Hi everyone
i am at a loss of what to do for K year with by DD5. She was just diagnosed HG (147 WPPSI) after years of perplexing, uneven behavior. Intense, hard to manage, constant craving of attention. She is the one that the "severe baby talk" thread is about. Anyway, she is currently an underperformer in school and home and after starting therapy a few weeks ago (initial findings- adjustment disorder/emotional disturbance). we've put some things together:
a) we feel she provokes us with baby talk and other behaviors as a way of testing our love for her. When she pushes us to the limit she validates how she feels- unloved, not as worthy as her brother, my DS7. When the going gets rough i tend to leave her in her bedroom, and she has actually shouted "see you DONT love me..".
.....
thanks
irene
Just a quick reply to one of your points. Do you think she might have some unmet needs to feel mothered by you while she was a baby? Our
grandson, GS9, was with us off and on from the time he was 19 months, until he came to us permanently at 5 yrs, 6 mths. His mother effectively abandoned him at 19 mths, 1 stepmother had come and gone, and stepmother #2 had physically abused him before we got custody. Some of his behavior was very similar to your daughters'. I'm not implying there was any abuse involved in your situation, but with your depression, focusing on meeting the needs of the older one, and hiring a nanny to meet the physical needs of your daughter, maybe she didn't feel loved and attach to you. I'm not making any assumptions as to whether that's true, I'm just throwing that out as a possibility since that was where we had to work most with GS9 to help him. In cases like my GS, it's easy to say "well of course he felt abandoned, neglected, unloved; look what he went through." Although your daughter was cared for, she's a very bright child who probably felt things more intensely as a baby. Her feelings of being unloved may not be based on fact, but feelings often have very little to do with fact. And while she may cognitively know she is very much loved, that doesn't always take care of feelings that say otherwise. For GS9, the baby talk & behavior were a way to relive and try to fix what was lacking for him as a baby.
