Emma

Emma......my challenge.

Every day my youngest daughter challenges me.  Summer is such a hard time for her.  The last two years she has attached to her teacher.  I say attached but this is not a healthy attachment.  However, they are safe for her, they are temporary.  At the end of the school year her teacher was telling me how Emma always had to have two hugs from her.  At that moment I realized that I have been allowing this temporary attachment to happen.  I have talked to the school and will meet with them before school starts.  I do not want her teacher hugging her this year.  I do not want Emma attaching with another teacher.

She attaches to these teachers and then when summer arrives she is once again stuck with me.  Attaching to me is scary so she does everything she can to avoid it.

We are still dealing with the taking of food.  She has been caught searching my desk and grabbing food from the kitchen.  At those times she thought that she was the only one in the house.  She was mistaken.  She is not allowed to go into the house alone.  When we are all at the pool she will run in to go to the bathroom.  It is during those times that she has been sneaking.  I had caught on and was waiting.  Even though someone has to go in with her she tries to sneak in alone.  She is quick and very sneaky.

She has also been in trouble for bullying, tearing up other kids toys, lying, stealing and has even cut her own hair.

I have been so consistent on giving consequences for calling others ugly that the behavior has actually decreased.  Sometimes she slips into her old ways and when caught gives off a terrible scream as though we are beating her (which we are not).  She does this scream every time she is caught doing anything she is not supposed to be doing.  Yes, it is quite annoying. 

At this time she is not allowed to be in the same room as the dog.  I have told her repeatedly to stop  encouraging the dog to jump on her and chew on her.  I am trying to stop these behaviors and she is increasing them.  After she got all scratched up one day and got another outfit ruined I had enough.  She is realy not enjoying this restriction.  One big problem for her is that the dog likes to hang out in the family room where everyone hangs out.  She tries to encourage the dog to go outside but once he is back to the door I let him in.  Ohhh, it makes her so mad.  I am not sure how long I will have to do this for it to sink in that I mean business.  I have a feeling that as soon as I release her from this restriction she will be right back to her old ways.  Well, I'd give her 8 hours.

She is also banned from the garage.  This is where the wii and most toys are located.  She is just not able to handle it at this time.  She quickly reverts to her bullying ways when she is not in my sight.

When she is in my direct sight she is a pleasure.  She is able to play well and enjoy life.

However, when she is out of my sight she inevitably gets into trouble.  In spite of consistent consequences she just can't seem to control herself. 

When she is in trouble she has a habit of screaming that she wants a new family.  I had been ignoring this until last week.  She screamed that at me and I decided to give her a dose of reality.  I told her that she was stuck.  I often her that.  Michelle was in the room and said that she likes to be stuck.  Emma just screamed louder.  I decided that it was time for some truth.  I told her that she needs to remember that until she came to our home she was moved 7 different times because of her behaviors.  People just don't put up with the screaming, lying, bullying, stealing.  They just don't, they have you moved instead.  But, we didn't give up.  We didn't have her moved.  NOW SHE IS STUCK.  She is stuck when we are not happy with her behaviors.  She is stuck when we are frustrated.  She is stuck when she is mean and not in control of herself.  If she is that unhappy then when she turns 18 she can do whatever she wants.  But, until then she is stuck.  It did stop her screaming.  I will be curious to see how long it takes her to scream that she wants a new family.

Others with attachment issues, have you had issues with attaching to teachers?  If so how did you deal with it?  This is an issue that I will address this school year.  I think that it is impeding her attachment at home.