Monday, November 4, 2013

Child PTSD behaviors- options

As I've stated before, Pumpkin has PTSD. She was abused and neglected prior to our care. With her history, came a lot of behaviors. Some of the original behaviors looked like this:

*Hoarding- Mostly things like dishes, food, etc. But also took our debit card and hid it.
*Feces smearing and hiding
*Not potty trained at 3 1/2
*Fear of having hair brushed
*Tantrums that could last 3+ hours with no way to console her
*Aggressiveness toward us and her sisters
*Nightmares
*Extreme fear of certain places
*Lying

It's been nearly 5 years since she has been away from the abuse entirely. But we still have significant behaviors. PCIT (Parent Child Interaction Therapy) at the beginning helped many of the behaviors, but we still have crazy amounts of lying, fear of having hair brushed, aggressiveness toward sisters, occasional nightmares, fear of certain places, and occasional hoarding of items that don't belong to her. She also feels that rules don't apply to her. It's been nearly 5 years of counselors, behavioral workers, social workers, etc. So what's next? Well we've been told we have a couple of options:

*Attachment therapy
*EMDR

While at this point I don't feel it is an attachment issue, typically this long out of the abuse the child would have adjusted if it was about the attachment disorder. She does have an attachment disorder, however. The counselor feels we are looking at the effects of the PTSD since the behaviors aren't adding up... and she can't/ won't talk about her past or say her name prior to adoption or the biological mother's name. So, we are probably looking at EMDR. So... there isn't a lot of information out there about it for children, so I will be posting information as I find it!