singledad said:
This girl has been abandoned by her birth parents once, twice by you, and it seems now also by her "adopted" mother.
How do you figure she was "abandoned?" She was given to me by her birth parents, which isn't abandoning her. Her mother took her once and I gave her to her once, neither was abandoning her. And I really don't get the abandonment part about her mother. I mean really, she's with her mother right now, visiting for the weekend. Their relationship has recovered to the point where when her friends from that neighbourhood don't show she cuddles with mommy, playing games and watching movies. (Basically, the same things she does with me.) There isn't a shred of hostility left.
She has been raped, shot at, and repeatedly victimised.
Slight nitpick, she has been "shot", not "shot at".
Has she received and help at all in processing all this trauma? In what form?
Other than emotional support from her family? (And by family I mean really just me.) No. She used to talk to her school counsellor on a regular basis, before we moved out here, and even took to talking to her again when she moved back with her mother for a while, but that's it and other than a chance to vent at length to somebody new (which is actually really helpful) she didn't get anything out of that.
For the most part, she's just had me. My main service is open and honest dialogue. I don't lie to her. I haven't lied to her about anything even remotely important in her life, and I haven't even told her a white lie since she was 6. Those are some HUGE respect points. I talk to her, I answer her questions, I give her advice, that's it. I'm terrible at persuasion and not much of a therapist, but I do what I can. I'm still better at talking with people than I am barking orders, and I tend to stick to my strengths.
What, if anything, have you done to bring home the message that however valid her feelings may have been, her method of expressing them was extremely inappropriate? What efforts have you made to teach her how to express feeling of disgust, appropriately?
I did what I do best, I talked to her about it. The issue there is fairly simple: The only thing I can tell her to dissuade her from acting as she does is that she's going to make things worse for herself at that school, and it's clear that she really doesn't care. I'm fairly certain she is trying to get them to expel her. More specifically, I think she's trying to irritate them enough they'll expel her over a minor issue.
I am going to be quite plain on one thing:
I've really only talked about her issues here, and I know they make her seem like a little monster, but she isn't. Most of the time, she's the sweetest little girl you're ever going to meet. Not just with me, either. With her mother and her friends as well. She's even friendly with minor acquaintances and nicer than most to strangers. Her hostility is only to people who have earned her ire, and like her mother she's never learned to hide it.
Every time somebody she hates provokes her, this adds to her hatred of them and she reacts in a negative manner. Of course, this means the next time her reaction is even more explosive until she eventually does something massively disproportionate enough to calm her down or get her separated from them. (Punching the teacher, for instance, got her suspended for six weeks and moved to a different class. She doesn't even notice him any more.) It's also really, really hard for somebody she hates to redeem themselves in her eyes, and most people don't try. (Her mother is the only one to do so successfully, if my memory serves me right.)
If people don't do anything to anger her (normal things, don't hurt her, don't threaten her, don't insult her, don't do any of those things to anybody she cares about, don't be a bigot, etcetera) she's friendly and warm-hearted.
Her big problem now is that she's in a school where a score of people have inspired an acrimony I'd never seen in her before, and she has to interact with more than half of them on a daily basis.
