There is definitley more to her issues. Right now I see two steps forward and one step back, so things overall are getting better and are dramatically different from when she was 2-3 yrs old where she would self-harm. On any given day we can have an hour long screaming fit. She has already gone through the phase of completely trashing her room and luckily she hasn't done that in about 8 months. We went so far as to remove everything and she got stuff back over a longperiod of time. A regular epsiode may look like this: she wants candy, cookie, etc., and I will tell her she has to wait or it's too close to a mealtime etc. She begins by hanging her head and not looking at us. She will demand said object, only to be told no on that, but I always give her options. Instead of a cookie or candy, she can have X or Y. The option, no matter what it is, is never good enough. Once her mind is set on what she wants, a tornado will not deter her. If she doesn't get what she wants, she will within a minute or two, go into a huge fit of screaming, saying mean things, attempting to hit(not always). We take her to her room. She will scream, throw things, continue saying mean things, etc, manytimes for up to an hour. We do talk with ehr afterward about how her behavior resulted in her not getting what she wanted and because of this behavior she will not be able to have X or do Y. She says that she does not know why she has the tantrum. Also, once she has made up her mind,there is non talking her down from the impending tantrum. It is as though she enters a bubble where we can not reach her. Any attempt results in immediate crying and screaming.
We have been through Love and Logic, Beyond Consequences, reward charts, taking treasured things away, you name it. Any intereaction with her once a tantrum starts results in a worse tantrum. It escalates. If we intereact and calm her down, she starts all over when she realizes that she isn't getting her first request and it starts all over. Like that idea is completley stuck in her mind. This behavior might happen 2-3 times a day for several days and then magically, she is fine for 3-4 days. The only similariies between the events I can find is that they all surround her deciding she wants something and having a fit when she doesn't get it, whether it is food, playing with friends, sitting in the shopping cart, carrying a bag, feeding the cats, etc. She wants what she wants and there isn't a way to derail that thought.
Here's her background as we know it:
Mom and Dad not married have baby. Volatile relationship with Dad coming and going because Mom has a temper and likes to cause conflict. Unlikely that Mom had very much pre-natal help and she does not take good care of herself. Drugs doing preg is a possibility(marijuana). Mom has a moderate IQ of about 75. (Daughter shows no signs of reduced IQ) Mom is neglectful and non-responsive to baby. At 6 months old she is taken into foster care because of a domestic violence call and no one availbale to care for her. CPS finds that Mom does not seem to know how to take care of her baby so she stays with first foster family about 4 months. During the next 6 months she is moved to an Aunt who is hostile to Mom(as reported by CPS), back to Mom for the final 2 months and then back into care, where she comes to us. The case worker went for a visit and found her in a crib, day old diaper filled, screaming, while Mom slept. Judge ordered her taken right then. So within a year she lived with 4 different families. That right there is enough to make a baby have major attachment issues.
husband and I have been married 18 yrs and have one bio daughter who is 15. We have one adopted daughter who is 15. She has been with us for 1. 5 yrs. We have had other younger foster children over the years, but moved to teens about 2 years ago. Stable home, Dad is home for lunch every day, I am a stay at home parent(both of us have post-graduate degrees), same house, same pets, same families on our street with kids she plays with. Grandparents live 10 mintues away, she sees them every week. My sister/brother in law&family live 3 blocks away, we see her almost every other day.
On our open adoption:We agreed to two vists a year with Mom when she signed over her rights to us, but she did not keep her side of the agreement up. We tried to make visits happen, but it wasn't until we located Dad that we really started having vists. We had never met him because his rights had been terminated before she came to us. We had our first visit with Dad when she was 3. Dad is loving, engaged and very appropriate. Momis standoffish, not engaged and isolates herself during visits. Our daughter has to engage with her. We now have visits about every 3 months and also visit with other family members such as grandparents, Aunts, cousins, etc. Our daughter now has a full blood brother too. Mom and Dad are not married and continue the volatile relationship even though they live together.
We believe that she is very attached and doesn't show the major symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) although some of her behavior points to the milder issues there. She is loving and kind. In the outside world she seems like any other 5 yr old. She performs well in a classroom(church, dance), but isn't in preschool because we live in a rural area and they do not have a class for her age. She starts kindergarten in August. She is never inappropriate with animals.She did go through a very short stage of attempting to poop or pee when she didn't get her way,but that stopped pretty fast when she realized she had to clean herself. I think she tried that when she had just turned 4 or right before.
I have read every book possible on adopting/ Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD)/ handling strong willed children, etc. We are completely consistent in our responses to her behavior. Yesterday was a better day because although she did nto get what she wanted, she did not have any meltdowns. She wasn't happy about it, but no major events. I expect today will be similar and by tomorrow we will have several days of nice behavior(which she gets rewarded for). When she is in her mood of non-compliance she hits every one of the ODD traits right on. From info gathered from her bio family, I believe that Mom is bi-polar, but she refuses to go get a diagnosis or treatment.
She has already had a speech evaluation where she was off the charts. She has no delays of any kind in the education or developmental arena.This is part of why it's so maddening, there isn't anything obviously wrong/missing. I have been keeping track of her behavior or a long time and while we do see a change from the past, we are very concerned that this behavior will present itself in school or elsewhere as she gets older. This is why I say that overall, I do not see a trigger for what the day will be. She starts almost every day witha smile and is happily doing whatever and then wham, there it is, and the remainder of the day is overtaken by the ODD behavior. Right now it seems the only way to head it off is to allow her whatever she asks the for which would result in a daily diet of cookies, popsicles, chips and coke, and playing at friends houses, the pool, visiting several friends all day, watching TV all day, or buying everything in the Walmart.
So now I'm starting to look at a neuro-psychiatric evaluation.
