RadKid.Org Blog

Ken, 

Thank you for this site and especially your personal notes about raising your rad-kid. We just came back from the psychologist, who seemed very good, professional, supportive and informational; and he thinks our adopted son, Daren, is a rad-kid. We, my wife and I, do too… I just staggered a bit to have the present and future so clearly articulated. Please just send me a little note saying you recieved this. I feel pretty isolated at this time. Thanks; and best wishes and thoughts to you for being a sharing person. I’m deeply grateful that I might be in even a little bit of contact with someone else who understands.

Tom

Tom, I just came across your email amongst my older correspondence. I hope that I replied to you at the time that your email was received. I think I did and if not, I apologize deeply. There have been some periods in my life where I just couldn’t possibly keep up with everything that I had to do, let alone those things that I wanted to do.

Hopefully, your son’s psychologist is trained in the treatment of reactive attachment disorder, as not every mental health professional is. Some of them seem to have ripped that page out of their copy of the DSM, while others can diagnose it but not treat it. Traditional therapy doesn’t work well with children suffering from reactive attachment disorder.

I know exactly how you feel when you say that you feel isolated. Everyone who has ever parented a child with reactive attachment disorder has felt that, since a common characteristic of the disorder is the the willingness and ability that these kids have to alienate their parents from everyone who might otherwise serve as a support system, including neighbors, other family members, people in church, teachers, etc.

There is an online forum hosted on Delphiforums.com that my wife and I started several years ago. Although I am not as heavily involved with it, and am no longer the host, I am still a moderator there, and I log in pretty much every day. Regardless, the forum is in able hands, and I think you’ll find it helpful to be able to discuss things with people who have gone through it. The forum is Delphiforums: Reactive Attachment Disorder. Give it a try, and I think you’ll be glad you did.

– ken

Hey, I’m a nursing student from North Carolina. I am writing a paper on Reactive Attachment Disorder for my class and I was wondering if you could send me some information on the who, what, when, where, and why of Reactive Attachment Disorder. Information about the treatment and what it is and who might be more likely to be diagnosed with it, basically just any information that you would like to share with me about the disorder. Thank You.

- Jennifer Gordan,  Student Nurse

Jennifer, I could do that. However, it would take me some time to put it together for you and, since I’ve already done that in my RadKid.Org site, this is time that could be better spent elsewhere. I would refer you to my site, to others in the Informational section of the RadKid.Org Directory, and perhaps some that you can find on the front page of the directory, such as the site for ATTACh.

I’m not through building up the Informational section, but you’ll find some useful stuff there.

Since you’re looking for information for a paper that you’re researching, you might even want to look at the opinions of the detractors of attachment therapy. Much of it consists of the rantings of people who could have probably benefited from attachment therapy themselves but perhaps there is something there to give you another perspective. I’ve listed a few of those sites in the Critical section of the directory.

Of course, if someone else wants to break it down for you in comments, they are more than welcome to do so.

– ken

Hi,

My son, who is adopted, has been diagnosed with RAD. We have a great therapist for him, finally; though We have only seen her once, already she has been a great help. She gave us a lot to read, but that is ok.

My question is – and what I need help with is… He is 5 years old. He’s been with us for 2 years now. He has been stealing my oldest daughters items. She is 9. And when ever he knows that something is her favorite, he steals it. He taken two computer games, two DVDs and some of her favorite stuffed animals.

We have just about torn this house apart looking for them. 

How do we get the answer from him of where they are? What do I do? Help me!

Thank you,

Terri

Terri, I wish I had a better answer but the quick answer to your question is that you can’t get an answer from him about where your daughter’s things are. If your son has reactive attachment disorder, control is pretty much the most important thing in his life and if there is one thing that he can control in his life, it is information. My nephew made an eight-foot long roof rake disappear from my house not long after I bought it, but there was never anything that I could think of that would get that information from him. I never saw that roof rake again, and everytime I brought it up I reminded him that he had the power over that bit of information.

Stealing and then lying about it are common characteristics of reactive attachment disorder. As long as he suffers from the disorder, you will witness its characteristics. You cannot control whether or not your son tells the truth, so you may as well admit to yourself that this is something that is entirely within his control and, as such, it is likely to be one of the last behaviors to go away as he begins to heal.

