Several of you have posted very good questions and today I am going to begin answering those questions. You wanted to know:

*********

“Are you attaching to (Dora)...falling in love with her? Or since it's a "trial" period, do you guard against that?”


“I am interested in knowing what form the purging takes. Does it involve crying AND kicking and screaming and biting and spitting, etc.? I'm not sure if we are experiencing purging or acting out behavior that has gotten attention in the past. I know that there's a feeling of relief (and release) following the tantrums; but, we certainly can't talk about feelings during the episodes. Any suggestions?”


“Did Amy have "sticky fingers" also?”


*********

Starting with the first one, me attaching to Dora and falling in love with her … I’ll start by backtracking and telling you about falling in love with Amy …


I can clearly remember the relief I felt when I looked in on Amy asleep in her bed when she was about 4 years old and realized that I did, in fact, love her. The minute her feet hit the ground in the morning I didn’t like her much, but I did love her. I think that love developed because even though she rejected me, rejected the family, didn’t participate in life and exhibited control battles over everything, I still knew that inside that shut down mass of defenses was a child. Somehow, I glommed onto that vulnerability and grew to love her.


I do think moms attach to kids who somehow, someway send a message of vulnerability. That is what triggers our mom mode. For those of you parenting kids who reject you at every turn and create such havoc in your homes that you can’t see past the trauma to find the child in the child … that makes it very, very hard for you to attach.


As far as Dora goes, there is a great deal of visible vulnerability in her, and it is tripping my mom triggers. Love is a process, so no, I don’t feel the same warm fuzzies for her right now that I do for Beth or Kyle or Stephanie. I wouldn’t expect to. Love is also about memories and shared experiences and history, and we are in the process of developing that now. (Side bar here, this is one of the major problems affecting my present-day feelings for Amy ... we have very, very few warm fuzzy memories that cemented our relationship.) When I view video footage I captured during my early days of therapeutically parenting Beth, I wonder how I managed to be so “clinical” or, dare I say it, hard on her. But I knew it was what she needed and it did achieve the desired result. I had to prove I was strong, predictable and trustworthy before we could move to the next phase. Now that I am madly in love with her, it is difficult for me to view that footage with the same frame of reference I had when it was taken.


There are many, many things about Dora that are positive, and her pain and vulnerability endear her to me, as weird as that may sound. She is also readily reaching out to me, and that makes building a relationship so much easier. That is something Amy clearly never did.


Lastly, I would never guard against showing love to a child. One can't get too much love. Dora has feelings for her mom (more on this coming) and attachments can be transferred in some cases. "Better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all."


Next up, what form does purging take?


Photo Credit