effects (lack of inhibition, lack of impulse control) from the heroine use in utero?
*hugs* to you. I can only imagine how difficult this is, especially since you thought you had resolved the issues!
It just means so much to have found this site to reach out on. I did go again to a therapist today, we had been on the wait list and they got us in. I got a lot of useful information. She will see my daughter next week. It is nice to have had the chance to tell another grown up how it feels to be frustrated. The safety of both my children is very important to me and it is hard having this level of disruption in our home. i am willing to guess every parent here feels what I feel, and as that sank in for me yesterday and this evening I felt much less alone.
Just to clear the record, Her mother became addicted to heroine after her birth. We suspect drug use but we don't know what. When I got her she had witnessed people injecting drugs, and claimed they had also injected her in the neck with a needle. The body trauma she displayed from this was quite traumatizing. I have searched for information on the effects of heroine use in toddlers, but it is hard to find. You are right, minibus. And.... I guess I did not really think I had resolved the issue, it just all seemed so much better.
Last month the therapist squeezed me in to offer me some tools in the interum while we were on the waiting list. I applied some of those tools, and today we realized that some of her recent escalating behavior was in response to a shift in my parenting techniques in some areas. She escalated as a method of testing my stability on those issues.
The move, as well, i did not realize how it would impact her!
I am so glad to have this site. Thanks.
I have adopted two of my cousin's children. I have had a lot of difficulty as well with attachment. My children are very young and I hope that the techniques we employed from Nancy Thomas were enough to heal them. I'm glad to hear you were proactive and got help early on. The therapist you are using...I hope it's an attachment therapist? If we need one, we will need to travel 90 minutes to the nearest one.
If the therapist is well trained in attachment therapy, keep using the parenting techniques you were given. In my experience, things always get worse before the children heal. Good luck to you, you are not alone.