Therapy

Well. Y "finished" therapy, but we can go back if we need to. I feel like things are going so much better overall with him.  The therapist said she felt like he and I had a good bond, and so we mostly just worked on strategies for making good choices and some things like that.

Miss M was next on the list.  Some things with her have been concerning. One thing, which I've not mentioned before, is that even when she was a baby I felt...like she didn't like me that much. I know, it's weird. How can a baby show preferences? I just felt like she didn't care to be with me.  There's just this weird feeling, a lot of times and even now that's she's 7, like she's looking through a veil and doesn't see other people as human beings...or something. I can't even put my finger on it.

It is, basically, attachment disorder. :( It's terribly sad. She was taken into foster care as soon as she was born, but the thing is - she was with me (I did daycare for her) for 40ish hours a week, visited bio mom 5 times a week for 2 hours each time), then with her foster mom the other times. Then she started going to real daycare when she was about 3 or 4 months old, but we still watched her quite often, and visits continued as well as her being at home with her foster mom. And then, the state started overnight visits with bio mom. So Miss M was there for however many nights a week (I think they got up to 3 nights?), and still going to daycare and our house and foster mom's house. Then that stopped, so she was at her foster mom's house/daycare/visits, then finally moved in with us.  So the therapist said she might just not have been able to really grasp who was actually her parent, and it was just really a chaotic time for her. She moved in with us at 18 months and has been with us since.

Thinking about my own role in this, I can see how me feeling like she didn't like me might have changed the way I treated her. Like, if she didn't make eye contact and smile at me, or interact with me really, then I just take that to mean that she doesn't want to do that and, so, trying to respect her, I backed off.  I am not a pushy person, I know that I sometimes need space and so it is OK if other people need space sometimes too.  So part of me feels at least somewhat responsible. I just...I didn't know that I needed to make more of an effort, you know? Or that I needed to be so persistent. It's not in my personality to act like that, especially if I feel like I'm bothering someone.

So, we are doing some pretty serious attachment therapy. Some problems have already stopped, and now I have a framework for thinking about the things that she says and does, which sometimes make no sense but when you look at it through the lens of attachment disorder then they make perfect sense. I don't think we'll be done with therapy anytime soon, and that is OK! I'm so thankful we started when we did.

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