UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Parents and Foster Parents
COURSE OVERVIEW:
The purpose of this beginner's course is to provide an overview of Reactive Attachment Disorder. Help parents to better understand the disorder including symptoms, causality, and best evidence-based Interventions.
THIS COURSE EXPLORES:
General Information
● The Neurobiology of Attachment● Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Reactive Attachment Disorder RAD● Symptoms/Causes/Prevention of RAD● Stress and how it affects the brain ● Nutrition and Reactive Attachment Disorder ● Coping and Support ● Building Resilience ● Parenting technique for RAD children
You will learn the following
● Parenting a child with a Reactive Attachment Disorder ● How to prepare yourself, your family, and your house for an RAD child. ● Emotional competence and RAD children● What is a "Victim's Triangle" and how to deal with it● Understanding: - Self-Regulation skills - Communication skills - Emotional competence - Cognitive skills● Discuss the implications of RAD knowledge and practical skills in parenting an RAD child (Dos and Don'ts of Disciplining)● RAD children and PTSD (siblings, caregivers)● Taking care of yourself (strategies, tools, examples)● Available Treatments and Therapies for RAD children and families
SUGGESTED SETTING: Parents, Adoptive Parents, Foster Parents, Caregivers, Kinship Providers
REQUIREMENTS: No previous experience or knowledge is required, you'll need access to a laptop/PC to playback and record your notes.
DEPARTMENT: Online
TIME:
Tips for Caregivers of an RAD Child
1. FIRST AND FOREMOST: Take care of yourself and support your own mental and physical health.
Providing care for a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) demands abundant patience and can be emotionally exhausting at times. To effectively care for a child with RAD, it is essential not only to understand but also to prioritize self-care principles. For instance, It's crucial to maintain a calm and firm demeanor, even in the face of disrespect, temper tantrums, or emotional withdrawal. Losing your composure risks frightening the child or eroding their trust in you. And how can you stay calm amid this chaos? The first rule is: to keep your stress levels low, take time for yourself regularly, and work on maintaining your health.
Here are a few things you can do to better equip yourself to provide consistent and nurturing care for the child.
● Prepare yourself emotionally. (A child with insecure attachment is already experiencing a great deal of stress, so you must understand and manage your stress levels before trying to help your child with theirs. So, understanding Emotional Intelligence is essential)
● Practice Stress Management skills. (Eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, using meditation, and breathing exercises, and staying away from drugs and alcohol can help keep your emotions on an even keel. Stabilize your mood by making healthy lifestyle choices)
● Consider participating in individual or couples therapy. (Even if you don’t have attachment disorder yourself, therapy can help you understand your partner better, learn strategies for effective communication, and work through your own emotions about your relationship. Husbands, remember that a child with RAD will attack a motherly figure way more aggressively (consider taking a Fatherhood course)
● Ask for help. (You'll begin to burn out if you don't periodically have downtime. Try to find a support group. It can also be a good source of emotional support. If possible and available, seek out respite care to give yourself a break. Make sure that the respite caregiver knows about RAD and will be willing to follow your directions for what works best for your child. Warn and remind them every time that “typical” parenting strategies don’t work for RAD children.)
● Acknowledge that it's OK to feel frustrated, angry, or guilty at times. The strong feelings you may have about your child are natural. But if needed, seek professional help.
● Don’t take rejection personally. (When your child seems to shut you out or retreat behind an emotional wall, you might blame yourself for their reactions. Remember that their attachment disorder is a complicated condition that's rooted in past trauma or neglect. Children with RAD are trying to protect themselves, and only time and care will build a sense of security)2. Build a team. Don't try to care for a child with RAD alone.
● Caring for a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder takes a team of caregivers, therapists, doctors, and other specialists. This is especially the case if you are a single caretaker. Consider getting an attorney as well. ● You will not survive this journey alone. ● Caring for a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder is the hardest thing you will ever do. ● Without support, it WILL destroy you.● Be aware that a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder can often "triangulate" caregivers, pitting them against each other. ● Stay united and support each other during this difficult journey.
3. Support your kids health
Make sure your child stays healthy. Pay particular attention to their exercise, sleep, and diet. When children are relaxed, well-rested, and feeling good, it will be much easier for them to handle life's challenges.
