Hi Roz,
It's odd the way life works. I was waiting to have some time to give your thoughtful reply the attention it deserved, and in the meantime life went on.. one of our cats just had his eye surgically removed due to glaucoma, and he's lying in my lap as I (try to) type. And V and I got a couple of hours of time to ourselves today, which is rare. I also got time to listen to three CDs by this Nancy Thomas, and need/want to listen to them at least ten more times.. in addition to buying a set of them for our Social Services agency. This agency has NO idea whatsoever, nor do their counselors, of what we're dealing with here. That's one thing I got from the tapes. The counselors who are trained and experienced in this are few, and widely scattered.. and alas there isn't one within hundreds of miles of us.
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( After you have read the book and watched the DVD, when you feel like reaching out again next, can you kindly share with us what you took away from the material?)</font>
First, that kids with attachment disorder are a whole 'nother breed.. nothing that works with "normal" kids works with them. (Please forgive the use of the term "normal" from here on out.. it's just a handy shorthand for referring to kids who do NOT have attachment disorder.)
It turned out to be a three-CD set, rather than a DVD.. and a book that I haven't read yet. The CDs blew me away enough for a start. I'll read the book, probably tomorrow.
Anyway, what I came away with is that we are NOT unique.. this is a common problem.. if not one which is officially recognized and widely accepted or understood. If kids suffer severe enough trauma at an early age, they detach from humanity. They can't trust it. They simply "opt out" of the whole thing. They have NO conscience, NO ability to trust or love, NO empathy for any other creature. Nancy says that of the kids she's taken in over the last twenty years or so, 80% of them had already killed someone. She takes the toughest ones.
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( You know Bob, all kids disappoint their parents sometimes, all of them even Vivian's "exemplary" kids; during their growing up years disappointed her.)</font>
We understand that, truly. And V's kids were not without problems.. including drugs. But they are now married and have kids and good jobs and are doing fine. I see this as the normal progression.. teenaged children tend to run over every speed bump in the road at high speed. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
No, we are talking about a whole other level of problem here. Nancy is pretty funny, and if you have the interest you appear to have in these things, I highly recommend her materials. At one point she said something to the effect of "Do you want to know if you're an awesome parent? It's easy to check. Look at the child. Are their head and four limbs still attached? If they are then you're an AWESOME parent! Most people dealing with attachment kids want to rip their heads off at some point!" She makes reference to the number of people who call her for help, and calls them "Abused Parents." They had no idea what they were getting into, and they have no real support, and few if any of the usual "good parenting" rules work with these kids. So they call, bewildered, feeling guilty and ashamed and inadequate.. saying basically "What are we doing wrong??" Usually they are in tears, utterly burned out, angry, hopeless, confused, and with absolutely NOWHERE to turn.
You sensed that in me, in the fact that I had nothing good to say about these kids. That was perceptive and helpful to me.. and I pondered it. They are cute kids, and they have a great and ingratiating act they can put on at any time. I often fell for it, and was then horrified to discover that it was only an act. I was and still am angry at them. They had promised us they wanted to be a part of our family. They were lying. They don't want that, and never did. I'm not saying that in a perjurative way, merely as an observation. It's what Nancy and others have told us, after the fact, to expect. They've fallen through the ice so many times (in being abandoned early in life) that they will fight to the death to not be dragged out onto the ice again (i.e., to not be put in the position of trusting or loving again.)
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( It appears to me that you had high expectations of having a nice family, with children with the woman that you love, and being happy together.)</font>
Yes, I went into this quite naive.. and was being guided by people who were equally naive (Social Services, Child Protective Services, lawyers, judges, etc.) This isn't to cast aspirations upon these good people.. they just didn't know. That's one thing we intend to remedy, at least in our own local area. We're going to make sure these people fully understand the syndrome, and that their counselors are *required* to learn about all of this..
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Buy now, several years later you have had many "hurts". It would be totally normal to think back on previous "hurts" when experiencing yet another. So much of the focus on your life, and disappointingly, is the behaviour if your children. When you find yourself doing that you might employ some self talk, specifically these words, "It's okay to feel like this but I am going to think about it less and less.")</font>
I will do that.. in fact am aleady doing it.. thank you. That's good advice. But of course we also need to begin fresh, as it were, by starting out all over again using *appropriate* parenting techniques for kids with Reactive Attachment Disorder.
Interjecting a couple of my own thoughts in here, and this is me and not Nancy, I feel that sociopathy probably stems from RAD. For decades we've puzzled over the sociopath. Why are they like this? Why is it generally agreed that there is absolutely no cure for this? I think the insights from the work on attachment disorders provides the missing insight here.
Another of my own thoughts.. ADHD and the various other acronyms used for "hyperactive" kids was long thought to be a problem in the ascending reticular activating system.. the part of the brain that allows us to "tune out" irrelevant stimuli. We aren't normally aware of the feeling of the seat pressing against our back as we sit.. or the sounds of traffic going by.. we tune these out. ADHD kids can't tune them out. So we end up in the somewhat odd position of giving the hyperactive kid a *stimulant* like Ritalin to "calm them down." Well, RAD is often disagnosed as ADHD, because the presenting symptoms look so much alike.
And my third thought is.. should we take this to private mail.. assuming you wish to pursue it any further? The moderators have been unbelievably tolerant, but this thread may start to become annoying to others. I know some people have expressed interest (not to mention incredible kindness) about this situation, but the ones we don't hear from may be quite annoyed..
I guess I'm asking.. to all who have read this to this point (and we're eating up a lot of our host's disk also!) ... should we continue or move this to a private conversation?
Oh, and one last though.. yes, of course we love the kids.. nobody would ever put up with a RAD kid if they didn't. Trust me! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Best,
Bob