While there is always a chance that your daughter’s stuff will show up again, I wouldn’t count on it. Rather, I would concentrate on protecting your daughter from losing any more of her stuff. Stealing is another matter, it being something that you may be able to exert some control over.

When you park your car downtown or at the mall, you probably lock the doors, and you may even have a car alarm. When you leave your house, you don’t leave windows standing open, and you lock the doors behind you. You may even count your change at the grocery store. Most of us do these things, and we do them because we are aware that not everyone around us is as honest as we’d like them to be. We do it in order to keep our stuff from being stolen.

Unfortunately, both yourself and your daugher have to realize that, until your son has progressed a great deal in his therapy, he will not be as honest as you’d like him to be. That being the case, you need to take similar steps to keep your stuff from being stolen. Your daughter needs to learn to do the same thing. Make sure that she has a room with a lock, so that she can keep the things that are valuable to her safe, and encourage her not to leave things lying around.

At the same time, you should limit your son’s access to things. If he cannot be trusted with other people’s things then his access to these things should be limited. We installed alarms on our nephew’s bedroom door that would let us know if he left his room at night, and we kept the things that were most important to us behind our own locked bedroom door.

At this point in your son’s life, he does not have a fully developed conscience so he doesn’t understand that it’s wrong to take something from his sister. Oh, it’s quite likely that he is aware that this is something that he might get in trouble for but, because he has no empathy for his sister’s feelings, this probably simply heightens the excitement and the feeling of power that he gets from being able to take it and defy you to prove that he did it.

Don’t put yourself in that position. Until he is healed, assume that he did it. However, because he doesn’t feel guilt or remorse over what he has done, the usual disciplinary measures aren’t going to deter him. Instead, you need to reduce the opportunities that he has to steal through locks, alarms, and repetition.

One thing that I had a hard time learning is that repetition works. In simple words, tell him why it is wrong to steal; and repeat that, using the same (or very similar) words each time. This is something that can be effective over the long-term whether the subject is stealing or kicking the dog. You should do this in much the same way that you might explain things to a toddler, remembering that he didn’t get it then.

While I know that it will be impossible to do so in every instance, try not to get too excited over his stealing. Never let him believe that it is okay with you, and always ensure that there is an appropriate consequence for stealing, but be aware that anger simply feeds into his disorder.

Most importantly, now that your son has an attachment therapist, you should consider her to be your therapist as well, since any good attachment therapist will recognize the importance of attachment parenting, and be more than willing to act as a resource. Read the books that she assigned to you, and ask her what to do when your son steals from your daughter. Perhaps she can help you come up with some appropriate consequences for this behavior. Don’t be afraid to bounce things off of your son’s therapist, since that’s a big part of her job.

– ken

I understand that it’s something on the order of a sin to neglect a blog for more than a few days, yet I have done this. Let me explain.

I’ve never been very good at multitasking when it comes to large projects. Oh, I can handle a variety of small things at once but once I get involved in a significant project, it consumes my time.

Not only have I neglected the blog, but I have all but ignored some of the tasks through which I derive an income, as well.

The project is a combined one, and I have finally gotten far enough in it to consider that maybe I can come up for air, if only for a moment.

The RadKid.Org Directory has become a huge project and, I think, an even larger success, particularly the treatment section.

As of this writing, I have worked my way alphabetically through the states as far as Washington, with only West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming remaining. There are 582 entries to the treatment section, mostly to attachment centers and attachment therapists.

Some of them, of course, will contain errors, or may point to people who are no longer providing attachment therapy, or who may have moved since my last information. That can be easily corrected, but only with the help of a lot of other people, both parents of children receiving therapy and therapists themselves.

Realizing that the directory format limited me to listing only those therapists, clinics and centers which had web sites, leaving out the bulk of people who are providing attachment therapy, I created the RadKid.Org AT Directory, using a wiki format, which would permit anyone to add a listing for an attachment therapist who they might be aware of, and which would allow the therapists themselves to greatly expand upon their own listings.

That last part hasn’t happened yet, but I am confident that it will.

