Patti we're talking a few seconds in the 'still face' experiment not weeks or months. How do any of us know what went on at WHF in the lead up to June's depression and admittance to St Andrews. We're not talking baby blues here where a new mother toodles off to her gp for some happy pills. We're talking serious mental illness requiring in-patient psychiatric treatment and ect as a direct result of her decision to adopt SC 
I think the failure to recognise this as a cornerstone of the case is a serious failing.
The still face experiment is shocking and I really don't think it should be allowed however much information it may impart to psychologists. If we go along with your thesis that June was this still faced woman who by default failed to give enough attention to Sheila even when she must have seen what the resulting harm was,or that replacement caregivers were also a shower and froze Sheila out,and even Nevill was too tired after a hard day's work on the Farm to cuddle,coo,pick her up or play with her toes then we have a damaged Sheila suffering from an attachment disorder,and for the purposes of this post let us accept all of this for one moment.
The attachment disorder can manifest itself in several ways. Violent parenting can result in extremis in the Mary Bell scenario,where Mary gets her own back on two little boys as she acts out the violent abuse her mother gave her whilst witnessing her prostitute mother deliberately harming her and being subjected to violent sexual acts by her male clientele. Before we drift from the subject the main point is the child's brain has been damaged as if it had been involved in a car accident,though of course one cannot see the damage physically;however the child as it begins to grow and sense adults around it develops survival skills first at the expense of relationship skills,manifested in manipulation,control,aggression or withdrawal.
You will see that I just cannot reconcile the above characteristics with Sheila;rather I see her as vacuous as has been described many times on this forum,and living in a vacuum,in a world which she found difficult to relate to,but I find no evidence of her harming pets,bullying fellow pupils(if anything it was Sheila who was bullied),I don't see her as manipulative but struggling with her developing mental illness which must have hit her like a ton of bricks,yet again I don't see her complaining as she undergoes mood swings and side-effects in medication. It was the self-harm which was a symptom of her illness,and certainly not inflicting physical pain on others.
Of course Sheila had a serious mental illness(we don't know how serious June's was but it seems she did not suffer from hallucinations and appeared to function in her milieu of charitable works and Church), could hardly get up out of bed in the morning and seemed to drift from one idea to another.However we may judge her for her vapid and aimless existence it's still a stretch for her to have finally given up on everything and everyone that last week over a remark about fostering or adoption around the dinner table which may or may not have taken place.
Whilst recognizing that every child is different I note other symptoms of attachment disorder:destruction which may undoubtedly have occurred with some of Colin's sculptures whilst they were living together,but then I also read that these children can be charming,generally when this person is interacting with people they rarely see(Jeremy writing letters from prison),controlling(Jeremy demanding money with menaces from June),stealing and lying(the Osea Road burglary),low impulse control(Jeremy kills five people within a short space of time because he hasn't thought through his actions and has no understanding of how his actions impact on others),no apparent remorse or conscience(the loss of five lives didn't bother Jeremy at all..when he looks you in the eye it's an indication that he's lying).
Nobody is denying that Sheila may well have suffered from attachment disorder,though it's hard to envisage how differently Jeremy was brought up than his sister,especially when daughters are usually the apple of their father's eye and are likely to be more reticent with sons in their early years. Both children were palmed off to multiple caregivers at an early age whereupon they were sent to public school for others to deal with(unlike Roderick Newall there was at least some time to bond during holidays),yet Jeremy had arrived into this emotionally-charged environment where all had the best of intentions to start with(remember Jeremy imitating Nevill with his food choice at breakfast),yet the individual just cannot maintain the facade of being someone else and the relationship breaks down. This is exactly what happened with Jeremy and Nevill.Parents expect change in their children(re:June's "Devil's Child remark to Sheila) yet this only puts further pressure on the child and the cycle of mistrust and in Sheila's case helplessness continues. However in my opinion Sheila had worked through her negativity with June after leaving St. Andrew's for the second time and had put her mother's former condemnations to one side. It was Jeremy who saw the years stretching out before him and realized that time was not on his side.
