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Does Your Child Suffer From RAD: Reactive Attachment Disorder (Videos)

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(N.Morgan) Many children suffer from RAD, but most parents just live with this condition because they do not understand what is happening to their child.  Do you or someone in your family have a child who suffers from Reactive Attachment Disorder? Do you ever use electronics to give yourself a break and keep the child occupied? If you answered yes to any of these questions this article is for you.

 

 

What is Reactive Attachment Disorder?

Attachment is defined as the affectional tie between two people. It begins with the bond between the infant and mother. This bond becomes internally representative of how the child will form relationships with the world. Bowlby stated “the initial relationship between self and others serves as blueprints for all future relationships.” (Bowlby, 1975)

Attachment Disorder is defined as the condition in which individuals have difficulty forming lasting relationships.

They often show nearly a complete lack of ability to be genuinely affectionate with others.

They typically fail to develop a conscience and do not learn to trust.

They do not allow people to be in control of them due to this trust issue.

This damage is done by being abused or physically or emotionally separated from one primary caregiver during the first 3 years of life.

“If a child is not attached – does not form a loving bond with the mother – he does not develop an attachment to the rest of mankind. The unattached child literally does not have a stake in humanity” (Magid & McKelvey 1988).

They do not think and feel like a normal person. “At the core of the unattached is a deep-seated rage, far beyond normal anger. This rage is suppressed in their psyche. Now we all have some degree of rage, but the rage of psychopaths is that born of unfulfilled needs as infants. Incomprehensible pain is forever locked in their souls, because of the abandonment they felt as infants.” (Magid & McKelvey 1988)

“There is an inability to love or feel guilty. There is no conscience. Their inability to enter into any relationship makes treatment or even education impossible.” (Bowlby 1955).

Some infamous people with Attachment Disorder that did not get help in time:  Saddam Hussein, Edgar Allen Poe, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy.

One famous person with Attachment Disorder who did get help in time (in 1887!) and became one of the greatest humanitarians the US has ever produced is Helen Keller.

In the video below Dan Hughes, Clinical Psychologist, from U.S.A., is the originator of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) and also attachment-focused family therapy, recorded this summary of how the brain reacts to trauma and how an understanding of this process is helpful to foster and adoptive parents as well professionals such as residential care workers and teachers.

How Early Years Trauma Affects the Brain the Child Who Mistrusts Good Care

So now that you have an understanding of what RAD is, what is the next step in helping a child heal and develop into a happy, mentally healthy loving adult?

Reading to your RAD child is an excellent bonding tool. Make is fun, with blanket forts or under the covers with a flashlight, surrounded by pillows and stuffed animals. Anything that provides comfort and a sense of security.

The RAD child is going to continuously challenge their caregivers limits, these are testing behaviors that are ultimately about trust. 

The next video dicusses the elements of sensitive caregiving during early childhood builds a healthy foundation for future development. Attachment disorder may be triggered during a child’s earliest years when a healthy foundation for trust and attachment is interrupted by abuse and/or neglect, abandonment, separation from birth parents and other factors. When this foundation is damaged, children may have difficulty in forming loving, intimate relationships. 

Attachment Disorder: Diagnosis and Treatment

In some cases, the challenges may seem insurmountable to the caregiver of a RAD child and they may consider sending the child away to a special care facility, however, research shows that this makes this condition far worse and the trauma suffered by the child multiplies.

Forrest Lien, Executive Director and Therapist for The Institute for Attachment and Child Development wrote:

Residential treatment centers aren’t family environments. They don’t effectively address the attachment problems between children and their parents. Kids with reactive attachment disorder reject trust and closeness, especially with mother figures. So, that’s exactly what they need in treatment.

However, residential treatment centers have a revolving staff schedule. Kids don’t develop close relationships with the staff. In fact, the kids develop superficial relationships with staff in order to manipulate them. Kids with reactive attachment disorder are extremely skilled at doing so.

To make things worse, we rewarded the kids with the chance to hang out with others who shared their distorted thinking. They only validated one another and made things worse.

