Adoption Tuesday - Attachment.9

Oops! Meant to post this on Tues. Oh well. Here it is now....

Special Treatment
The topic of today's post is more related to general parenting than it is to RAD/attachment, however, I have found I use this concept more now that I have a RADish in the fold. It's about special treatment.

I know the trend today is equal treatment for all kids. If Suzie has a birthday, you'd better be sure little Johnny has something to open as well, so he doesn't feel left out. If McKenzie ran in the race on field day, she'd better get a medal for "participation", even if she finished middle of the pack.

Well, call me slow, but I've never caught on to this particular trend. I don't think we're doing this generation of kids any favors by letting them think "everyone's a winner". We're not. Some excel at running, some at art, some at cheer and others at math. And that's OK.

 On the flip side, some kids need a little extra help at things their peers find easy-peezy. That's alright, too. And what do we do with kids that need some extra help, and could easily get quite discouraged? We find ways to help motivate them.

I've always tried to teach my kids that fairness has a way of making the rounds. Your brother got some special reward/treat today? Great, let's be happy for him. That may be you next week. Or next month. Who knows?
Sometimes, one of the kids may need a little extra help to get through a tough section in their science class. Maybe I might reward them in some small way if they completed all their homework, and they studied, and they did passably well on the test.
 When the kids were little and one of them had to take a nasty course of antibiotics, I was no stranger to sticker charts to help motivate them, with a little prize at the end to reward them for getting through it.

Likewise, kids with RAD need extra help learning to be a part of a family. And I'd better not hear, "He gets a reward just for being nice? NO FAIR!" Because you know what? That doesn't come easy to him, and he needs a little help to learn how to do it. Just like the others, at different times, needed help learning to read, or keeping their room clean, or establishing the habit of using their agenda book in school, or using the potty, or anything else that might have been difficult or challenging at one time or another.

The list of things that a child with attachment issues or a history of trauma might have trouble with could include:
sharing
honesty
eye contact
appropriate physical boundaries
respectful language
putting forth effort in school
understanding the sense of a "family"
contributing to chores
resolving disputes in a controlled manner

I have no problem using incentives to help a child of mine learn these concepts. To me it is no different than any of the other examples I listed above. The hard part can be educating others (siblings, teachers, other family members, parents of friends) that there is no difference.

It should be this simple: Area of struggle (_____) for the child ---> help from parent in a way that will be meaningful for the child. I should be able to fill in any area of struggle into the blank, not just the ones people are used to seeing most commonly. Practice the trumpet? Clean your room? Say something nice to your sibling?
Help your children (and others, as needed) learn that it doesn't matter what area your child is struggling with. What matters is that you've identified it, and you are helping him or her in the best way you know how.

Previous posts on Attachment:
Attachment The Attachment Tree
Attachment.2 I Love You
Attachment.3 Keck and Kupecky
Attachment.4 Control
Attachment.5 Cycles
Attachment.6 Consequences
Attachment.7 Add It On
Attachment.8 - Attachment Activities

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Adoption Tuesday - Attachment.4

Control

A common theme for kids with attachment issues is control, and that's what I'm going to touch on today.

These kids have lost so much in their lives, and it's always been out of their control. Because of that, they love to hold on to control wherever they can, and they do not react well when control is imposed upon them by others, be they parents, teachers, caseworkers, you name it.

Many of the behavior problems we see with RAD kids are based on their desire to be in control. When James' Reactive Attachment Disorder first began to surface, I treated his behavior problems the same as I treated any other behavior problems exhibited by my kids. In short, I tried to exert MY control over HIM. Each time, I was basically just lighting his fuse. And it was a short one.

Wrong move.

He would engage in an inappropriate behavior.

I would attempt to impose a consequence immediately.

He would refuse to submit to whatever consequence I was handing out.

I would get angry and up the stakes, piling a bunch of "if - then" consequences on top of our already out-of-control emotional brush-fire.

Emotional responses ran amok for the both of us, and the rest of the family suffered the effects of an out-of-harmony home.


Through therapy, reading, and the support of the RAD community, I have learned to not react so strongly and emotionally to his misdeeds.

Instead, if he goes against household rules, I let him know, with as little emotion in my voice and on my face as I can pull off, that what he did was wrong. I then tell him we will talk about it later, and I try to remove myself (and any involved in this "conflict") from his vicinity.

