RAD diagnosis

You might want to cross post this on the Special Needs forum. There are several parents of RAD children on there regularly. Good luck!

My son has PTSD. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

I have a son diagnosed with RAD, but there are a lot more parents on the special needs boards who deal with both.

Both of my daughters have RAD and PTSD. My son has RAD and ADHD. What kind of info are you looking for?

Do you have a child with these diagnoses?

just wondering: if we get the chance to adopt a 10r old child w/this diagnosis, what we will be dealing with since we already have 3 bio kids 2,4, & 8! Will it be too much stress on our family?!

My daughter has rad and ptsd. With children that young, I would would not bring rad into the home. A child with rad has the goal of destroying the family.

My foster daughter has both RAD and PSTD. We go back and forth on given the chance if we would chose to adopt. She is 5 and she is a handful. Soiling, defience, agression, munipulting and lying are her tools of choice. I do not believe that she has any thought out goals of destruction or evil intentions. I believe that these are just symptoms of her illness. Again it is hard to give and give and give to someone who does not give back and only forms superficial relationships. We do have young children in our home (another 5 year old, 10, 11,and 15). We need to have baby monitors and line of eye supervision. If I have to go to the bathroom, she must be in seperate room away from others. It can very draining. We love her and I believe she feels it but can not at this time recipocate and why should she? She didn't ask for any of this. So if you think that you can do it - do it but first read everything and believe it. Also, set up boundries and rules and make sure your partner is on board to the tee with parenting theroies. He or she will test them. Read Love and Logic get some ideas and than throw it away because it wont work. Then read beyond Concequences. Read Read Read and pray and than decide. We still have not decided (she is foster only at this point) and it has been 7 months.

My daughters have PTSD and attachment difficulties (not RAD). As an adult, DD1 has largely healed, although she will always have certain issues.I would not bring a 10 year old diagnosed with RAD into a home with younger children. Children with RAD need very intense and focused parenting, and they can be a risk to younger children. If they are unable to attach to adults, they will not able to form a normal and secure attachment with siblings either, not without serious therapy. So younger children may well end up as targets. Even if they do not, they will indirectly suffer because of the amount of time and energy it takes to parent a child with RAD. You won't have a lot of time left to focus on them exclusively.

I would not bring a child with RAD into a home with younger children. My son who has RAD is our youngest and he has still managed to find ways to hurt my other children. He steals from them, tells lies about them, and breaks their things. He also takes a ton of attention. My kids often feel like they cannot have friends over because he will do odd things (tantrums, cussing, screaming, peeing, pooping and throwing up in odd places, stripping etc) We no longer have peaceful family dinners because he will throw up at the table, just to disrupt things. We end up not participating in community things. Often one of us has to stay home while the other goes to another child's game or play or concert or whatever. Vacations are stressful because he does his best to ruin it.

No, i would not recommend it. Younger children, especially a 2 year old, are not safe around RAD children. It took 3 years (and continued attachment therapy) for me to feel like we could add another child to our family without them being in danger. While my oldest is doing well, she does lie about my younger daughter and has admitted she (oldest) wants her (youngest) to hurt like she does. It would be a long time before my FD is safe around a younger child and she is only 5. They actually seperated her case from her younger brother due to her PTSD/RAD. I would have loved to have gotten him placed in our home too, but it just was not safe for either of them. From what my therapist says it takes two years out of foster care for every year in foster care/abusive environment for a child to heal. If you do decide to continue with the match I would also suggest reading Parenting the Hurt Child by Gregory Keck.

I had a temporary placement of a severely RAD child. I would not recommend placing a RAD child in a home with younger children, just as others have shared. Most sw won't do it either. My younger child was severely emotionally abused and bullied by the RAD foster child even while being supervised at all times. Then the other older siblings in defense of the little one hated the fc. It was a terrible situation and its not fair to the little ones. Also, it is terribly hard on you as the parent. In addition to the emotional abuse to my younger child, I could not even bathe my biochild because ffc would get in my lap and scream in my face not to so she could have my attention. This child in public would go hug strangers and beg to go home with them. She would urinate herself at the dinner table to cause a scene. I had to go to her school all the time for her behavior and wetting. It is so hard on your biokids to be patient with that kind of behavior and with the emotional abuse. And that is just a couple issues we had. Also it can cause regression in your littles. A rad child will not act their age. I chose to have this child moved to a home with no other children which broke my heart. Noone has mentioned this aspect.....it is better for that RAD child as well to not have younger siblings. That child needs a lot of one on one attention. My ffc needed to be someones whole world 24/7. My ffc is thriving in a home with no other kids now and has been adopted.