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Old 09-08-2006, 09:30 AM
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aspenhall aspenhall is offline
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have you gone to www.radzebra.com yet?

Basically you remove ALL opportunity for her to get her needs met by ANYONE except you. And then you play baby type games, loads of holding and rocking and backrubs, foot rubs and she needs to reciprocate too eventually, take turns her feet first and then yours.

It will be hard but you need to put a BIG dent in her self confidence (of her manipulative skills) thus far, she has been successful when she uses them......NO MORE! EVERY SINGLE manipulative attempt must be pointed out, and dealt with....At one point dd was not allowed to give me a kiss or say I love you because those were TOOLS to her....once she quit using them as tools, then she could say it again. I know, I was mean.... Your household needs to have a zero tolerance policy for poor behavior/choices. Make sure you always call it a choice.....she is responsible....... Kids like this don't see our patience as a merciful gift or anything like that, they see our patience as a WEAKNESS TO EXPLOIT. Also, she sounds old enough to understand things, so USE WORDS...tell her what she is doing, tell her what you are doing and tell her why, tell her what she should have chosen, tell her how it can be avoided next time, and MOST OF ALL keep reinforcing that her tricks won't work with you, acknowledge that they have worked before, but point out EVERY TIME "see, it won't work anymore" I tell dd her eyes change color when she lies to me...It is a color that moms/dads see. And that lil bit of self doubt wondering if her eyes have changed color while she lies to me is evident on her face, and It makes catching her in a lie EASIER!...pretty soon she will believe that she no longer has the capacity to trick you with a lie...and she'll be so flustered when she tries that it will be obvious to you.....

Start saying stuff like that to make her doubt her skills and she will start to wonder and you will be able to catch her on things more often, which will reinforce what you've been telling her. I also say stuff like "I know you had to do xyz in your first home, but you don't need to do that here, it's my job and I'm good at it, pretty soon you'll see that I'm telling the truth"

Lots of calling her bluff, setting up scenarios that prove you can be trusted....lots of "reading her mind" telling her you know what she is thinking and then BEING RIGHT about it.....once I got dd to doubt that I was just like all the rest of the grown ups, she let her guard down a bit, doubted her skills and eventually abandoned them....but for each time dd was successful in her manipulations, it took another month LONGER to get her to stop.....each success only build their confindence and staying power....you need to outlast them at all costs....never let her be successful at it...it will ruin all the progress. Be prepared to drop everything at a moments notice to deal with a situation....don't teach her that in public you won't do anything about it, or if your on the phone, or speaking to a friend.....teach her that no time/place is safe for her to mess around and get away with it. DD would watch and wait until she thought I was distracted enough, then do things....I have hung up on THOUSANDS of people mid sentance no warning to deal with situations. ALSO, never let her make you mad/frustrated/sad/.....that just tells her where your buttons are and makes it easy for her to manipulate your emotions...her consequences should NOT affect you....dd would sit in a time out for hours no problem if it meant I also couldn't go anywhere...so I got my dad to sit her while she was in a time out and we still went out.....That only had to happen 3 times and she quit prolonging the timeouts just to make me suffer too.

I'm sure there's more, but if you find a therapist CLOSE who is WILLING to do attachment based therapy, that may be ok too....at least to start.
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