Much of the listings that you will find for attachment therapists in the RadKid.Org Directory are linked to stub pages that I have added to the RadKid.Org AT Directory, providing basic contact information only.

It is my hope that therapists will avail themselves of the opportunity to expand upon their own listings, to multiple pages if they wish, or that I can replace these listing with links to the therapist’s own web sites, as they create them or I come across them.

At this time, I am listing only attachment therapists in the RadKid.Org AT Directory, which will include any therapist providing attachment therapy, not exclusive to those providing only attachment therapy. I chose not to include centers or clinics here because most of them have their own web sites that can be linked to from the RadKid.Org Directory, and I’d rather link to your site than my own.

Later, I might include a section for those providing respite, attachment training, or other services.

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks. It will never be done since there are always new things to be added, but I am confident that the RadKid.Org Directory is already the most comprehensive listing of attachment resources available, and that the RadKid.Org AT Directory has the potential to become a huge resource for attachment therapists and parents seeking attachment assistance.

Those of you looking for help in West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming … I’ll get to you soon enough.

Please let me know what you think. Let others know about it as well, and please don’t be afraid to link to it from your site. Better yet, I welcome you to participate in the project.

Soon, I’ll get back to posting more regular updates to the RadKid.Org Blog. I apologize for my absence.

– ken

Recently, we took steps to replace our old directory with the RadKid.Org Directory, which permits site owners to add their own listings, and allows anyone to bid on placement for these listings. In other words, anyone can support a site that they particularly enjoy by bidding as little as a dollar to increase its placement or ranking within the directory.

This directory was necessary because I did not have the time to maintain our old directory and, because of that, many of the links and some of the information was outdated. In some cases, site owners became upset with me because I was unable to make the changes that they requested as quickly as they had hoped. New site owners were sometimes impatient with the amount of time that it took me to add their sites.

While this may still occur with the new directory, it permits site owners to add their own sites for a nominal fee of one dollar, or to bid more for higher ranking within the directory. Anyone unwilling to pay even this small amount will have to wait for me to find the time to add their site, leaving me with nothing to feel bad about.

Additionally, any funds received through the bid process will help to compensate us for our server costs and other expenses. If people should ever begin bidding on placement, we may even receive some compensation for our time, although I’m not holding my breath on that one.

Still, this left one problem. In my old directory, I was able to include, not only web sites, but names and contact information for attachment therapists who did not have a web presence, thereby increasing the likelihood that visitors would be able to find someone near them, as many good attachment therapists have not created web sites for themselves.

In an attempt to alleviate this problem in the new directory, I have created a directory of attachment therapists using MediaWiki software, which will permit any attachment therapist to create his or her own listing in the directory without any cost to them, or to edit pages created by others.

This creates a page that can be linked to from the RadKid.Org Directory.

Every attachment therapist is encouraged to create a listing for themselves in the AT Directory. This listing can range from one small page giving giving little more than contact information to multiple pages describing their practice, and even including photographs. Attachment therapists who already have a web site can use this space to link to their own site, thus increasing their visibility on the Internet, while those without a web site can use this in lieu of one, at least to some extent.

If you know of an attachment therapist who is not listed here, you can easily create a listing for that therapist, offering as much or as little information as you have available.

Once a therapist has created an account for herself, she can take control of her own listing, at which point we can close that listing to editing by the public, thus permitting the therapist to limit the amount of information she wishes to include.

Additionally, listings included in the AT Directory will be linked to from the RadKid.Org Directory unless a more comprehensive site is listed there. Generally, when a therapist is employed by an agency or attachment center, we will list the agency or center site in the RadKid.Org Directory. A listing in the AT Directory permits the therapist to have an additional listing, one that they can edit and “take with them” if they should change agencies, this permitting patients to find them if their employment changes.

This also serves to make the RadKid.Org Directory a more comprehensive listing of attachment resources, which is its chief purpose.

– ken

Although the RadKid.Org Directory, in its own subdomain, has been around for about a year, I’ve been hesitant to recommend it since there really wasn’t much there. However, over the past several weeks I have built it up considerably, to the point where I have every reason to believe that it is the most comprehensive directory of reactive attachment disorder sites available.

At this point, every site has been added to the directory at no charge so you might want to consider that I threw in the minimum one dollar listing charge, at the same level that I added my own sites.

