Nightmares

Kiddo has been getting up several times a night for the past few weeks and was super hyper yesterday.  I asked her to calm down and tell me what was going on.  After asking a few different ways, she said she's worried.  She said she keeps having nightmares about her baby sis doing things to her new parents. She's worried that she'll never get adopted and worried that we'll make her call her back.

I reassured her that we weren't going to force her to call her sister, the option was always there, but it wasn't a mandatory "chore", that we're looking to be supportive.

She said she wants to go back to visits every few months, not every month.

I gave her ideas from my past therapy on negative thoughts and told her to repeat "it's just a dream" or "she's never done that in the past, it's not likely now" every time and for her to come to tell that instead of zombies so I can remind her and reassure her, as well as give her an extra hug.

She said she's worried S is so much like her that she'll do something like that. I asked what happened that provoked her doing that in her last home (to remind her it was self defense) and asked her how many times she'd done that to us (none).  I reminded her if she hadn't done that since then and only did in self defense, then logically it was to be expected if S is "just like her" that she would only respond like that in self defense too, instead of offensive aggression.

I asked her if she'd ever thought about doing that to us and she said no.  That was to remind her she only gets violent when somebody is violent with her and she's not a bad kid.

She was still hyper and anxious, but I think it was productive.