Three Weeks and Counting....

Now that I took the time to vent in my last post, I'm on to how Kismet has been doing up to this point in time with us. We are going on 4 weeks with her living with us this Friday. And so far, things have been going... well... not bad. From my perspective, anyway. I think from Brad's perspective, things have been kinda tough.

See, it's like this. Kismet responds much better to me than she does Brad. As she says to me, she's "more used to" me than she is Brad. While she spends far more time with Brad during the day than with me, she's not used to having a dad. She says. It's not that I doubt the veracity of this statement. I know her bio dad was not present much in her life but at the same time, she lived in a group home and a foster home and both had fathers in the house that she had to take instruction from. It feels like an excuse, honestly.

Since I'm not the one who deals with her all day long like Brad is (who is in the stay-at-home parent role and I think we all know that the stay-at-home parent gets much less respect from the kids) PLUS she's not used to having a dad, it's hard to really know what lies behind her actions, if there is any sort of sense to be had from it at all. I guess there's just so much about Reactive Attachment Disorder that we don't know or understand.

She's back in school full time this week with minimal problems. She had a few melt-downs at school her first week but after Brad spoke with the school about some of the stuff that was going on, they started handling her better in school. She put in a week of half days and has started back full time this week and so far, so good.

She's still obstinate, still has a temper that flares up on no notice at all, and still a bit sassy. But then a lot of kids are like that. So far, we've seen little of the demon child we've been warned would show her face as she started settling in and feeling safe. If anything, she has actually been a sweeter and more helpful child now that she's settling in. The only thing that seems to trigger a bad reaction in her is an unannounced change in her schedule, or, more accurately, an unannounced change in her expectations for her schedule. She does fine when she knows what to expect but does not do well when things change. We can accomodate some of that but we will need to learn how to handle the unexpected changes when they happen.