This morning as Beth was waiting for the neighbor to pick her up for school, she was hanging out in my office. My blog, and the last picture I posted of Amy, was displayed on my computer. She said, “Who’s that?” When I told her it was Amy she was shocked, and she commented on what a pouty face Amy wore. I scrolled down and displayed the rest of the recent pictures, and Beth asked, “Did Amy ever smile?” I said, “Sometimes, but it was…”

“Fake?” Beth filled in the blank even as I was speaking.

Beth was amazed that Amy would realize I was... more

Another reader questions whether if Amy had been a bio child, would her actions/attitude been diagnosed as a mental illness? The fact is, RAD is a mental illness. It is an emotional and/or brain wiring response to trauma. And there is a huge genetic component to Amy’s response as well. She is, by all accounts, not dissimilar from her birth mother.

And it is also a fact that we treated her mental illness. We tried multiple therapists, multiple medications, multiple other therapeutic interventions. Operating on... more

Starting part four of this series, a reader asks if Amy ever smiled. The answer would be yes, on rare occasions, but they often seemed fake and shallow to the rest of us. And her laugh was often forced or offered up at inappropriate times. I understand she didn’t feel what we feel, didn’t know when to laugh, hadn’t a clue about how to engage emotionally with anyone. I “get it” that she can’t do something she isn’t equipped to do. Talking to Nancy Ashe about how she felt (or more appropriately how she didn’t feel), how she “performed” her... more

Amy could make a control battle out of anything… and she did. She wouldn’t collect all the towels, or make her bed, or put away clothes, or wash herself, or do much of anything anyone asked. You could ignore her, get in her face, or do something in between… no change. She once spent two weeks in her room, during the summer, missing all kinds of activities, for want of doing 15 minutes of family chores. All she had to do was say, “I’d like to be a part of this family and I want to show you by ____________” and then name... more

The things I most remember about Amy early on were how controlling she was, how passive aggressive she was, and how shut down she was. Her eyes would just glaze over and you couldn’t touch her emotionally. She couldn’t selectively filter out what she didn’t want to feel so she shut down her emotions across the board.

No matter what we did, she found a reason to not like it or to complain. The week Tommy joined us, when Amy was 4, we went to Leaps & Bounds, a play area, and she didn’t like that (“too... more

A reader asked what Amy was like as a child and what behaviors concerned us early on. This is a good question and a difficult one to answer… not because I don’t know the answer, but because it is painful to remember our struggles that originated so early on and never really resolved. Amy was 21 months old and weighed about 21 pounds when she arrived. She was a beautiful child, notwithstanding the dour face and perpetual pout she wore from the very beginning. I was completely clueless about attachment, grief and loss. I... more

Part One

Continuing on with my thoughts on the steel box with a velvet lining…

It is my opinion that when we don’t have reasonable, and yes, perhaps even high expectations of our kids, we are sending messages of incompetence and we are undermining our child’s confidence. I blogged about it before; one post is here.

Our... more

Perhaps some of you are tired of my canine reporting, but since I am up to my eyeballs in barking, playing, slipping, sliding, ball dropping dogs… it is very hard not to think about them AND very easy to draw parallels in their behavior with the behaviors of our kids.

Zoë, I have decided, spent her first 1-2 years tied up outside somewhere. Either she received some socialization or she is just a friendly, social dog. But she has NO manners whatsoever and thinks nothing of planting her feet on my back when I least expect it. She's a fast learner and... more

This morning Beth and I loaded up two of the five dogs and joined the fairly newly formed Kansas City Hiking Club for a 4+ mile trek. We came home and extracted ticks from Beth (Frontline will take care of the dogs!) and showered and ate and soon will be taking a nap. The BC’s are napping but Zoë and Gracie are romping, as they haven’t burned off any energy yet. Zoë is looking like a different dog already… she’s put on weight (not feeding tapeworms anymore) and is starting to believe her fortune really has changed.

I will... more

We interrupt our regular programming to provide you an update here at Canine Central. I must say, even as a dyed-in-the-wool dog lover, I am looking around here wondering what the heck I have done!

Zoë has the demeanor of having died and gone to heaven. She just polished off her second meal of the day. She walked over three miles with me. She and Ben have figured out how to play. She loves the puppy to pieces and clearly misses her own pups (I can tell she has had a litter) because she is cleaning and boxing this puppy... more