[hopefuladoptee]

Nancy, I'll certainly try that with my 3 1/2 year old but don't think my 19 month old is quite ready for that. I do ask my daughter why she was put in time out and then explain to her that behavior is not acceptable. She says okay but she's right back at it 5 minutes later. Like I've tried everything to get her to poop on her potty, she absolutely refuses. So I bought her some gum (her favorite candy) and said this is for when you poop on the potty. This was a week ago and still no signs of even wanting to. Last night we were sitting there and I said, "You know what? I just pooped on the potty so I think I'm gonna get a piece of gum." Not 2 minutes later my son comes running in the room with a piece of the wrapper. I go in the kitchen and she's pushed a toy up against the counter and reached the gum. There was no actual evidence except that my wrapper was not where I put it. I put her in time out and explained that the gum was only for pooping on the potty and that she could get hurt doing something like that, etc. Not 5 seconds after I let her up, my son comes running in the room again with a piece of gum. Not only had she gotten up on something to get the gum but she had also hid a piece from me.

We have tried every type of parenting there is out there and she doesn't respond to any of it. As I said we've started taking her to a specialist so hopefully she'll get some help - and we'll get some help. There just has to be some kind of technique that will get through to her. Right now we're still in the filling out papers period and them evaluating our answers. Plus it's hard because my son does some of the same things but, although we are trying to teach him not to do them, he just isn't old enough to really understand what we mean. So she sees him getting away with some of the things she can't and that makes it harder. We try to explain to her that she's the big sister and she needs to show him how to behave or explain that we're trying to teach him not to do these things too but he's just a baby and she's a big girl. You just don't know what's running through her head though.

Anyway, I will try that with her and see how she responds to it. She has a lot of attachement issues so I don't know how it's gonna go over to take her back to the original problem. There are only so many of her rages I can handle in a night.

[N.Gwinn]

Well, Good luck. I am glad you are seeking professional help. I have had several children in my classroom with attachement dissorders, and the two things I can say are: The younger the child is when you start dealing with it, the easier it seems to be to make a difference, and professional help is necessary with that. You are not going to solve it on your own.

She sounds like she is not respecting boundaries you set or rules. Keep me posted on what the therapist says to do. I would be curious to learn some new ideas.