Shows behaviors only at home?

Well I can say from my foster classes that kids of this age especially will act out to "test" if your going to adopt them. A lot of times they are scared you'll disrupt and sometimes they're just trying to protect their emotions and pushing people away is all they know. At home is where she feels comfortable. She knows that at school etc she needs to be happy & cooperative otherwise he needs wont be met. She knows that at home her needs will be met regardless of how she behaves. Changes are she's just trying to work through these feelings of abandonment. I fostered a teen for a lot of years and I realized taking her on a car ride and getting a starbucks or something with a heavy dose of conversation would always help me find the "root" of a lot of negative behaviors and 90% of the time it was a mis-interpretation on her part. Best of luck sweetie teens are hard! :)

It's is very common in attachment disordered children. They often do well in school and residential facilities. Due to the disorder, they react to environments that except emotional connection and reciprocity. My daughter, severe rad, does not act out in school. She is very passive aggressive, but no outward aggression. At home, she is quite the force to be reckoned with.

my son had a period of time when he did the same thing. His thinking was that if no foster parent took him then they would send him back to his biomom. Never would have happened but that's an 8 year old's thought process

Totally common for kids with attachment issues. A good friend of mine fostered a child who was out of control at home and at school, but a total angel in church. It's like they have these "islands" of emotional stability. One of the real challenges that can come of that is when the prople in the "island" just don't believe that the child is as out of control as s/he really is. I experienced that in a small way recently. Our FS has major tantrums at home and at daycare - but never on visits. So when I would describe the tantrum behavior, the SW would always say, "Well, he never behaves that way with me." For several months I would keep trying to explain that he does well when there is undivided, focused, adult attention (like when the SW is driving FS to his visits) but that when in a social situation - like at daycare or at home with other kiddos, he can be quite out of control. She didn't believe me . . . until he finally had a meltdown at a visit . . . and tried to bite the SW. I was actually thrilled that he finallly showed the SW what he can do. Good luck.

very common in RAD kiddos..........ours - at 10 - was a charming angel at school and butter wouldn't melt in his mouth - played the charm on everyone and anyone and they all thought we were nuts. We desperately wished/tried to see that charming boy at home. it was only at home or with the family that we got the extreme PA behavior and then finally the outright dangerous behavior Please take your time before deciding on adoption.....take a very long time and be honest with your feelings. Be aware that if she is very attachment disordered that when the honeymoon ends a lifetime nightmare for the rest of your family may be beginning and love does NOT solve the problem

Wow, thank you all for your responses. I am saddened and at the same time glad that I have this place to ask where others have had similar experiences. The honeymoon is very much over. My DH insists we can help her. With her behaviors the last few days I am not so sure. Our two other daughters are afraid of her when she goes into her meltdowns. She threated to pull my hair, bite DH, throw a cup of water on me, spit in my food/drink. She got so wild yesterday DH had to bear hug her to stop her from doing harm to others or herself. I took our other two girls outside to calm them down as they were freaked out seeing her behavior. I can understand why. I've only seen this in movies. :confused: Then a couple hours later everything was fine, according to her :( We do not want to give up on her. It is SO HARD to think that love is not enough. I do not feel equipped to deal with her behaviors. It's really a helpless feeling. I don't like it! I also found out that she's had dx of ODD, RAD and SED. None of that was mentioned when I directly asked what dx she had prior to placement.

Be VERY careful of putting hands on a foster child. Especially having your DH put hands on. If you must, then please make sure your caseworker is on board and/or you call them right away to let them know when, how, and why you had to be physical. RAD is hard. Love is helpful, but it has to be love through thick and thin. Through behaviors big and little, easy and hard. And behaviors that make you want to run the other way as fast as you can. Vent: I hate hate hate it that caseworkers do not give this information to foster parents. I hate hate hate that they sugarcoat it and end up doing so much damage to the foster parents and to the children they are supposed to be helping.

Yes, it's a scary thing...and we've documented her behavoir and our responses each time something has occured, directly to her CW and ours. She is a ward of the state. Open for adoption. She has been hospitalized more than once. I just wish this wasn't our first experience fostering.....

It seems I've seen others mention Nancy Thomas. I will order that book. It looks like a good one to have. I would have declined the placement had I known her dx. Now that we have her, I feel guilty giving up on her. And I've read SO much more than DH has, that I worry about going forward. He is 110% committed to helping her. I have so many doubts....I am thankful he has the heart for this....I just wish my faith was a strong as his. I just keep thinking she needs a home and we can provide....but I ask myself at what cost to our other two girls? Then I just feel I'm being selfish. UGH. I didn't realize this part would be so difficult. How do you know when you need to hospitalize? When they don't calm down and come out of an episode?

