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Apr. 23rd, 2024 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyDear Care and Feeding,
My teenage niece, Liza, is a kid who’s been through some tough times. She was removed from my brother’s home by child protective services when she was 8, and now lives with my husband (we also have a baby) and me. She is a wonderful kid in so many ways—kind, smart, driven—but is holding a decidedly unkind grudge against our dog, and we are at a loss as to what to do.
We got the dog 5 years ago, when Liza was 11 and admittedly, we didn’t handle it in the best way possible. We knew that my niece wanted a dog, so we thought she’d be excited too, but we did not adequately consult her as to which one. The dog also isn’t perfect (barking, peeing, some of which has improved with training). My niece has held the most epic grudge against this dog, perhaps because she feels like she wasn’t consulted, or maybe the dog has become a vessel for all of her feelings of sadness and fear of not having a family after what happened to her. We have tried to empathize with her feelings while also drawing limits on her behavior: no kicking or pretending to kick the dog and no, we are not abandoning the dog at a shelter, as she has suggested. We’ve tried simply letting her feelings be. We’ve tried talking to her about the root cause of her anger and offering to do a group session with her therapist. We’ve tried telling her she can pick a dog trainer. We even, in a moment of desperation, tried having the dog stay with my sister for a while; that didn’t work, as she complained about the dog just as often and even refused to go over to my sister’s house several times because of him (at great personal cost, as my niece loves my sister!)
This is about more than just a dog. When it comes to those underlying feelings, we talk to her about my brother (now deceased), and she has a great therapist. And we have made clear in every way that we love her, consider her a part of the family, and would like to adopt her if she’s open to it. We have a great relationship with her otherwise. But if anything, her dog grudge has escalated, and at a certain point (she’s 16 now), it has become pretty cruel (not to mention self-destructive) for her to carry these feelings against a poor dog, who is frankly pretty afraid of her.
—Dog Tired
( Read more... )
My teenage niece, Liza, is a kid who’s been through some tough times. She was removed from my brother’s home by child protective services when she was 8, and now lives with my husband (we also have a baby) and me. She is a wonderful kid in so many ways—kind, smart, driven—but is holding a decidedly unkind grudge against our dog, and we are at a loss as to what to do.
We got the dog 5 years ago, when Liza was 11 and admittedly, we didn’t handle it in the best way possible. We knew that my niece wanted a dog, so we thought she’d be excited too, but we did not adequately consult her as to which one. The dog also isn’t perfect (barking, peeing, some of which has improved with training). My niece has held the most epic grudge against this dog, perhaps because she feels like she wasn’t consulted, or maybe the dog has become a vessel for all of her feelings of sadness and fear of not having a family after what happened to her. We have tried to empathize with her feelings while also drawing limits on her behavior: no kicking or pretending to kick the dog and no, we are not abandoning the dog at a shelter, as she has suggested. We’ve tried simply letting her feelings be. We’ve tried talking to her about the root cause of her anger and offering to do a group session with her therapist. We’ve tried telling her she can pick a dog trainer. We even, in a moment of desperation, tried having the dog stay with my sister for a while; that didn’t work, as she complained about the dog just as often and even refused to go over to my sister’s house several times because of him (at great personal cost, as my niece loves my sister!)
This is about more than just a dog. When it comes to those underlying feelings, we talk to her about my brother (now deceased), and she has a great therapist. And we have made clear in every way that we love her, consider her a part of the family, and would like to adopt her if she’s open to it. We have a great relationship with her otherwise. But if anything, her dog grudge has escalated, and at a certain point (she’s 16 now), it has become pretty cruel (not to mention self-destructive) for her to carry these feelings against a poor dog, who is frankly pretty afraid of her.
—Dog Tired
( Read more... )