Had a talk with my daughter.

When the girl was with her Aunt, several upsetting things happened. The two of them got into an argument, mainly because the girl was overtired (she's only 10, and gets very excited when overtired, refusing to go to sleep, and becomming rather uncontrollable, if you don't nip it in the bud really quick).  So, the Aunt put the girl to bed in a darkened room (the girl is afraid of the dark), yelling between the two of them was rather bad, and when I tried to intervene, was told that I was not allowed to talk to the girl, even though she was calling me from the other room. I listened to this for an hour, nearly in tears about it, because I knew I could help get her calmed down if the Aunt would just get out of the way. After an hour, the Aunt walked past me and told me that she was done, couldn't handle that, and it was my responsibility. Rather rude, on the Aunt's part, but I did go in and take care of it. With this girl, the first (and most important thing) is to get her calmed down first. While she is in "full flow" you cannot reason with her. She can become completely unmanagable, if you do not calm her down first.  In order to calm her down, you must maintain your calm. This is very important. While I don't always do it right (sometimes it is really hard to control your temper when this girl gets going), I do do it right 90% of the time.  I'm working on doing better, because it is better for both of us.  Got a call from the Aunt today, and she told me that she was going to defer to me from now on, as I am the "parent" in this situation. She told me that from now on she will tell me what she needs (and we had a discussion regarding trying to force the girl to eat food she considers inedible), and allow me to "parent" the girl to get this need forfilled. I told her that then I would tell her if the request was reasonable. We agreed. PROGRESS!  finally. Let's see if it pans out.