He doesn't read the boards like I do. Reading about real examples for me is better than any book. He does read the books I recommend. He has been through the same training. I just feel a bit more knowledgeable with all the internet searching I do. I tend to give up quicker, he does not. He feels God put her in our home for a reason. So we could help her. I feel that same way. I'm just not sold on whether long-term or adoption is going to work. I had hoped it would. Tonight we had another episode. Our FD refused to take her meds before bedtime. She took off outside. Minutes later she came back in. We of course had followed her. Is it selfish to think of the two children we have here over her?

Absolutely NOT SELFISH. They are your children, she is not...YETAsk yourself if you could handle this kind of home life for the next 18 years, if she never got better???I would not pursue an adoption. Lots of great services and support end once she is yours. It might help you to see the rage as an indication of her fearfulness. The angrier the child, the more they fear inside. It can be a panic attack type response when she is RAD. Did I read that this is your first placement? Yikes. Please tell me your daughters are older than her? ODD is almost as bad as RAD. And the hyper-vigilance of RAD can exhibit as ADHD. I would try to address the panic and anxiety before anything else. It's VERY hard to remain objective in the midst of rages. Here is what helped me:I didn't punish her RAD responses. However as a consequence of her UNSAFE choices, I took steps to bolster my ability to keep her safe such as a bedroom door alarm, cameras, locked windows etc... And I never let her see it upset me (that is a reward to ODD/RAD). Instead, after she had calmed, I would ask her to tell me what she hoped to gain from that reaction, and ask her if she got what she was aiming for. Sometimes I would get the truth, other times I would get sass and snark. When I got the truth we would discuss another approach to getting what she wanted. And I was careful to only suggest things that she would have a 100% success rate at. OR if not 100% I would be sure to stipulate any circumstance where she wouldn't get success with that new choice.If I got snark and sass, I simply told her what I believed her objective was, and then also explained a better, more successful way at achieving her goals. I used what I knew about her, and her fears, and her past and the general brain workings of RAD, and ODD to make an educated guess, but I would tell her with perfect confidence and unwavering commitment to the explanation (until I heard the real truth). I would usually "predict" the triggers and her responses fairly accurately. It showed her I understood, and that she wasn't hiding her true emotions at all. That her real feelings didn't scare me at all. And I would talk about why her choice wasn't successful.I accepted that she needed to manipulate to survive, and instead of fighting it, I taught her the most effective way to "manipulate". Which is by putting other's needs first before her own, taking care of others and investing in the relationship so that when she needed to make a "withdrawl", the relationship account would be full and she could get what she needed. I also explained that this was a family rule, and that it can sometimes work outside the family, but not at 100% success. It was a gamble at best when dealing with non-family/inner circle.I explained that I WANTED to see her get what she had her mind set on, but that it wasn't worth the harm she was causing herself using certain methods. And that it was my job to teach her to get her needs met WITHOUT harming herself or her future. I also made sure to tell her all the good things about her at this point. So that she wouldn't want to harm her future either. I would speculate on a fantastic future (using details of how she could get that future) that I saw for her. It took YEARS and it's still a work in progress, but she's getting it. And now when something goes sideways in her peer relationships and catches her off guard (what? people don't Love being pestered???!!) she will come tell me what happened, and what she thought would happen and ask where she went wrong.Plus, she apologizes...no matter what. Before anything else, she apologizes, and as part of the apology she tells her plan to make it up to the person/people. (this she needs help with and we figure something out together).Eventually she'll understand that if she lets nothing out of herself, it means nothing is getting in either. One Child is a good book for ODD, RAD kids to see their behavior from a different perspective. And I would have her talk to other more stable RAD kids if possible. It essens the rage SO much when the child can see they aren't the only ones dealing with this foreign culture (of emotionally stable people).

Aspenhall.....yes, this is our first placement, and bios are younger than FD. FD is near 11, my bios are 9 & 7. They are afraid of her when she acts out. But when she is "normal" they all 3 play together quite well. We would have declined this placement had I been told the truth. I directly asked what dx she's had. I was only told ADHD. From all I had read we would never have accepted an RAD child at this time. And certainly not for our first. We have not absolutely no experience with any type of special needs or behaviors remotely close to this. She is very fearful. She is afraid of getting moved again, afraid of behaving badly, afraid of not having friends, afraid to go to bed, she has voiced off of this. She can be so willing to help and be loved, then flip. Nobody can identify her triggers....exept not getting what she wants.