Website owners

Any web site relating to reactive attachment disorder, attachment therapy, attachment parenting, or other emotional or mental health issues relating to children will be added to the directory for free by sending me an email or by completing our web form. We have a place in our directory for traditional parenting sites as well, although our focus is on reactive attachment disorder.

Or, you can add your own site for a minimum bid of one dollar, with any additional dollars serving to place your site ahead of others in the listing, according to who bid the most.

Attachment therapists

If you are an attachment therapist, but do not currently have a web site of your own, we will create a one-page, no-frills, site for you and host it on the RadKid.Org domain, and we’ll do that at no charge. In order to be included in the new RadKid.Org Directory, you will need to have a web site but we can make that as painless as possible.

Send me however much information you’d like to have included in a web page and we’ll put it online for you. This might include details about your practice, such as your focus, philosophy, qualifications, and other information, but certainly address and contact details.

Send me the information by emailing me at ken@radkid.org or complete the form on our RadKid.Org site.

If you would like something more, please navigate to Laisha.com, which is my wife’s business, a large part of which is creating web sites. I’m sure that she can come up with something nice for you, which might include referring you to a dependable and cost-effective hosting plan.

However, if you are interested only in the free page, contact me about that, and I’ll provide you with further details.

Directory ranking

At this point, every site in the directory is listed at the base one-dollar rate, and the order of ranking is according to the order in which they were added to the directory.

I encourage you to take control of your own listing by bidding additional dollars on your listing, as this will not only place your site ahead of others on the list but will give you additional control over your listing, as far as modifying the description and making changes to it, as long as they are in accordance with our terms of service.

Additionally, you can list deeplinks featuring other pages of your site.

We’re not looking to make money out of this, but we would like to recoup our hosting charges, the cost of the software, and other expenses. I’d rather avoid advertising on the site, so this is the only way in which we can do this.

– ken

While reviewing Leigh Ann’s Horses for Attachment yesterday, I had intended to go more into depth about equine therapy, and particularly its use in the treatment of attachment issues. However, I was pushed for time, which is another way of saying that I’m married and can no longer make decisions for myself. There’s a downside to everything, I suppose.

I first became aware of equine therapy as a treatment for attachment issues when one of our nephew’s social workers, whose last name I can no longer recall but whose first name was Jill, went into business for herself, setting up an equestrian treatment program as a component in the treatment of a variety of issues, including RAD. I’ve moved a couple of times since then, and was unable to locate the advertising flyers she left with me, and couldn’t find her program online, or I’d have reviewed her program instead, being familiar with its founder.

While it appears to be an excellent program, Leigh Ann’s Horses for Attachment was not the first such program, and is certainly not the only one. Terena Thomas, daughter of Nancy Thomas, founded a program by the name of Hooves for the Heart in 1988, and continues to operate the program in Eagle, Colorado. Terena is a co-author of Dandelion on My Pillow, Butcher Knife Beneath, which she wrote with her mother and sister, Beth Thomas. She also authored a complete manual for her equine therapy program, the research leading up to it, teaching tools, and three DVDs to guide someone interested in setting up a similar program. Entitled It’s Not Just Horsing Around with Defiant Kids!, it is no longer available on Amazon.com but can be purchased through Nancy Thomas’ site. This program, I believe, served as the basis for Leigh Ann’s Horses for Attachment, which doesn’t take anything from either program.

Additional information can be obtained from the Equine Facilitated Mental Health Association (EFMHA, itself a section of the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, Inc. (NARHA), which has provided equine assisted activity and therapy (EAAT) programs in the United States and Canada through its network of nearly eight hundred member centers.

If you were to Google “equine therapy” you’d find several similar programs throughout the country. To limit the results to those used in conjunction with attachment therapy, you might want to Google “equine therapy” + “attachment” .

– ken

From time to time, I will be featuring a program, center, camp, book, or individual therapist specializing in reactive attachment disorder or attachment therapy. Sometimes, this will be something that I am personally familiar with; while at other times, my review will be based upon information received or otherwise available, perhaps from a web site.

