Reactive Attachment Disorder

RAD comes in many shapes and sizes, and is different in every child.  For example, our 12 year old, Elle, has never been good at identifying her emotions, how to describe them, nor how to communicate them.  On the other hand, our 6 year old, Bunny, has had no trouble identifying her emotions, she just has a problem controlling them. Every therapist we’ve had has always had a chart of emotions on their walls.  You know, the chart of cartoon characters making faces like angry, happiness, and horror.  These charts are used to help children identify their emotions visually.  Our current therapist has gone through a list of the most common emotions and had both girls explain the definition of each one. Through our… [more]

We had Bunny in therapy last Friday and we were discussing her recent round of temper tantrums and struggles for control.  Lately, she has been sneaking out of the house and not telling anyone where she is going or what she is doing.  On 20 acres of pasture and woodland, a little six year old is likely to get into a lot of trouble, so you see why we’ve been getting upset. Especially now that the coyotes have had their spring pups, and we have killed two copperhead snakes in the last two weeks.  We don’t worry so much about Elle, because she always has her dog as her constant companion and she wears a pair of leather cowboy boots to protect her… [more]

When I became a parent, I never knew a useful skill would be managing a rollercoaster ride.  One day Elle is having a bad day and she is at the bottom, but Bunny is riding at the top.  Twenty-four hours later, Bunny is scraping the bottom and Elle is flying high. But, it’s not only the ups and downs of one child versus the other; it’s the pendulum swing back and forth in a single child.  For seven years, we’ve dealt with RAD’s effect on Elle.  There were times that we were so far down on the bottom of the rollercoaster; I thought we had permanently derailed.  There was a time I was convinced we would only see her during weekly visits to… [more]

I was at the gym the other day and I was watching a few mothers in the locker room with their children.  One mother was trying to juggle a baby on the floor, brush a toddler’s hair, and manage a little boy who refused to sit still.  I had empathy for the young mother because I couldn’t imagine having three kids, let alone three children so close in age. There was also another mother with her three-year-old daughter.  The little girl kept asking her mother question, after question, after question.  I could feel the frustration emanating off the young woman and I saw some of myself in her face.  The little girl wanted to comb her own hair, but kept asking how… [more]

Hopeless. That’s how it felt. Nothing we did made a big enough difference. My dream of becoming a mother was fading fast. We spent so many years preparing to be parents. Then it took two years to finalize our adoption. Our son was nearly 10 years old when we adopted him from Kazakhstan. The “honeymoon” didn’t last very long. The rages lasted for hours. The violence was unbelievable. I still have scares on my legs from when he would attack me like a wild animal. Ceiling fixtures torn out. Computer monitors thrown. Walls kicked in. Chairs smashed. The destruction was, well…expensive. He would torture our animals. Every little thing set him off. I would get spit on regularly. He would even urinate… [more]

Two years ago, we learned about Nancy Thomas and her special brand of attachment therapy.  Our daughter, Elle, had been diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and we didn’t know what to do to help her.  With the help of an attachment therapist, we struggled with changing our parenting style in order to combat Elle’s RAD behaviors. After a year of seeing little progress, we decided to attend one of Nancy’s family therapy camps.  Nestled in the Colorado Rockies, Nancy and her staff started the process of our understanding RAD and how it was affecting our daughter.  We learned parenting skills that would help us to help Elle understand what was going on in her brain, and help her identify her emotions and… [more]

Attachment disorder or survival disorder as I like to call it is not a well known issue, but can be extremely difficult and emotional to deal with.  Our rescued "busted adoption" child is attachment disordered, by his own confession.  We have hoped in the two years he has been here we would change some of his behaviors, but perhaps only Jesus can if he will let him in.  His continued "bullying" or threats to our oldest boys are becoming not acceptable and his inability to tell the truth is at the very least frustrating. Children who suffer from this disorder are extremely charming to those outside their families, but entirely the opposite within the home.  They have frequently been abandoned by their mothers… [more]

My daughter, Elle, has reactive attachment disorder (RAD).  She has been in therapy since she was seven and has been seeing an attachment therapist for the last two years.  Her therapy is helping and the more time we spend on addressing her RAD behaviors and her relationships, she is getting better. One thing we noticed from the beginning was her irrational relationship with sugar.  Like most kids, Elle loves cookies, cakes, and candy.  However, the difference between Elle and normal kids is her RAD.  Her relationship with sugar is much like an alcoholic’s relationship with whiskey. In a way, they are the same thing.  It is all about sugar…glucose, sucrose, fructose, and lactose.  Sugar is sugar.  Unlike an alcoholic, it is harder to… [more]

When I was young, I had rules in my house that I had to live by…or there would be consequences.  Back in the 1960’s, the consequences were usually a spanking, either with a hand or a wooden spoon, and once I had to eat soap. It’s odd that I don’t think this was unusual when I was little, but I can’t fathom punishing my daughters in this fashion now. As a child of the 60’s, we had order and discipline in our house, right along with every other house on the block.  We didn’t misbehave, we knew how to treat adults with respect, we knew not to argue with our parents and I always knew I had to go home at night… [more]

As I sit at my desk, composing this post, Bunny is throwing a temper tantrum.  She doesn’t throw “normal” temper tantrums; these are oppositional defiance disorder related tantrums.  We’ve had Bunny in therapy for about six months.  At first, we thought she was just having behavioral issues because she has a sibling with reactive attachment disorder (RAD), but her behaviors are different than Elle’s and they are escalating. We have been working on a diagnosis for Bunny with our therapist.  The first assessment we took reported that she did not have RAD; she didn’t even score on the chart.  After discussing this with our therapist, we decided if we were to take the assessment again, Bunny would score off the chart… [more]