Staying the same

Well, right now she is pretty much doing the same. She has support for all her goals, except for the main one, which is calling out other girls on rules.

From the outside, this sounds like being a tattletale. But what it comes down to is personal accountability. The whole concept of realizing you are in control of all your decisions, and you are responsible for them and the results you get from them. And one of the ways you learn this is to accept the decisions you make - and the easiest way to do this is acknowledging when you decide to break a rule. However it is hardest to admit this to ourselves, and we often need help. So the girls are supposed to track when each other breaks a rule, and bring it to their attention. It isn't about punishing them, but about getting them to realize they made the decision, and here are the consequences.

Yes, the confrontation is hard. I have a problem with this myself - I don't like to hold the boys accountable for their chores (and I resent when Diane holds me accountable for not holding the boys accountable (ok, honesty time - I resent it BIG TIME, especially because I just feel like the go between - but that is another issue entirely)). However one of their rules is to hold others accountable - so they are actually breaking a rule when they let someone else break one without calling them on it.

However it does get easier, and the amazing thing is that people will step up. You phrase things in the terms of agreements - Did you agree to do (or not do) X? Do you acknowledge that you did not do (or did) X? From there you can deal with consequences, and integrity. Ultimately it isn't so much about others but about keeping the agreements you make - which leads to honesty and integrity and trust - and those are three things that Katie needs desperately.

So B, her therapist, had an interesting idea last night on the call. For the next week this is her only goal - she won't have to worry about the others for now. But every day she doesn't do it, when they are in their group sessions, she will then have to confront every girl there with an issue they have to work on. Right then. And there will be no avoiding or putting that off. So the next call should have some kind of interesting results.

One other thing Katie has tried - she wrote Diane saying that she wanted Diane to adopt her. We shut that down, but it was still something we had to deal with. She has such big issues with her birth mother, and I can understand these, but that is not a solution ( aside from the legal and cost issues involved for - well for nothing at this point). It is interesting to note that she said she wanted to do this as a symbol of her relationship with Diane. We replied that the relationship has to be repaired first - and even if we did an adoption, the paper wouldn't change the relationship. And while it has improved - Diane and Katie have an enormously long way to go. The distance between them is farther than the physical distance by a long ways, and will be much harder to truly cross.