Today, I will be featuring two programs since they are administered by the same people. I am not personally familiar with either Camp for Broken Hearts or Leigh Ann’s Horses for Attachment, although I am somewhat familiar with the use of equine therapy in the treatment of reactive attachment disorder.

Camp for Broken Hearts

Operated by Frances Taylor (Director) and Christie Fisk (Co-Director), the last camp session was held at Camp Overton in Rock Island, Tennessee from October 12th through October 17, 2008. However, their web site indicates that they have purchased land in Woodbury, where they plan to construct a new, and presumably permanent, camp site.

Camp for Broken Hearts is designed specifically for families who are raising children suffering from reactive attachment disorder, not so much as  a treatment facility but as a place where parents won’t be solely responsible for their child’s behavior. When a child acts out, he or she will be removed by the camp’s trained staff, permitting the parents to continue on with whatever activity was in progress. The child’s consequences, then, will be the child’s consequences rather than the parent’s. Families will be able to relax and have fun, with support available for both parents and children.

Unlike other camps, children will remain with the parents rather than socializing with other children, since the more the children play together, the less they are trusting and bonding with the parent.

Camp for Broken Hearts hopes to provide an environment that encourages families to make memories together while enjoying the support of trained staff and other parents who share many of the same struggles.

The 2008 session cost $1,000 for a family of two, with an additional $250 for each additional person.  Their web site can be reached at www.campbrokenhearts.org.

Leigh Ann’s Horses for Attachment

Equine therapy has been shown to be helpful as a component of attachment therapy. Leigh Ann’s Horses for Attachment is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, located in Tennessee, and offering a therapeutic riding program useful in the treatment of reactive attachment disorder and other attachment issues, as well as a variety of other problems including:

• Autism
• Depression
• ADD /ADHD
• Bipolar Disorder
• Tourette Syndrome
• Sexual Misconduct
• Asperger Syndrome
• Self Esteem Problems
• Conduct Disorders (OCD)
• Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Each course is tailored to the special needs of the child, intended to provide increased self esteem, enhanced body awareness, better balance, longer attention span, improved listening skills, improvement in self control, enhanced sensory integration, joyful memories, and fun.

LAHA owns several therapeutic horses, with others in training, and accepts donations of horses so long as they meet the criteria for the program. The criteria are available on the LAHA web site, as well as a downloadable contribution form. Donations to the organizations of money or horses are tax deductible.

Leigh Ann’s Horses for Attachment is located in Woodbury, Tennessee. Their web site can be found at www.leighannshorses.org/.

– ken

Hello Ken,

I have a friend who has an almost 5 year-old daughter they adopted as a 6 week-old. She has become very difficult (putting it mildly) recently. They were always aware that there was a problem but were not sure what it was. A therapist recently diagnosed RAD. Problem is she has now been kicked out of two preschools because of bad behavior and is on her way to seriously injuring someone. She does not do this at home with her mother, though. She just acts horribly, but not violent. At home, she constantly has accidents in her pants even though she knows how to use the bathroom. Preschool is the worst. I am totally out of my element and do not know what to do to help.

My friend doesn’t want to believe she has RAD since she does not act out on the weekends. She may not bash anyone on the weekends, but it is never NEVER pleasant. Now my friend is not an overly affectionate person. She has a 9 year-old son who this is taking a toll on as well, and they are considering giving the little girl up or my friend is going to leave. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Thank you,

Jamie Rocke

Jamie, while the majority of the real work is done at home, where the child can be expected to spend the bulk of her time, attachment therapy is an important component. You see, a good attachment therapist will work with the parents as well as the child. While I am aware that there are parents who are trying to go it on their own, utilizing attachment parenting methods they may have read in a book or online, but without utilizing a trained attachment therapist, there are a number of reasons why I don’t recommend this.

First of all, these kids are generally far better at frustrating their parents, to say it mildly, than the parents are at controlling the situation. Without the guidance of an attachment therapist, who might also serve as an educated but objective sounding board, it’s far too easy for a parent to go far afield, placing both parent and child at risk. Attachment therapy and attachment parenting are intended to work together, and I don’t know that any one of them is of much use by itself.