4. Provide Safe, Predictable and Nurturing environment
5. Don't try to control your child.
In the midst of all of the chaos that occurs while caring for a child with RAD, it can be so easy to want to control a RAD child in as many ways as possible. This may come in the form of: ● Micromanagement, ● Punishments, ● Negative consequences, ● Incentives, and/or ● Reinforcers.The problem is none of these processes will work due to the brain damage that a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder has. The more you try to control the child in any way, positive or negative, the more behaviors will increase. This will then lead to you losing your mind, which we don't want.
6. Don't use any form of physical punishment.
There may be a time when you want to use forms of physical punishment while caring for a child with RAD. In those moments resist it at all costs. It will NOT help.Caring for a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder comes with heightened emotions and the eventual development of Secondary Traumatic Stress. - You will develop your own fight or flight response, whether you like it or not. - You have a breaking point. - It WILL be challenged in the home.
7. Don't tolerate abuse of any kind.
Whether your child with Reactive Attachment Disorder is physically, emotionally, and/or verbally abusive to themselves or others, it is important to report it, document it, and ask for help every time.Abuse does not just affect the abuser and/or the victim. It affects everyone who witnesses it, including other children and adults who may be in the household.
8. Take charge, yet remain calm and consistent when your child is misbehaving.
Staying calm, providing emotional consistency and clear interpersonal boundaries signal safety for children who have experienced trauma*. If you fail to do that, your RAD child may look at you as weak and unstable.
(*Child Safety Commissioner, 2007; Health Federation of Philadelphia, 2010; The AustralianChildhood Foundation, 2010)9. Respond to your child's emotional age (not the chronological age)
10. Exercise caution regarding "Victim Triangle"!
● Be aware that a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder can often "triangulate" caregivers, pitting them against each other. Not understanding the dynamics of a "Victim Triangle" can have devastating consequences for family relationships.
11. Don't dismiss behaviors or underestimate your RAD child's capabilities.
Your RAD child's brain is programmed to survive but in a "particular way". This is how it overcame all that it endured in the womb and/or during infancy and early childhood.
It can be called a "derailed brain", and please understand that it is willing to do almost ANYTHING to continue to ensure survival in any way it feels necessary and familiar. It may sound strange but keep in mind that "love" is the most dangerous thing of all and the brain will fight it at every turn.
Ask a professional Therapist what to do about it. Let your RAD child know that you know about it. and keep in mind that behaviors associated with Reactive Attachment Disorder grow with the child.12. Always try to stay positive
Stay positive and hopeful. Be sensitive to the fact that children pick up on feelings. If they sense that you're discouraged, it will be discouraging to them. When you are feeling down, turn to others for reassurance. [323]
13. Help your child identify emotions and express his or her needs.
14. Don't blame yourself for your RAD child's behaviors.
Many think talk therapy and maybe some medications are magic bullets for troubled children. Both can be helpful, but the main thing is finding practitioners experienced in dealing with Reactive Attachment Disorder who understand the subject and know the right approaches. And it is extremely difficult.
For therapy to be effective, the child must want to change, and the therapist MUST understand the disorder. “Children with moderate to severe RAD typically need to be outside the home for treatment because everyone in the home is suffering,” says Forrest Lien, LCSW, a counselor who spent the last three decades of his career working with children with developmental trauma and their families. “A lot of attachment folks will push the attachment relationship with the mom rather than looking at the whole breakdown of the family system".
“With effective RAD therapy, the clinician works with the child to give up trying to take control and to allow themselves to feel vulnerable with their attachment figures and to count on their parents to guide them and direct them,” he continues. “That’s like saying to these kids, ‘Give up all your survival tools and trust me.’ To them that feels like dying.”15. Be immediately available to reconnect following the conflict.
Conflict can be particularly disturbing for children with an attachment disorder. After a conflict where you have had to discipline the child be immediately available to reconnect as soon as he/she is ready. This reinforces your consistency and love. It will help your child to build trust in you being there for them at any moment.
