I am a mom, that is my highest title. I also coach, support and encourage other parents who live with emotionally disturbed children. I teach therapists, social workers, case workers, GAL’s and people through the juvenile justice system to give them effective tools to help families and children. I specialize in bonding and conscience development. I firmly believe that attachment is at the root of most mental illness. A lot of researchers out there are finding that to be true. It is under diagnosed not over diagnosed and is a huge issue for our children and our county.

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Since 1974. I worked for large agency for ten years alongside Foster Cline as a licensed therapeutic foster mom. I worked with some of the toughest children in the country and some of the best professionals in the country so I fine-tuned my parenting program out of survival and necessity because the kids were in my house! The more I worked with them the more passionate I became because I loved to watch them heal. Then I realized taking the child away from the parent and then sending them home was heartbreaking for the parents, the child and me. In 1995 I started working with the family so they didn’t have to send the child away and parents had more tools to use at home. Parents could get help before it was so late and they were so burned out they had to get someone else to do it. No one does it as well as the parent, including me. I have no more talent than any other mom, just more experience. Two hands and one heart—same tools. When parents know how to use those tools they can turn the child around without traumatizing them by sending them away.

More children with larger issues, deeper level of damage done to them before they get help. More drugs, more alcohol, more teen pregnancies, more time back with birth parents who are not ready to parent. By the time we start helping them it is more difficult. Adoptive parents, for some reason, seem to be waiting longer to get help. I think it is because there are people out there saying "they will get over it, just wait." But the kids don’t get better, they get sicker every day when they don’t get help and parents are more exhausted.

The general public has become more negative about the care for the child that is necessary to help them. People become “educated” about attachment disorders through misrepresentations in the media and that has caused a tremendous amount of problems for parents looking for help.


As a society more parents are parenting out of guilt; we are more over indulgent. Buying more stuff to keep children busy. Lots of isolation… 60% of kids in the US have a TV in their room. Kids are isolated and not part of the family and the bottom line is there isn’t a family. They are nuking their own food, standing at the microwave eating alone and spending 6.5 hours/day on computers video games and TV. They are not interacting with their family or developing relationship skills. This is very, very destructive and scary.

The price of treatment for an emotionally disturbed child has gotten higher and funding available to help families has gotten lower and harder to find, so this lack of funding has prevented children from getting the help they need.

Attachment does not just happen, it doesn’t just appear out of the air, it takes time and energy and commitment. There is nothing more important for the child… absolutely nothing… not a shopping spree or time at Disneyland … nothing better than time spent with the parent one on one, laughing and learning to love. That is what we should be investing in.

Social workers need to have an entire course on attachment, attachment issues, RAD, and the required treatment. I think they should each adopt a child but then it would be a few years down the road before they would be able to help anybody! They need to support the parents. Bottom line is they need enough training to be able to support the parents. All the questioning and doubting and negative stuff they do cause more damage to the family. Many disruptions have been caused by social workers and not the child. And that is so wounding to the child and the family. There are some great social workers out there doing some fantastic work. Unfortunately the flip side of the coin is young, untrained social workers doing great harm.

Attachment therapy is treatment by a mental health professional that puts the parent and the child together. It connects or reconnects their hearts. It does not involve bonding to the therapist in any way. That has caused triangulation in a lot of families. It is done by a mental health professional that is trained to do the therapy. A therapist cannot be trained in a weekend seminar they go listen to, or through a book they read. They go through hundreds of hours of training in order to be qualified to treat these deeply wounded children.

If the therapist tried to take child in other room and close the door and leave the parent out, the therapist is absolutely clueless about RAD. The very act of doing that says they do not know how to treat the child and they do not understand the child they are attempting to treat. It also gives you a high indication of the low IQ of the therapist. You have to have a very low IQ to choose to be alone in a room with a child who very likely will make false allegations against you! An attachment educated therapist knows that it is easier for the child to tell the truth if the parent is in the room. It is very easy to lie when the person you are lying to doesn’t have the information to know what the truth really is. And the truth needs to be the center of the therapy.

My number one goal is that they can live happily ever after. They let go of the pain and the anger and destruction that they put in the relationship and just be able to look forward and laugh and enjoy their relationship with each other. This applies to both parents and children.

Something I would really, really like to see is that parents of children with attachment disorder be honored. They are unbelievably amazing. You know that song, The Impossible Dream… these parents live the impossible dream. They are out there fighting an unbeatable fight, doing all this unbelievable loving to someone who hates their guts, destroys their home and takes all the fun out of life… these parents keep on looking for resources, fighting the fight. They get spit on by mental health professionals that are supposed to be helping them, attacked by the government, stabbed in the back by their own families, kicked when they are down by the community. Most people have no idea how much love these parents put out there. It breaks my heart. When I work with parents they tell me the stuff the child is doing and ask for ideas… and then they tell me their deepest pain, and it comes from all the people around them who should be supporting and uplifting them but instead are adding to the burden.


People need to know that children can heal. Once they have the tools and they have a good mental health provider on their team, children can do it. Every foster parent, every adoptive parent should have comprehensive training in bonding and attachment before they have the child.

When they bring a child in that has heartbreak, that child needs intensive care. Intensive care involves a parent committed to their healing just as if the child had undergone a physical heart transplant. The child would need a parent by their bedside meeting their needs if they had experienced a major physical illness. For six months to a year the parent’s focus needs to be on helping the child recover from what they have been through, and that means being home to accomplish that goal.

I hope she calls us soon because she will be a great spokesperson. Her children have had their hearts broken and they are wounded and they are going to need help. And she’s the kind of person who will look for that help. She’s a powerful lady. Too bad Oprah isn’t planning to adopt… how’s that for a powerful lady?