As this person is a friend, you have to realize that you don’t really have any power in this situation beyond encouragment and recommendations. You say that a therapist has diagnosed reactive attachment disorder. Is the girl receiving attachment therapy from an attachment therapist then? If so, then I would have to suggest that the therapist is in a much better position to make recommendations than I am, being not only qualified to do so but closer to the situation, as well. If not, then my strongest suggestion to your friend is that she seek assistance from a qualified attachment therapist, who should be able to guide the family in attachment parenting as well.

Nothing you have said would lead me to question the diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder, as these are all fairly common characteristics of the disorder. Being less than five years of age, her chances of recovery should be high if she receives appropriate therapy, followed up by attachment parenting at home. If the family is unwilling to avail themselves of appropriate therapy, then I don’t know that there is anything that I can suggest that would truly help.

One thing that concerns me is that you say that your friend is not an overly affectionate person. Would this describe her as a whole, or is this a description of her feelings toward her adopted daughter? If the latter, I can fully appreciate that it might be difficult to show affection toward a child who shows only hatred in return. But that too, is something that a qualified attachment therapist might be able to assist with. It is important that a parent be able, not only show but to feel affection for the child with reactive attachment disorder. It helped for me to think of the hateful things as the disorder, while loving the child whom I was trying to reach beneath it all.

If your friend is capable of affection, then she is capable of feeling affection for her adopted daughter. However, if she is incapable of affection, then she has something in common with her daughter. I trust that’s not the case.

I am pleased that you recognize the concern for the older brother, as far too often siblings are forgotten as the child with reactive attachment disorder demands the attention of everyone involved. It is absolutely necessary for time to be set aside for the siblings as well.

Suggest to your friend that she join the online support forum hosted by Delphiforums. There are a lot of people there with a variety of experiences and levels of expertise, some of whom may be able to be of help to her. While Delphiforums does have a paid membership option, people are able to register and participate for free. Payment removes the advertising from the site, and offers some additional benefit, but it is not required. In fact, I always suggest that if someone is going to sign up for a paid membership, they do so by using the “UPGRADE THROUGH THIS FORUM” link near the bottom of the forum page, as this helps to pay some of the costs of operating the forum.

I wish that I had more to offer, but that’s about it, I’m afraid.

– ken

Dear Ken,

1. Did you openly read books about RAD, and do computer research about RAD, in front of the boy? Did he realize you were gearing up to work “from a stategy”, to help him?

2. Does the Daniel Hughes method rely on one person (a mother-figure ) to provide the main interaction? Does this person have to be a stay-at-home woman? Currently, the boy lives with an older man and wife, and a younger mom-figure, whom he gravitates to, but who works at a job. If regular school does not work out this fall, he may be at home, with the older woman (she is helpful and available, but no real healing bond). The household is trying to act “as One”, but they are currently using traditional parenting methods. If we are successful to get the household to do RAD-parenting, then the “one” mother-figure person would take on more importance, it sounds like.

3.  How is a the RADkid kept “under control” at school? With a RAD-trained teacher? Is there such a thing? Hopefully,he would be in Special Ed, a “Person of Concern”, but, if I understand it right, many teachers have not heard of RAD. Have you ever watched the 3-hour video by Nancy Thomas,”Captive in the Classroom”? It is suggested that the video is supposed to be given to the Special Ed teacher by the parents? Would this help keep the RADkid in line for 6 hours?  Vickie, Seattle

Our nephew was twelve when he came to live with us, and had developed a very good public face. For that reason, those who did not know him well didn’t know that he was disordered. Some parents wished that their children would be as nice as he was. That’s not surprising. Although we later learned of a few things that we had been unaware of at the time, his first month with us was very pleasant.

Once diagnosed, at first we tried to keep it from him. Of course, anyone who has ever spent any time with a child with reactive attachment disorder soon learns that it’s very difficult to keep anything from them. He walked into the room while I was working on the web site one day. I switched to another screen but he asked, “What’s radioactive attachment disorder?”

Since one of our main objectives in parenting him was to develop trust, I couldn’t find my way to lying to him about it. I explained it to him, and he listened carefully. I told him, of course, that it was reactive attachment disorder, and that this was what his psychologist thought that he had, explaining that none of it was his fault. The conversation actually led to some worthwhile discussion about emotion, and his chief concern was that we were going to tell everyone about it.