Many parents come to me, frustrated and burnt out. They spend time and/or money for their kids to go to residential treatment centers. When they get home, their kids are just the same and families continue to suffer. I hope we can come together as professionals to help break this cycle.

Whether it’s incessant text messaging, Snapchat, or a game app, it’s all the same—today’s modern social media and technology bombards children with constant distractions.

These distractions become yet another obstacle in parenting, especially for those raising children with reactive attachment disorder.

Here’s why electronics create great problems for children with RAD and their parents:

Minimize electronics. Kids with RAD are highly prone to escapism, to the point of it being dangerous and everything a RAD child watches must be monitored because of potential triggers. 

Electronics are more interesting for kids than developing relationships. The most important lesson children with RAD need to learn is how to foster attachments and sincere relationships. Life is already very busy for most families with school, work, therapy sessions, etc. Electronics consume even more time in which children with RAD could spend with others.

Social media fuels superficial relationships. Again, children with RAD need to work hard to learn how to create authentic and healthy relationships. However, social media only provides more opportunities to present false identities and manipulate relationships.

Electronics affirm a sense of entitlement. Tired parents understandably need a break from oppositional behaviors. However, to rely upon electronics to get relief only leads to more problems later. Children who were abused or neglected at a young age, right in the midst of important  developmental stages, remain “stuck” in their toddler years developmentally (watch the  video “How to recognize attachment disorder in your child“). Just like toddlers, they want what they want when they want it. When parents “give in” to electronics after children act out, they only reinforce that sense of entitlement for children with RAD.

Electronics often lead to more power struggles. Parents of children with RAD feel worn out from constant chaos and arguing from their children as it is. Ironically, the very objects parents often use as leverage for desirable behavior—electronics—often create more battles. Children often rush through chores, homework, etc. when parents rely upon electronic time as an incentive. When parents request that their children return to efficiently complete their tasks, the tantrums and arguing ensues all the more.

To raise children with RAD is extremely difficult and exhausting. Yet, those raising such children are better off finding respite time in ways other than electronics. Until children with RAD and those raising them establish a quality relationship, we recommend that parents forbid or set extremely strict limits on the use of electronics.

In the future, parents might have the chance to ease limitations and play games with their children to further build an established healthy relationship. Until that day is possible, however, the “electronic babysitter” will only make matters worse.

 

 

References:

http://www.attachment.org/reactive-attachment-disorder/

http://instituteforattachment.ong/a-modern-day-challenge-of-parenting-children-with-reactive-attachment-disorder/

http://instituteforattachment.org/?p=1394

http://www.littlerockfamily.com/post/103753/how-to-recognize-and-heal-difficulties-caused-by-childhood-trauma

Sky Davis

http://instituteforattachment.ong/why-in-home-services-dont-work-for-kids-with-reactive-attachment-disorder/

http://instituteforattachment.ong/a-modern-day-challenge-of-parenting-children-with-reactive-attachment-disorder/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQDa3sA79VBEElSajwmuofg

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCszXV5ryNN3ToHmoqK61v-A

More Stories Contributed By N. Morgan



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    Total 9 comments
    • Pink Slime

      Hello Angle#3,

      Charlie here. This is a disturbing article. I am familiar with this diagnosis. It was once called RAT or Reactive Attachment Theory, but I see they now call it RAD. I guess it’s not a theory anymore.

      You see, I once suffered this, but my parents took a radical method to cure me. It was baad! It was called RAAD or Rationing And Allocating Doughnuts! :lol: :lol:

      You see when I began suffering the so-called symptoms me parents would leave me with a box of doughnuts and close the door. Every day they did this and guess what? I was CURED!!

      I told my parents when I grow up I want to be a Master-Baker!! Both of my parents face turned red. :roll: :roll:

      But anyway I am cured now but have a nasty habit. Yep, only want to bake doughnuts! The finest ever! :lol: :lol:

      Signed,

      Charlie (learn to love yourself through master baking) :lol: :lol:

    • Air Quotes Shill Air Quotes

      Mrs. DOOMSAYER’s Parenting Tips

    • maris

      This sounds exactly like my 28 year old daughter. However, I was and still am a loving caring mother and my daughter and I were very close. We use to call ourselves the Siamese Twins. When I had my daughter I quit my career and became a full time mother. Television was never used as a babysitter as we did not have one. The computer was not used as a babysitter as we did not have one. This was the late 1980′s and early to mid 1990′s. We lived on a farm were my children spent may hours of healthy fun on our 35 Acres with our various pets and animals. We read books together and played games together. Both my daughters were happy and healthy living in a loving environment or so I thought.

