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The big question I'm seeming to have is pertaining to RAD. I've read about some pretty extreme situations on the boards and behaviors exhibited. I have been reading some books too, but am wondering what to expect since it seems to be terribly common in adopted kids.
Do y'all have some examples of maybe moderate RAD behaviors/effects that you deal with that you could share?
Just trying to get some of this figured out I guess and what I should expect, so I can have 'Aha' moments and not 'OMG' moments when I face some things.
:Chewie: ----->Coffee anyone?
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Come over to the special needs board....Read past posts....there are experiences there that run the gamut from the mild attachment issues, to the extreme....
if you think about a RAD child in the sense that attachment and intimacy and trust is PAINFUL and to be avoided at all costs.....then you take each individual child's resourcefulness into acct....then you see anything and everything can happen.
It is up to each individual child and their intensity of emotions.
The main issues are manipulation, stranger affection, need to cause chaos in times of peace, inability to accept or give true affection, Lying, Stealing....etc..
The Manipulation is the worst....you gotta be on guard at all times not to allow them to succeed at manipulating anyone....every little sucess at getting what they want with old tools like these, delays the healing. They start to doubt whether they should abandon those behaviors, or simply try HARDER or longer and be more persistant.
They learn to push your buttons to make you feel just as awful as they feel.....which is pretty awful.
visit [url=http://www.radzebra.org]Home[/url]
The toughest part of parenting a RAD child for me is the lack of reciprocity. A child with RAD cannot give back to their caregiver. They give absolutely nothing back and take everything. My daughter has no concept of family. Yes, we have rages, lying, stealing, manipulation, etc. But the lack of love and the lack of even understanding basic love and respect is the most difficult for me.
The younger you can get them treatment the better. Find a therapist that specializes in RAD and start therapy ASAP. We were told we were too late. (we took them in when he was 7 and his sister was 8). They always had weekly counseling. We thought loving them and giving them structure was enough.....After 5 hospitalizations ou 15 year old son has been in residential care for 1.5 years now. His 16 year old sister who is still with us is going through extreme difficulties right now.
finnmom
The younger you can get them treatment the better. Find a therapist that specializes in RAD and start therapy ASAP. We were told we were too late. (we took them in when he was 7 and his sister was 8).
This is intimidating. We're currently waiting for the file of a boy, just turned six, with other special needs besides his age. We're expecting attachment problems as he's spent a long time in an orphanage. If he does have RAD- is there really no chance of recovery by the age of 7?
Thanks-
Julie
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I think there is always a chance of recovery, however that decreases as age and neglect increases. Age 6 is young. I would say until puberty, with the right interventions, they can get better. Of course that depends on the severity of the RAD and the child's willingness to heal.
I think the therapist who said it was too late for children who were 7 and 8 was uninformed. That is sad for them.
I agree with Lorraine about the therapist being uninformed. My oldest was a month shy of his 7th birthday when he came to me. We are going on almost 3 years now and he has improved behaviorally quite a bit. Many in the community have noticed how much he has grown. I think this past week has been a turning point for him in therapy - he now appears to want to work thru some of the past verbally - he has been doing it in play but not as far back as the birth family issues. There is still a long way to go for him and our family but we are making slow and consistent progress. Sometimes you have to be willing to hang in for the really long haul with a RAD kid but it is worth it.
Just my experiences
Julie, it's great you are researching things so thoroughly.
I just wanted to chime in to remind you that not all older children in foster care have RAD.
While it's always good to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised if things are better than expected...just remember to keep in your mind, at all times, what you can handle and what you cannot, or are not willing, to handle.
My 10 and 11 year old were in the system 3 years...we've had them almost a year already...no RAD.
Best of luck!
skoi
This is intimidating. We're currently waiting for the file of a boy, just turned six, with other special needs besides his age. We're expecting attachment problems as he's spent a long time in an orphanage. If he does have RAD- is there really no chance of recovery by the age of 7?
Thanks-
Julie
We adopted my now 7 year old in November. He was six then and turned seven in May. He has had some issues, but not major ones. We have not been in counseling. (we did consider it, but found nothing closer than a three hour drive) So we decided to give it a shot on our own and guess what? Most of his bahaviors are gone. His biggest issue was food, but he is eating normally now. I still watch it carefully and if we have a major change in schedule he will stop eating for a meal or two, but mostly he is doing very well. His other behaviors are also better. He will make eye contact with me and let me hug him. He has quit trying triangulation between me and dh, though we will see how he handles the new teacher in the fall, it helps that it just happens he is getting an old friend of mine for a teacher! We are still watching and don't consider him cured or quite normally attached yet, but he has come so far from a kid whom I will swear hated me for the first week or two.
