Photo Perspective

God recently gave me a friendship at our homeschool co-op that He has used to force me to be honest about my parenting of V. She encouraged me to seek help because V shows symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). I have felt for years that I have been a failure as a mom to V (V has been home for almost 6 years now). We feel like we are getting nowhere in reaching his heart motivations for his behavior. V can be very obedient and sweet when his dad or I are paying attention to him, but as soon as we are not looking or out of earshot, he often resorts to bad behavior.

I just finished reading Adopting the Hurt Child by Gregory C. Keck & Regina Kupecky, where the author describes the dramatic effects that not being able to bond with a primary caregiver during the first 3 years of life has on a person's ability to relate to everyone in their world in their future. V spent his first 21 months in a Ukrainian hospital, then the next 16 months in an orphanage, so he experienced multiple changes of shifts in who was responsible for caring for him. Since we all learn to relate to people based on our first attachment to our primary caregivers, V did not develop an ability to totally trust us as his adoptive parents. This inability to trust leads to an inability to attach and can be exhibited in various ways for different kids such as:

Superficially engaging & charming
Lack of eye contact on parents terms
Indiscriminately affectionate with strangers
Not affectionate on Parents’ terms
Destructive to self, others and material things (accident prone)
Cruelty to animals
Lying about the obvious (crazy lying)
Stealing
No impulse controls (frequently acts hyperactive)
Learning Lags
Lack of cause-and-effect thinking
Lack of conscience
Abnormal eating patterns
Poor peer relationships
Preoccupation with fire
Preoccupation with blood & gore
Persistent nonsense questions & chatter
Inappropriately demanding & clingy
Abnormal speech patterns
Triangulation of adults
False allegations of abuse
Presumptive entitlement issues
- List is from www.attachment.org

Because of V's ability to be superficially engaging and charming, many of you who know V will find it difficult to believe that we struggle with his behavior. How many times have I heard, "Oh, I just LOVE that V! He is SO sweet, adorable, cute, ect."? So please trust us on this issue, and pray for healing for V as we start learning how we can help him overcome his hurts. We will be starting therapy with a therapist who specializes in attachment disorder in August (there's a LONG wait to get an evaluation done). In the meantime, we will be learning all we can about RAD and try some different parenting techniques that have worked for other kids with RAD.

Focus on the Family has an article about RAD if you would like to learn more.