[MatthewS]

Hi Kerri,

We ALL have times when we feel like bad parents. Your little girl is the same age as ours and I will tell you outright that we have the same challenges that you're facing. It is tough, but you adopted her to help her have a great life. Hang onto that.

Things that work for us when our dd goes mental at night include taking her into a dark room, just the two of us. She calms down pretty quickly in the dark as long as she's not alone in the dark. Once she's in a decent frame of mind we can talk with her. We are also pretty brutal about taking away toys that she really likes when she's being mean to us. Usually just for a day or two. We have a box that the toys go into and she can earn one back at night by being good at bed time.

We have a responsiblity chart on the wall which earns her magnets that stick to it when she does things like being nice, cleaning her room, going to bed, etc.

We use timeouts during the day (they don't work at night really) but if our dd is really testing me, I'll go into a timeout myself. "Sweetie, I really don't know what to do with you right now. I'm going to have a timeout to try and figure it out. I need you to sit and colour for the next 15 minutes." It catches her off guard every time and gives me a chance to breathe.

Trust me, you haven't damaged her. She KNOWS that her situation is better. Ours tells us that she hates us and doesn't want to live with us anymore. When she calms down, we ask her if that's really true. In every case she says that she was just angry and she wants to be with us.

Give your daughter permission to be angry. She needs to know that its ok. What we tell ours is that she can be mad as heck. That its ok to be angry about what happened in her past. But what she can't do is hit, kick, or otherwise hurt other people.

I feel for you. I know how hard it is. Be strong, stick with it, it is worth it.