RAD behaviors to expect...?

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]