My response was that it wasn’t anyone else’s business unless he made it so, that we wouldn’t discuss it with anyone else unless we felt that we had to do so in order to protect ourselves. Explaining to him that his desire to make us look bad to everyone else was actually a part of the disorder, and that if he put us into a position where we felt that we had to discuss his diagnosis with someone in order to prevent them from believing that we were awful parents, then we would do so, but this was something that he could control.

During the one semester that he spent in public school, we did have reason to discuss his diagnosis with the school counselor and one of his teachers, but I can’t say that either one of them made a large effort to understand it. We also discussed it with our pastor, and later with the director of the Christian school that we enrolled him in during his junior year of high school. Other than that, we kept quiet about it, knowing that in the small town in which we lived, it wasn’t necessarily to anyone’s benefit for him be assigned a label.

After discussing it with his therapist, we agreed that there was no harm in letting him in on the secret. We let him have access to some of the attachment books that we had, hiding only the ones that spoke of the possibility that they would grow up to be serial killers, not wanting to give him any ideas that he may not have already had. In fact, I seeded my library with books that I wanted him to read, knowing that if I had simply asked him to read them, he wouldn’t. More than a few of them made their way to his room, so it worked.

As for school, that didn’t work out very well. A full week of attachment parenting could be undone in one day of public school, as he was being rewarded for all of the wrong behaviors. Plus, he wasn’t turning in his work, completing tests, or doing much of anything productive. After that first semester, we pulled him from public school and homeschooled him for a few years, which was much easier, less time-consuming, and far more productive. This, of course, would not be the case with every child or in every family; and we did find that it was better if I taught him rather than my wife, since she was the one that he most wanted to displease.

I have seen the Nancy Thomas video, but I don’t think that anyone at his public school would have taken the time to watch it. It’s an excellent video, though.

As for your question about attachment therapy and Dr. Hughes, our attachment therapist had trained under him and was in communication with him. We met with him a couple of times, but he was not our primary therapist. Most of the sessions involved my wife, who was the mother in his life, and my nephew, although I was present for most of the attachment sessions as well. A couple of times, she met with just my wife and my nephew, and once with just myself and him, but the majority of the bonding effort was between my nephew and my wife.

We learned that we could rate the value of his therapy sessions by his reactions later on. When some real work was being done in therapy, he would rage later, sometimes even before we got home. We came to recognize that as a good thing, realizing that one-step forward and two-steps back was still a step forward, and since he had made that step once, he knew that he could go there again without anything tragic happening.

We also learned that it does no good whatsoever to kick yourself over anything that might have been said or done in the past. We tried to be consistent and in control, but there were times when we couldn’t withstand the onslaught and might say something that wasn’t exactly helpful. Parents are neither superhuman or perfect. I had no trouble apologizing to my nephew, telling him that I had said things to him that I shouldn’t have said, and that I had done so because I was angry. Since he knew full well that he was trying to make me angry and was well aware of his success, my apology actually served to take some of the power back.

One trap that we had walked into, for the sake of consistency, was the idea that once we made a decision we would have to stick with it even if we realized that we had done so in anger, and could see that it wasn’t having a desirable effect. We grounded our nephew to his room for a month one time after he kept escalating whatever it was that he was doing wrong at the time, and then believed that we had to stick with it since we had told him that he was going to be confined to his room for a month. Since we lived in what had once been a three-unit apartment, his “room” included a bedroom, dining room, and full bathroom, so it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounded. Still, it was more of a punishment for us than it was to him.

We later determined that consistency meant that we were in control, and that meant that we were free to change things when they weren’t working out. Still later, we realized that it was best if we didn’t assign a consequence until we were no longer angry about the action that precipitated it.

Although I haven’t read this in any of the books, one thing that we kept trying to do was to treat him like a normal kid as long as he was acting like a normal kid, so that we could enjoy the times when he was doing this, and in the hopes that he would realize that whenever he was tired of attachment parenting, he could simply quit acting like someone who was in need of it. I don’t know that this is a therapeutically useful model to follow, but it did allow us to have some good times and gave us a basis upon which to judge the progress that he was making.

I believe that it was useful for us, but that it may not be for everyone.

– ken