[minibus]

Originally Posted by HappyGirl36

When she came to live with us, i lost my life as i knew it. all privacy, my entire sense of personal space. GONE. she notices everything that changed the next morning from the night before and comments on it. (ie. ice cream carton in the trash. "AWWW, you guys had ICE CREAM without ME?! No FAIR."

it literally has made me have insane over the past 7 years and i'm JUST NOW identifying it and trying to understand it. DH doesn't quite get it. all i know is "eerie" is the word. creepy. i have never seen any kid like this before in my life. why do you think this behavior exists?

I wanted to jump in here and offer my perspective. I worked with children in therapeutic foster care for 4 years and worked in mental health with many foster/adopted children for several years beyond that.

The hypervigilance. You say that your step daughter came from a situation of neglect and was eventually taken out of her mother's care. That is EXACTLY the reason for her hypervigilance. Can you imagine being 3 years old and left alone in the dark with no food and not knowing when the food would come next? Or not knowing what would happen to make mom hit you this time? Children learn to be extremely hypervigilant because they try to figure out patterns. Maybe the last time mom ran out of ice cream she got so mad that she hit me. So I'm going to watch for when that ice cream container goes in the trash the next time, because then I can know when she's going to hit me again and at least I can prepare.

I know that it feels totally unreasonable and I very much applaud you for trying to figure out the answers. I know it feels like you've been living with this child for SEVEN years and you've never done anything to make her believe that you're going to act that way. Unfortunately, for children, the connections in the brain and the cause-effect with regard to caregiving forms in the first few years and is very difficult (but not impossible) to correct and it takes a LONG time.

Kids, especially hypervigilant ones, know when they're driving you nuts. This might be part of the reason that she's refusing to bond. She drove mom nuts (or mom told her that she was the problem), and they took her away from mom, so why won't they take her away from you, too?

I would suggest a good family counselor, or even better, an RAD specialist.

Best of luck!