16. Don't resist or fight advice given by professionals.
There are 4 attachment styles, including 3 insecure attachment styles. Because of this and the fact that Reactive Attachment Disorder is a spectrum, not all cases look the same. RAD child would give a hug – but on his terms or as a manipulation tactic. Same with saying “I love you.” Because he didn’t recoil to touch or would give eye contact, his RAD diagnosis can be missed for years. “They can have a disordered attachment and still have Reactive Attachment Disorder,” one parent notes. They can seem attached because they have separation anxiety or seem well adjusted to those outside the home, another parent adds.
17. Keep track and DO NOT discard important papers and documents.
Even if your child does not have an extreme case of RAD, involving violence, try to keep all the important documents for "future reference". You will probably need them in the future.
An effective way to convey the challenges of parenting a child with RAD is to liken it to the difference between a drip of water from a faucet versus a constant, forceful stream from a firehose. While neurotypical children may occasionally lie or get into trouble at school, children with RAD often exhibit these behaviors chronically and at a heightened intensity. Parents of RAD children frequently face reports from school about behavioral issues several times a week, making nearly every moment spent with their child feel like a struggle. This level of difficulty is far from typical.18. Don't work with a therapist, doctor, or other specialist you don't feel comfortable with.
Reactive attachment disorder is difficult to treat, there’s no doubt about it. While building a team, the caregiver has to feel comfortable with a practitioner/therapist/doctor.
19. Don't let your child work alone with a therapist until you feel comfortable.
Traditional therapy has the child alone in a room with the therapist. Children with RAD con, lie and manipulate. It is part of their diagnosis. Alone in a room, with an adult who does not know the truth, they will test the adult by lying, conning, or manipulating to see if they can trust that adult. An adult who believes their fables fails the trust test and no help from them will ever be accepted by the child with RAD. With the parent not present there is no one accessible to do a fact check. When an adult is fooled they flunk the child’s test for trust-ability and thus become completely ineffective. Game over!Providers are taught to take the child to another room and leave the parent in the waiting area. The blatant messages to the child are; “Your parent is not important. Your parent can’t help you. You don’t need them.” That is the opposite message for healing to begin. Parents are essential!*Once you have established a comfortable relationship of trust with the therapist, having been open and honest about all that's been going on, with the therapist hearing all sides of the situation, you can choose whether or not you feel comfortable with the therapist speaking to the RAD child alone.Any therapist who is familiar with Reactive Attachment Disorder will understand your request so long as you are completely open and honest about situations that are occurring in the home.
* Nancy Thomas [221]20. They are not acting out because they do not love you.
If you have adopted a child who is acting out, then keep in mind that they are not acting out because they do not love you. Their brains are wired "differently", their experiences have made it harder for them to bond with people, and it may take some time before that changes. However, your caring behavior and love is important to help them build their trust in you and other people [233]
For more detailed information on parenting a child with RAD please register for a free course
8 Things to know about Raising a Child with Reactive Attachment Disorder
1. Children with RAD behave very differently outside the home. Others often describe them as “charming” and “delightful” when things in the house are decidedly different. This dichotomy can further isolate parents as they worry that others won’t believe them if they share what the child is like at home.
2. Parents of children with RAD may carry tremendous guilt. It is a heavy burden to carry the weight of responsibility for something that was done to your child by someone other than you at a time before you even met them.
3. Make it clear to others that if your child latches onto them, they need to hand the child back to you. When others return the affection to your child, it may damage your relationship with your child.
4. Parents with children who have RAD often do not share the truth about how bad their child’s behavior is out of fear of being judged. (Parents- Remember that you are not alone).
5. It is essential to understand that traditional parenting does not work for children with RAD. Even though you love your child with all your heart, this love alone is not enough for your child to overcome RAD. Professional therapy and intervention are needed.
6. Children who have RAD can be expert manipulators, and as a parent, you may feel like you are a detective in your own home.
7. Children with RAD can place a lot of strain on marriage and relationships, and therefore, it is crucial to set aside time for these relationships.
8. Siblings of a RAD child can develop PTSD. Please, use strategy to protect their well-being at all possible costs.
A Family Support Corner
8 Great RAD Therapist Qualities (Clinician Checklist)
Parents Support (Traumatization)
Family Support (Siblings PTSD)
How RAD Impacts Families
An Open Letter To Friends
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