On most mornings these days, Bari Greenwood’s 4-year-old daughter wakes up in her bunk bed, gets dressed by herself and eagerly waits to be taken to daycare.
For most 4-year-olds, these moments in a daily routine would hardly be worth mentioning. But Greenwood recounts them with the wide smile of a proud mother, for each is a hard-fought victory and a sign of remarkable progress.
Greenwood adopted her daughter in July 2015 but had cared for her for more than a year before that, when Child Protective Services removed the girl, then 2 years old, from her biological parents. Greenwood, a relative, agreed to take the infant in after adults in the home were found using methamphetamine, she said. There were also allegations the girl had been sexually assaulted.
It was a difficult transition for the child, traumatized first by her home situation and then again by her abrupt removal from it. Night terrors — bouts of shrieking and crying in the middle of the night — meant many sleepless nights for Greenwood and her husband, who would spend hours at the girl’s side, trying to console her.
[For more of this story, written by Edgar Walters, go to https://www.texastribune.org/2...are-treat-psycholog/]
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