      Then when my oldest daughter was nine her father and I divorced due to the fact he tried to rape my best friends 15 year old daughter. I feared for both my young daughters. I researched pedophilia and found out the cure rate was almost non existent. At that point my nine year old totally changed. A beautiful, intelligent happy child became depressed and totally uncontrollable. I put her in counseling continued to love her in spite of her constant uncontrollable reckless behavior. Her father had money and influence and removed her from my care. She lived in a home where her father was never home and her 78 year old paternal grandmother was in charge. She would leave and not be seen for days. She skipped school and got on drugs. I spent $50,000 in lawyers and courts to get her back and give her the help, attention and love she so much needed. When I had no more money I had to give up and admit defeat.

      She is now married to a criminal, con man and drug addict. She never goes out of her house and lives in a dark dungeon with all the curtains and blinds shut at all times. She is a heroin addict. She had a very high IQ and was offered help to get into Harvard. She dropped out of school in the tenth grade.

      I am sick and tired of these so called psychiatrists and “experts” in childhood development blaming mothers! Did you ever think in might be the incestous fathers at fault! And yes, he raped both my children and I will lived with this guilt that I did not know sooner, for the rest of my life. He lives a guiltless life with all his money having destroyed his two daughters. He has never done anything for them except rape them. He paid off judges and with his sociopathic charm won over friends and family. Now that my daughters are remembering he just blames them and says they are lying. I still help them, love them and deal with all the constant problems and dramatics. Someday he will stand before THE JUST JUDGE GOD and hear those sobering words, “depart from me I never knew you into the everlasting Lake of Fire”!

      • Pink Slime

        First of all, I’m sorry to hear what happened.

        But you should be aware there were signs your husband was to be rubbish, but my guess is you ignored them or couldn’t imagine them or was never paying attention so you went and married the trash anyway. Maybe for money, love, desperation, pressure, who knows?

        I hear this story so many times. See so so many lives destroyed, ruined. But I do know there are always TWO sides to a story, for whatever reasons. We all make mistakes and we PAY for them dearly! :cry:

        But what do I know? I’m just a guy that eats doughnuts. :lol:

    • David Gordon

      F all that. If a child does not resent the world, it does not live. It should hate you if you are part of the overriding establishment.

    • David Gordon

      Still no name, no face. F you all y’all commenters. You are a joke and you know it. This is why I am NSA Top Ten and you are Slime or less.

      • Pink Slime

        Did my “master-baking” touch a nerve with you? A big thick fat nerve? :lol:

      • 2QIK4U

        Hi mate. I never put my head on any pic cos it will break the camera 😉 I prefer to put evidence of a human skeleton on Mars straight from NAZA archives.. It looks better than my head and proves the secret space program that we’ve been to mars before. .. Sorry I couldn’t rent that place as I haven’t visited still but will visit you for a drink when I get there. Did you think about my fan induction for your stoves? It would increase efficiency greatly… be good or be good at it. 👽

    • Boo

      How about we ostracized pedophilia behavior openly and directly like we used to, penalized the perpetrators and bolster the child’s confidence and self esteem with the knowledge they had nothing to do with this and they can come out of this knowing not all people are balanced. Teach them how to carefully vet acquaintances as young adults and as parents do your job and start vetting any relationship your child will be exposed to before you trust their care in a strangers or relatives hands. You may not be able to hit the bars and party down for the first 14 years of your child’s life, but life is long and redirect those fun experiences to developing them with your child instead. It isn’t a perfect world and this is not a perfect answer, but as one who was abused as a child by such an experience with a step father…it goes along way to releasing their baggage from one’s trip through this imperfect life.
      And by all means…tell the offender what a piece of human waste they are to their face when the opportunity presents itself.

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