[HappyHopefulMommy]

I'm going to back up just a little - well, first I have been gone from a.com for a while simply because life has just been busy (I will get to that). But, we were placed with 3 siblings just over one year ago. The youngest was then almost 4. 4 months after that we also were placed with their younger sibling. We have now finalized all the adoptions and everything has been mostly ok. We have had a crazy summer and with the addition of 4 kids so quickly we needed to move into a bigger house. We ended up moving from California to Utah 3 weeks ago. The move has been good, but of course every one is regressing a little. BUT, Jenna (I forgot I can use her name now that we have finalized) has been having a very hard time. Or maybe we are having a hard time with Jenna. She is almost 5. I feel like we are attaching really well with the other 3 kids. But, Jenna does not care about any thing. She is extremely defiant. (example: she will ask me if she can bring a toy out of the play room and I will say, "no, not right now". She will bring it out anyways. She will ask if she can go outside and I will say, "no, we are staying inside right now". She will go outside anyways, she will be running in the house and we will have a converstaion about not running and then she runs as soon as I say "go play" . . . ) I could go on and on, she does it ALL day long. At bedtime she will SCREAM for over an hour just for attention. If she does not get her way, she will hit scream, yell, stomp for an hour. I have literally done time in with her ALL day long. We have done positive reinformcement and she does not care if the other kids get a treat or sticker or whatever it is and she doesn't. It means nothing to her. She does not trust me or my husband at all. But it is not just us that she does this to. She does it to grandparents, anuts, uncles, my friends, her teachers at church. She has been doing this for several months and the move has not seemed to made it worse or any better. She is always very stiff (like her body) she tries to control all her siblings and is always telling them what to do. She lies so often, I feel like it is pointless to ask her something. I feel like all I do all day with her is parent and discipline. She is just constantly breaking rules and she knows the rules. It is very exhausting to parent her, especially with 4 other kids. She takes up so much time.

We are starting to go back to rocking her and singing to her, I try to cuddle with her and she does fight it a little. She wants her arms on top or mine and it really bugs her when I put mine on top of hers. We are in the process of looking for a therapist. But I am hoping you guys have some positive parenting advice for me.

Thanks for reading! (oh and we were her 8th placement in 3 years and she was removed from birthmom at 8 months old)

[lovemy6]

I would read "Building the Bonds of Attachment" and "Holding Time" and go back to treating her like a baby...bottle and all. My dd was about the same age as your dd when we started this and after only six months of attachment therapy and therapeutic parenting, she was attached and healed from RAD.

[AmyAnne]

One that I loved playing was the M&M game. I would have kiddo close his eyes. I would put an M&M in his mouth and he'd try and guess what color it was by taste. The point wasn't for him to be right so there were a lot of "I think you were right!"'s

[aspenhall]

Where in Utah??
I could give respite! And I know loads of people here who dealt with my dd's ODD and could give respite as well!
HUGS!

I almost wonder if you should switch it around so that YOU always win. Tell her what you don't want her to do....if she does it, you win, and praise her for it! If she doesn't you win as well! In a year or so she might get tired and quit pushing so hard...but right now it's the "grin and bear it" stage.
I went through it too and NOTHING HELPED hardly at all, except discussing her issues/results/goals plainly with her. It helped her doubt her set course just enough for trust to creep in.

[AmyAnne]

Okay. A few things jumped out at me on the re-read. I would seek a legitimate attachment therapist in your area. Welcome to Attachment & Trauma Network* - ATN or Attachment Disorder information and support at ATTACh.org. have listings. Our attachment therapist worked on a lot of behaviors like this.

We did not want to use medication with our child, but it was a Godsend. We, too, had the angry attention seeking stuff at bedtime and it darn near killed us. We did a combination of things.... one was to have our child put on a low dose of rispridal in the evening. The other was to sit in the hallway outside his bedroom door and read or something for 20 minutes after we put him in bed. It wasn't to interact with him, or to keep him in there, but the presence of a "Safe" person outside his door made him feel better (note: we did this AFTER attachment therapy was complete. Don't know if I'd recommend it before then). Anyhow, after starting the rispridal, we went from 1-3 hours of traumatic hell every night at bedtime to.... nothing. He NEVER did it again. He was on the rispridal for almost 3 years and is off it now. He doesn't fall right to sleep anymore, but he also doesn't yell and scream and paint the bathroom with shoe polish and flush things down the toilet instead of trying to go to sleep. Instead, he usually lays quietly in bed. He gets up to go to that bathroom like 900 times the first hour (I think he might be sneaking a book in there and reading, since he can't have his bedroom light on after bedtime) And he'll occasionally come down and ask unimportant questions (such as, "Are we going to the pool tomorrow?" or "Hey Mom, for Halloween can I be a wizard?" or something that can very clearly wait till morning.

Another thing that worked well for us was inconvenience time, for the ODD behaviors. That's where we got paid back time when his behavior inconvenienced us. So okay. Let's say she takes the toy out. You would tell her "Jenna, I asked you not to take that toy out. Go and put it back, please". When she doesn't you say "Okay, no problem. I'll start counting inconvenience time". So she plays with the toy 20 minutes and puts it back. She now owes YOU 20 minutes. Maybe she makes you lunch (most kids can manage a PB&J and a glass of milk). Maybe you have a chore, such as folding the laundry. Maybe she needs to go to bed 20 minutes early so you can rest. After awhile she's not going to like this. After 4 years of using this, all I have to say is "I'll start counting inconvenience time" and Austin is in compliance within 1 minute.