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Compared to some, my kid seems really mild. I have always described her to not be a sledgehammer to my head, rather a constant drip to my temple. Relentless-- and my temple is starting to callus over.
We got her at 10, and now she is 12. We are working to get her into an RTC BEFORE she gets worse. She has all of the typical behaviors, and I agree with Lorraine - the lack of reciprocity is probably the most heart-breaking. She is only recently (thank you puberty) starting to tinker with some of the more frightening behaviors - namely falsely accusing us --really strecthing a little truth into a huge disasterous event.
One psychiatrist we visited pretty much wrote her off as too late to help. I argued back that if an RTC could provide even a 50% improvement that would represent a 50% greater chance she would have at becoming a productive adult--able to function in society without all the lying, manipulation, triangulation, shallow-insincere stranger relations, attention-seeking, controlling behaviors.
She has worked my last nerve and yet I still believe that there is hope for her. I desperately want to get her some intensive help and then I desperately want to give it another shot with her at home. Nothing would please me more than to have her accept love, to feel love, and to accept being a member of this family. If we can get her to just be accountable for her own behaviors/decisions/actions, that in itself would be huge!
As Kristi said above, know what you can and cannot handle. It is not easy--I will not tell you that--but if you go in knowing about it and have some clue about how to handle it, you may be very good at it. Unfortunately, some of us do not find out for years what the root cause it. We wasted a lot of years not knowing or understanding what was going on in our house.
You already know more about RAD than I did going into adoption. We were told she was ADHD, anxious about adoption, and depressed about her birthfamily, so that is what we focused on. We figured what? 50% of kids have been diagnosed (correctly or not) as ADD or ADHD, we can deal with that, and as for the anxiety and depression, finalizing the adoption and giving her a secure, stable, loving environment with a lot of support and guidance will help her overcome that--and that is what CPS told us too! She just needed a loving home. We were a bit blindsided by the RAD and it took our third therapist to clue us in. She had the first two totally charmed and we looked like psycho parents.
Using this checklist, she has 23-24 out of the 28 behaviors listed. Most in the severe-level, but some in the moderate and a few in the mild.
[url]http://www.reactiveattachmentdisordertreatment.com/childattachchecklist.pdf[/url]
More than you probably wanted to know. But we are so ingrained in this right now. Good luck!
[edited to add missing link]
My son was RAD when he was placed with us at age 7. He has improved greatly in the last 2 and a half years. PM me if you would like more specific information
stranger affection, need to cause chaos in times of peace>>
These are two things that we notice with our child. Attachment therapy will be starting this month. We have also known our daughter for quite some time and she does have a bond with us so we hope that this makes a difference for her.
Lorraine123
The toughest part of parenting a RAD child for me is the lack of reciprocity. A child with RAD cannot give back to their caregiver. They give absolutely nothing back and take everything. My daughter has no concept of family. Yes, we have rages, lying, stealing, manipulation, etc. But the lack of love and the lack of even understanding basic love and respect is the most difficult for me.
This is also the most difficult thing for my wife and I. We just want to to be loved back. It's hard.
If you want behaviors, here are some of the worst (sometimes typical) behaviors we have experienced:
Defecating on a siblings bed, smearing poop on walls, trying to strangle kittens, constant false accusations of abuse from siblings, hugging strangers, and peeing pants at every Holiday. Holidays and birthdays are always a treat. At least one of our 3 RAD kids will ensure it will be a disaster somehow. These we can deal with, it's just behavior. The lack of any caring feelings to us as parents hurts.
It does take a certain type of person to choose to live with, care for and love these children. With a lot of therapy and structure they might be able to love you back.
Over the past 2 years, 2 of our children w/RAD are improving greatly. One is not, she needs control so much and she rarely gets it. Her whole life is consumed with manipulation to gain that control.
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These we can deal with, it's just behavior.
Wow. What a great way to put it. Yes, while the behaviors are annoying, very annoying, don't get me wrong, I can deal with that. Its just the lack of reciprocity that drives me batty.
My daughter is a non-person. She is whoever she is around. She has no opinion of her own. She has no preferences of her own. It changes based on what is around her.
Her lack of being is the worst part of parenting a RAD child for me.