Shelly,
Been there, done that. It's true, these kids are masters at trying to drive us away while pretending to "attach" with perfect strangers. And it's also true that parents (and teachers!) who have never cared for a child with attachment issues will not have a clue what you're going through. When you keep your child close (tight reins, lots of structure) and out of extracurricular activities (which for them is yet another adult to manipulate and a "leader" to please superficially in an attempt to frustrate the parents), people call you "too harsh," a "drill sergeant," "unloving," etc.
My 8-yr-old confounds every caring adult she comes into contact with. "Why would she kick that boy for no reason? She just walked right up to him and kicked him!" "But she's usually such a sweet, happy little girl. Why was she so defiant with me today?" "Are you saying that she lied to her teacher/principal/nurse? She's not really allergic to peanut butter?...You don't really send her to bed without supper? ...You don't really make her scrub the hallway with her toothbrush?...You don't really tie her up with the garden hose?" (Ok, that last one I just made up, but my K has told a plethora of whoppers to anybody who will listen!)
Yesterday was the latest in our round of RAD insanity: She conveniently "lost" her $300 eye glasses during recess and blamed a non-existent child for knocking them off her face while they were "wrestling in the leaves." Hmm...I checked. There is no such child named J in her class! Her teacher and I put 2 and 2 together and figured that she didn't want to have to wear her glasses for today's picture day, so she "lost" them yesterday. Problem is, she didn't think long-term, and now she's blind as a bat and will struggle to read, see the board, etc. UGH!!!!! And since she has no concept of money, I encouraged her to think of how yucky it will feel to not get birthday presents for the next 7 or 8 years! And there's also the fact that Santa knows "when you're naughty or nice," and throwing away your glasses definitely qualifies as "naughty."
Yeah, I know. That last thing probably caused her to feel more shame. I did rub her back as I was saying it (and she was bawling), and I told her how sad I was that she wouldn't get to have her picture taken today (she'll have to wait for the retakes so that she'll have her new, "ugly" glasses for the picture).
I reiterated how every choice has a consequence and in this case, she made a poor choice, so it earned a yucky consequence (no dressing up for the school pictures today, lots of icky chores to pay for new glasses).
Here's where that loveless feeling comes in. I went into the school to explain what we were going to do (no pictures today so that the gravity of her choice will sink in), and her teacher saw me in the office. She came to tell me that K had already tried to ditch her "ugly" glasses by hiding them in her desk, but the teacher made her put them back on. (I had told K they were not to leave her face when I dropped her off, and that stinker said, "OK, Mom"
and proceeded to take them off the minute she got to class. Grrr.) Anyway, she's stuck with an old (useless) prescription until we can get new lenses put in to these old, dorky looking, heavy frames. (The ones she "lost" were cool! They were bendy, indestructible, very lightweight, pink frames which she chose, and transition lenses! And she managed to keep them for a whopping 6 months. Ugh.
) And my brain is telling me that I need to give this up. It has to be HER problem. Not mine, her Dad's, her teacher's, her principal's, etc. So let the consequence learning begin!