Speaking of Austin, need to take him to camp now, but I'll think more on this.

[AmyAnne]

Okay..... and I'm back!

Regarding the bedtime thing, I would make that priority one to get fixed. The bedtime thing is the killer, because then the child is overtired and acts up, and the parents are overtired and aren't at the functioning capacity to deal with the child's behavior in an effective manner.

Other tactics I use are:

Tile bounding him while I cook: This is because he will often start doing attention seeking behaviors or picking fights with me while I am cooking or deliberately getting in my way, standing so I will crash into him, etc. The way it works, is I give him a section of 6-8 tiles of the kitchen floor he can sit or stand on that are NEAR me but not in my way. He may sit quietly, or talk to me, but not argue, or even get up and help me cook dinner if he wants. He may not leave this area. Usually he would sulk for 10 minutes, try to argue, then start talking about stuff, and 5 minutes later would help me cook (we don't have to do this one very often anymore)

Also with Attachment Disordered Kids (It sounds like yours might be), sometimes throwing them for a loop is good. We did this for homework, but it could work for bedtime or ODD behaviors too. "Bad Behavior Bingo". Make up bingo cards of your child's usual behaviors. Mark them off as she does them. When you score a bingo, holler "YES! BINGO!" do a victory lap, and treat yourself to a scoop of ice cream. One that also worked well for me was to call him on his behaviors and make him think about it. "Well, it's 6:00. That means in 2 hours you'll be doing the nightly bedtime freakout. You know, it's really not convenient for me at 8:00 tonight. I have an idea, let's get it out of the way right now. Ready???? GO!" Usually my son was so flummoxed he didn't know how to react. This is one we only used sparingly.

Our current one is "Go sit". It's like the naughty chair or the timeout chair. But we don't say Time Out because he's 12. WE just say "Go sit" and tell him where we want him to sit down (good practice in following directions) I like this because 1. I can do this anywhere (He learned this week that Mom can and will make you sit in the produce aisle of the grocery store) and 2. If I honestly need a few minutes away from him, I can put him farther away from me.

[jeffw]

We had similar problems with severe defiance for awhile and we found that no amount of reward or punishment would do anything. "Inconvenience time" would accumulate until it was 24 hours a day and then what do you do? Both time-ins and time-outs rely on the kid being obedient enough to actually sit where you put them. This behavior finally broke after we started holding him when he got defiant like this. The idea was to hold him when he wasn't safe to himself, others, or property. Being completely out of control made him unpredictable potentially dangerous. It wasn't a punishment as much as it was just what needed to be done at that time. Holding was always done as gently and lovingly as possible. My wife or I would sit on the couch with him in front. His arms would be crossed and we would hold him at the wrists. We could hold the wrists reasonably loosely in this position because he couldn't twist. We would fold a leg across his to keep him from kicking. An essential ingrediant was to never show anger. He would do whatever he could to try to provoke anger. We would release him periodically to see if he could calm down and accept affection. In the beginning he would fight for two hours at a time. In about two weeks his defiant behavior stopped--or at least became infrequent.

Remember, your daughter has experienced sever trauma in her life. The trauma has made her who she is. She probably harbors a lot of fear deep down inside, just like ours did/does. Her response to her environment is likely her way of trying to feel safe. Think of her as alone in a dark forest screaming out for help. You wouldn't punish such a kid for making too much noise; instead you would give her a big hug and try to comfort her. She needs to learn that spending time with you is safe, even when she is not in control. Never show anger. Anger makes you the troll she fears instead of the compassionate queen coming to her rescue. We trained ourselves to expect the absolute worst and we found that we were more creative than he was. What he did wasn't half as bad as we could have done in his shoes so we experienced relief instead of anger.

We have 3 kids besides our problem child and, like you, we struggle to give them the attention they need. Kids like this take a lot of time.

[AmyAnne]

I did forget to mention, JeffW, we also did holds. We have stopped them now that kiddo is 12 because he is getting too big and one of us was going to get hurt, and he minds us pretty well now.

[HappyHopefulMommy]

Thanks for the replies and advice. When she starts her totally out of control tantrums we do hold her untill she calms down. But I am sure I need to be more patient and not show any frustration with her. She only does the screaming at bedtime sometimes. We are starting the rocking method sveral times a day and always at bedtime and that helps too! I know this is not an easy fix problem, so thank you so much for all your advice.

[aspenhall]

Have you tried Melatonin spray for bedtime issues?
Once my dd had several good nights behind her the anxiety over bedtime lessened to the point of no more fighting it. It's taken a few years but her system is finally normalized, and she falls asleep and stays asleep. Which means she has less trouble during the days. My life truly began to change when she started getting enough sleep. Until then, nothing worked.

She was simply terrified of falling asleep. It stemmed a lot from her control/trust issues. If she was asleep she couldn't watch us. Plus she'd had such bad nightmares for so long that it took years for her not to fear falling asleep. The melatonin was a lifesaver.