Parenting Children & Teens with Reactive Attachment Disorder

Attachment is the deep and lasting connection established between a youngster and caretaker in the first few years of life. It profoundly affects your youngster’s development and his or her ability to express emotions and develop relationships. If you are the parent of a youngster with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), you may be physically and emotionally exhausted from trying to connect with your youngster, only to be met with opposition, defiance, or, maybe hardest of all, indifference. A youngster with insecure attachment or RAD doesn’t have the skills necessary to build meaningful relationships. However, with the right tools, and a healthy dose of time, effort, patience, and love, it is possible to treat and repair attachment difficulties.   ==> Parenting Defiant RAD Teens Understanding attachment problems and disorders— Kids with RAD or other attachment problems have difficulty connecting to others and managing their own emotions. This results in a lack of

Lectures, warnings, hollering, bribes, second chances and reminders do NOT work. You are wasting your time and breath. Your youngster knows the rules – he just refuses to obey your rules! Remember – her actions are often automatic responses learned from infancy. Your youngster is in their element when you have lost your control! Natural Consequences: • Broken object – they must replace it with their own money or with chores. • Did not bring homework home – go back and get it or assign your own homework. • Does not want to eat – no problem, they will not starve, but they will sit at the table while the family eats (NO snack before next meal). • Foul mouth, raised voice, rudeness, and back talk – can be rewarded with chores, exercise (jumping jacks, sit ups, running on the spot) or payment to money jar. • Hurt someone – they must apologize and lose privileges (having friends over, watching TV, playing video games, using the telephone, etc.). Most likely, they will

A major problem with the diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) is the painful truth that many of the very individuals we moms and dads turn to for help - professionals in the mental health, neurological, and medical fields - often lack the knowledge and expertise to treat our kids. One of the first doctors I took my youngster to told me that my youngster would end up institutionalized and that if a PET scan were done on his brain, it would look like Swiss cheese - black holes of non activity where there should be brain activity. That there is nothing much I could do for him as "...these Romanian kids were hopeless cases..." My youngster was 7 years old when I was told this by a prominent neurologist. I didn't believe in giving up. This youngster was my responsibility and I would work hard to figure out how to help him. How I would have loved it if there were professionals willing and able to treat my youngster - who believed in positive change in his l

What happens when the mother reassigns a different motive to the child's cry and decides not to be responsive? A youngster cries for a reason - not to manipulate his parent, not to be mean, or nasty, or to be a "pain in the neck." When, instead of trying to discern what her youngster needs, a mother simply says - "oh, he's just tired," or "he has to deal with sleeping by himself now" - she has given her baby the idea that expressing his inner-self is wrong or bad. A baby is like someone who is quadriplegic. He can't do very much for himself - but that doesn't mean that he isn't thinking and feeling. When the baby cries and his mother responds, the youngster learns to have trust in the world around him and to have trust in himself. When the baby cries and his mother listens, the two join together in a moment of oneness that transcends the separateness, the aloneness, which the baby knows all too well. If the youngster has not

What doesn't work: 1. Attempting to persuade the RAD youngster to change his mind by presenting “logical, reasonable, or “practical information”. RAD kids are highly unlikely to be influenced by reasonableness. Adult efforts to do so look “stupid” to a RAD youngster an can intensify his lack of feeling safe. 2. Emotional reactivity. RAD kids experience parents' frustration and anger as proof that the youngster is effectively controlling his parents' emotions. This only inflates their grandiose sense of power. 3. Negotiating with a RAD youngster. 4. Rescuing the youngster from the consequences of her behavior and / or attempting to solve the RAD youngster's problems for her. Philosophy— While love and parental common sense are necessary ingredients to successfully parent a youngster with attachment difficulties, they are rarely sufficient. This is due to the fact that most kids with attachment problems are too guarded and too distrustful to rec

How the Attachment Bond Shapes Adult Relationships— You were born pre-programmed to bond with one very significant person—your primary caretaker, probably your mother. Like all babies, you were a bundle of emotions—intensely experiencing fear, anger, sadness, and joy.  The emotional attachment that grew between you and your caretaker was the first interactive relationship of your life, and it depended upon nonverbal communication. The bonding you experienced determined how you would relate to other human beings throughout your life, because it established the foundation for all verbal and nonverbal communication in your future interactions. People who experience confusing, frightening, or broken emotional communications during their infancy often grow into grown-ups who have difficulty understanding their own emotions and the feelings of others. This limits their ability to build or maintain successful interactions. Attachment—the interaction between babies and their primary