Proponents of controversial attachment therapies commonly assert that their therapies, and their therapies alone, are effective for children with attachment disorders and that more traditional treatments are either ineffective or harmful (see, e.g., Becker-Weidman, n.d.-b; Kirkland, n.d.; Thomas, n.d.-a). Proponents believe that traditional therapies fail to help children with attachment problems because the prerequisite of establishing a trusting relationship with the child is impossible to accomplish with these children. In contrast to traditional theories, the controversial treatments hold that children with attachment problems actively avoid forming genuine relationships, and consequently relationship-based interventions are unlikely to be effective (Institute for Attachment and Child Development, n.d.). Proponents of the controversial therapies emphasize the child’s resistance to attachment and the need to break down the child’s resistance (Institute for Attachment and Child Development, n.d.). According to proponents, children with attachment disorders crave power, control, and authority; are dishonest; and have ulterior motives for ostensibly normal social behaviors. The child with attachment disorders is described by these proponents as completely self-centered, often exhibiting a sense of grandiosity, lacking conscience, and posing a danger to other children and, ultimately, to society itself. They are labeled within some treatment or parent communities as simply “RAD’s,” “RAD-kids” or “RADishes.” Thus, the conceptual focus for understanding the child’s behavior emphasizes the child’s individual internal pathology and past caregivers, rather than current parent-child relationships or current environment. If the child is well behaved outside the home, it is conceptualized as successful manipulation of outsiders, rather than as evidence of a problem in the current home or current parent-child relationship (Thomas, n.d.-a). Proponents of this viewpoint may describe the presenting problem as a healthy family with a sick child. This perspective may appeal to some. As Barth, Crea, John, Thoburn, and Quinton (2005) noted “attachment therapies may be attractive because by locating the blame for the child’s current difficulties with prior carers, they appear to relieve adoptive and foster parents of the responsibility to change aspects of their own behavior and aspirations” (pp. 262-263).

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