[Joy2566]

I'm pretty discouraged right now. My 9 yo has been home from the hospital for 6 days. The first few days were pretty good, I can really see a difference in her behaviors, and then today happened. Her official diagnosis is adjustment disorder with possible PTSD. The psychiatrist felt that she was a very sweet child and did not need meds and the the outpatient therapy we have been doing for the past 6 months is more than sufficient to meet her needs. He reluctantly agreed to try meds (Abilify) because I insisted. We do go tomorrow for wrap around services that the psych didn't think we need. I am beginning to really believe that our main issue is attachment disorder, and her counsellor agrees, however I'm not getting much help. Everyone focuses only on the behavior and not the cause of the problems. E is very manipulative, and uses her behavior to control the family. She will pitch a fit and then repeatedly appologize, complete with all the excuses about how it wasn't her fault and she didn't mean it. I have come to believe that she is just trying manipulate me. I no longer want to dicuss her appologies, she screams at me that she wants to talk to me, but it really is not to change the behavior, more to control the family by taking my atttention from whatever I am doing, or need to be doing. I have started ignoring her yelling that she wants to talk to me, and it seems to just escalate her fit. Today's fit started because everyone was working at various tasks and she was fighting with everyother person and making it so that wherever she was nothing was getting accomplished because she was in the way and screaming at everyone. Since she was unwilling to work, her consequence was to sit in a chair and do nothing. Big fit! 2 hours of screaming off and on, it escalted to her scratching me and pulling my hair because I had the nerve to call the case worker (about something unrelated btw). The end result of all this is that she is going to respite while we go to a funeral. I just simply can't deal with her behaviors at a family funeral. Counsellor today said E has absolutely no empathy for anyone. She is angry about having to go to respite, but not sad. Just doesn't care that she will be away from home. Am I on the right track with parenting this child? How do we go about getting appropriate help? She's very good at making even the so called professionals believe that I'm the crazy one. Of course, I'm beginning to feel that I am truly crazy.