The following morning — and on the next four days — Purvis arrived at the home at 7 a.m. Stacie had quit her part-time job, sent her 2-year-old to her parents’ house for a few days and locked herself in the house with Kristen. Her husband remained at work to provide some stability for the family.

“I truly believed in my deepest heart that this child was going to be a sociopath,” she said.

Purvis developed “Kristen’s Rules” on brightly colored poster board and decorated it with pictures of Kristen’s different faces — angry, happy, mean — even adding her little foot next to the rule, “No kicking.” Other rules included no hurts, no throwing on the floor and using only her “good” words, which included the phrase “mommy and daddy are the boss, all the time.”

The first step included playful engagement with the parent, with Purvis offering ways to redirect Kristen’s anger. If she growled with an ugly comment, Stacie would say, “Oh, is that a lion?” If Kristen’s behavior escalated to physical aggression, Stacie would wrap her arms around Kristen and hold her quietly to prevent violence against the child or others.

To pass the program’s first level, the family was to go 14 days without a violent episode. The family spent nearly two months on level one. This meant two months of no school, no soccer, no outside work for Stacie, and keeping Kristen within an arm’s length. Two months of asking for toys, bathroom breaks, drinks from the refrigerator. Two months of sleeping on a cot in Kristen’s room.

Early the third day, which she describes as “the worst,” Stacie had a revelation while Kristen was being held.
“At one point, Kristen kept saying, ‘I can’t stop crying, Mommy. Make the hurt go away. Make them leave me alone, make them get away. Get it off me.’ And she would make these growling, animal noises, like nothing I’ve ever heard. I was truly scared.

“I truly believe that as an infant, she was either strangled or suffocated, and at some subconscious level she believed that the only safety in her world was the safety she could create, and that she couldn’t trust people.”

Then another first: Three weeks later, Kristen crawled into her mother’s lap, curled up in a ball and fell asleep. Never once in Kristen’s four years had she ever fallen asleep in her parents’ arms.
Eventually Kristen’s discipline turned to “earning chores.” If she hit a sibling, her mother would ask her to clean the bathrooms. If the bad behavior continued, time spent doing the chores would increase by five minutes. Kristen still didn’t attend school, but she could be a little farther away from the parent.

“I think the program takes them back to a point where they have to relinquish control,” Stacie said. “In her little world, she truly thought the world was only predictable if she controlled it. And she would control it at any cost.

“She was very well-behaved in school and never spoke a word. It was part of her control. She could do that at school and survive, and at home she could let go and control her environment by unleashing.”