Nancy, As painful as it must be to write this series, I want to thank you very much. We are in the process of seeing a psychiatrist and having medication prescribed --we had two visits and this next visit will be so the good doctor can "observe" our son. Although our extended family has high hopes about medication, my husband and I don't believe that this is the silver bullet. We are going to give it a try as we have not done medication before and it is a piece, but like you, we won't be surprised if he refuses the medication and I have already told him that he is free to do that. (Paradoxing! You can guess his response? "I'm going to do!" We'll see). Normally we don't tell him what we have the works but he saw a picture of himself from the orphanage and has been all wigged out [his scared comes out very ODD and trying every which way to provoke and be "wooden"]. We tried school and even though the elementary school was 100 yards away and we live in CALIFORNIA (!!), we still got questions as to why he was wearing shorts in January. "Because he wants to" I said. At least the staff asked. The incident with shoving a pencil down a child's throat sent me into orbit. Clearly the school didn't understand the kind of watching we had requested. Right now, he refuses to read [Correction: I did get him to do 2 minutes of reading with 2 hours of working with him; it was agony...]. He did write a letter to thank a relative for a comic book as I say that you can use the gifts that you acknowledge with a thank you note. And he did ask to do math and did may 10 single digit addition problems. I do a lot of books on tape. When he listened to "Man's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankel, he had the most amazed and happy look on his face: "Mom! Someone who has suffered more than I have!". Both he and his sister absolutely love "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Topsy in the story is certainly RAD. So I get the classics and the Newbery award winners (that I can tolerate) on tape and he loves them. When he is not doing that, I give him a choice of chores, strong sitting or playing. He always choses chores and then strong sitting and maybe playing. Why do I think this is so? Because he longs for structure and chores have structure. And strong sitting has structure. Free play doesn't.

I so understand the lack of wanting. Our son spent--and I won't indicate how long, but it's appalling...going on months--of just wanting to stay in his room and refused all privileges and wanting anything. It all started over a two paragrah paper I asked him to write. When he finally finished it, it took all of 30 minutes.

Right now he is in a dark place and scared and of course he won't tell me what is bothering him. When he has in the past, it breaks the scared. For whatever reason, he won't.

Thank you so much for your candor, Nancy. There are so few who understand and I can already hear the cry from the pit: "If you'd parented differently!!!" My cynical response: Adopt a few RADlets and call me in six months. Right now, our extended family is open--at least some of them--to reading about what we are dealing with. I suggested "The Unlit Path". I doubt it will be read. I had suggested "Building the Bonds of Attachment" but one relative thought that was too hard to read because of the tragedy.

It is such a lonely journey.

Patricia

For our family, we discovered that is was about power and control. Even when it was clearly not in his best interest, Tony would say or do things to try and create chaos, just because he could.

Deb Hage and Brita St. Clair helped a lot. Using their techniques helped us get our senses of humor back, while helping Tony learn more appropriate and successful behavior.

Nancy, I want to also thank you for your candor. Hopefully it is cathartic as you continue in the healing process, all the while trying to help others on their paths.