I have a fifteen year old RAD daughter with just about the least range of emotions that I’ve ever seen on a human being. Zero concern for her birth brothers, 100% concern for other people’s stuff, as in she takes what she wants with absolutely no regard for anyone or their feelings. Does not compute.

We’ve spent close to a year in Intensive Family Intervention counseling with a very good team, headed up by an insightful, on-target woman who cannot be manipulated in any way, shape or form, although my daughter has certainly tried.

In many ways, I just feel sorry for her inability to care. How sad. It’s not her fault either, her mother was an inhalant abuser who lived with a registered sexual offender, and this daughter suffered greatly as did her four birth brothers. Only one of the five children, a 13 year old is in any manner normal, and he’s nearly 100% awesome. Only suffering from a speech impediment, now he sports braces and a great attitude. He’s a million percent likable, very popular and good-natured, attached to our family, deeply loyal and very emotional; he’s a joy to parent.

My fifteen year old left today to visit the therapeutic placement that she’s soon going to be residing at full-time in an attempt to change or break the patterns she has, the very good idea of Miss Pat, her therapist.

This daughter, sort of wishy-washy about our last and final attempt to prevent her from being locked up by the police due to her continuous theft charges, left indifferently today. Certainly not a “good-bye, see you Sunday,” and never a “thank you Mom for trying every single intervention and resource that you could have found for eight years,” instead she left me a pooped-in and smeared everywhere toilet.

She has to have her own bathroom due to hygiene issues, false allegations for fun, and her stealth ability to steal EVERYTHING faster than we can notice it’s gone. I’d asked her to clean her bathroom, her only chore besides cleaning the room that she also has to herself. Any other chore, like any other child might have, simply gave her too many opportunities to steal what she could have just asked for, and received, in the first place.

So I opened her smelly bathroom only to discover that unless I could hold my breath for the next 48 hours, I best clean it up. Thanks for the reminder of why I’m still working to find help.

Neither her therapist team, nor I, is convinced that this particular intervention attempt will work, nothing else has, but I still feel as her mother that it behooves me to keep on trying and trying, hopefully someday there will be progress. My life will continue successfully after she grows up and moves out, and I surely desire the same for her.