Advice please

[Guest guest]

First off we do work with a behaviorist, but she is not at my beck and call,,LOL. Takes a few days to hear back from anyone and another week for an appointment. She has us at a "as symptoms worsen or new one arise" type visits.

Our dd has been diagnosed with AS and RAD (reactive attachment) and I am being trained to tell one from the other and wowsa, this is not easy.

Little bit of what has been going on as of the new school year.

Our dd has done a 360 in 6th grade (middle school),,,,,,,she went from not doing homework, participating, lieing about it all, etc. etc. etc...to doing all her homework on her own, only missed a minute amount of turning in papers, given consequence from the teacher, corrected herself and moved on. Her conferences were glowing reports, she grinned from ear to ear. We are still picking ourselves up off the floor and have no idea how, what, where and why it is so diff from the last 6 yrs. Left us waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Well maybe it has,,not sure,,this is where I need advice.

The other evening, dh, dd and myself were coming home in truck, I heard dd crinkling paper in back seat, asked her to stop, she said, not doing anything, not making anything crinkle, started it up again, I reached for my dh and squeezed his arm,,non verbal jester asking for help, he didn't respond other then "why did you squeeze my arm" I thought,,,oh he is clueless right now, nice help hubby,,,poor guy get the pressure from her and I both. We got home, as I was walking to front door I hear hubby say teasingly to our dd "come here Annie, I have a squeeze for you,," she backed up and said NO,,he then proceeded to the house (later told me, he didn't persue it because he thought his joke went over her head and left it alone as we so often do),,when he was almost to the door she came up behind him and kicked him really hard, him and I stood there in shock. I read about AS children getting physical, and I know RAD kids do too, but she has never exhibitted this kind of behavior before. My dh's reaction was to turn around and kick her, and this is very shocking because this is not in his makeup, he has never reacted like that. Luckily he had sense enough to back off. All I could do was ask her to hang her coat up and then had her face her dad and apologize,,which she did eventually after saying different reasons as to why she was apologize.........therefore it was an empty apology. Here I sit two days later wondering what comes next,,,,,,,,,,where did that come from,,,was it AS or RAD or a little of both? And who kicks their dad?????????? She obviously has no respect for him with an action like that.

What should I be doing?

Lynne BanksSD Rep. www.americanadoptioncongress.org