Bad Case of Stripes

A huge part of attachment disorder is not knowing their own hearts. I don't know about your kiddo, by mine will choose food she doesn't like, clothes she doesn't want to wear, activities she doesn't like, and on and on. What is that? Fear of being wrong and therefore rejected, control of parents' time/energy/focus, too busy focused on surviving to think about anything else. I don't know what the core is or if it changes for my RADish. But it is incessant. Questions like, what do you want? or did you like it? are often met with robotic answers or copying the child that answered near her.

This week, we got our children pets. Our threshold right now with a baby in the house, is limited to beta fish. We got home, got them in their containers and then needed to name them. It took girlie FOR. EVER. to choose because we made her choose hers first. No opportunity to copy. Taking waaayyyy too long, her siblings couldn't wait any longer and chose names. RADish chooses a name in the same manner. (e.g. one chooses a name from a movie, she chooses a name from a movie. one chooses a friend's name. she chooses a friend's name. etc) After much encouragement and not letting her copy them, she finally chose a name. We all agreed it was a great choice.

That night, I pulled out this book:



Love this. She totally got it. Without me saying anything, she said, I do that all the time. A great discussion starter!