When the stars are aligned, he will continue to perform some reaction-provoking behavior for awhile. I/we will ignore it. After some time, he will go up to his room of his own accord. Next day, he will apologize, and we will talk about consequences (losing his phone, for example).

Of course, it didn't always (and currently doesn't always) go this smoothly, because part of the control for him is getting reactions. We're mostly past it now, but when he didn't get the reactions he was looking for, he would often just up the ante. At different times in our past, police have been to the house, trips have been made to the ER, furniture has been upended.

The trick to parenting kids with attachment disorders is to know the difference between simple reaction-provoking behaviors that can usually be handled by not getting drawn in, and the more serious behaviors that can lead to injury to family members if not handled expertly, which may involve professionals, or possibly hospitalization for the child.

If the child is able to have a discussion (later that day or next day) about his behaviors and the consequences, I have found it's a good idea to let him help choose what the consequence will be by giving a few choices. This, again, goes to letting them hold on to some of the control.

Example:
Couple nights ago, James wanted to watch a movie with my husband. Fred was pretty fried, and he had other plans which involved an early bedtime.
B/c of James' history, he didn't take to this well, and started getting antsy. He began accusing his Dad of favoritism and being self-centered, and being old and just all manner of things.
Fred went back and forth with him a bit, then realized what was at play and simply dropped himself out of the conversation.
James lay on the sofa and kept slamming his arm against the couch. Very annoying, when done repeatedly, but really no harm, no foul, so we just ignored him.
Luckily, there were no other kids in the room, or that would have been a whole other ball of wax.
Every now and then he would resurface to say something more about Fred being self-centered, which we would just ignore.
After awhile, he went up to his room, but not before telling Fred that he hated him.
We ignored.
Next morning, he still had a little troubling behavior going on with his sibs, but soon settled down.
A few hours later, I had a talk with him. The conversation remained calm, and it spoke to why he is likely feeling these things towards Dad, as well as to why the things he said are inappropriate.
Finally, it touched on consequences. He had three choices: lose his computer for the day, lose his phone for the day, or clean out dad's garage. He chose to lose the phone. Plus, of course, an apology.

If we had demanded ANY of those things last night, I can tell you it would have ended up VERY differently. Very differently, indeed.

Now, I know this is a very mild example, and pretty easy to deal with. Almost a no-brainer. But I use it to underscore the differences between a child with a troubled past, and a child who has grown up in a loving household his or her whole life. If one of my birth kids (or for that matter, my securely-attached adopted kids) had acted/spoken in this way, you can bet they would not have waltzed off to their room unchecked. That kind of disrespect would have been dealt with swiftly. But with traumatized/poorly-attached kids, this reactionary method to discipline simply does not work. It not only doesn't work, it makes the situation worse. By far.

So to summarize, when dealing with milder (non-threatening) behaviors with your RAD child,

1) Keep emotion out of it.

2) Give space, either by the child removing himself, or you removing all other family members from his vicinity.

3) Do NOT give out consequences in the moment, but wait until the child has completely calmed down about it.

4) When giving out consequences, always start the discussion with why the behaviors were wrong to begin with. Table-turning can be very helpful: "If I were mad at you, do you think it would be OK for me to tell you I hated you?"

5) Let the child have some choice in selecting the consequence. Present 2 - 4 choices of appropriate consequences, and let him have some say in which it will be.


I hope this helps. If you have any questions, feel free to use the comment form, or message me on FB, or email me.




If you'd like to read the other posts in my series on attachment, you can find them here:

Attachment
Attachment.2
Attachment.3

















Don't forget, I am now posting daily on my blog Life on the Funny Farm. Come on over!

Small Triggers

This morning in Health class, my son got to sit in the classroom and glance awkwardly around, trying to avoid eye contact while all the other students were busy raising their hands.

This morning in Health class, my son's teacher attempted to teach her students about, I presume, relationships and attaching, and she illustrated her point by asking who remembered their mother giving them a blanket when they were little, or tucking them in, or snuggling with them.

This afternoon in my home, we had an episode. The episode began with balking when asked to do chores. The episode involved a state trooper. The episode ended with a very out-of-sorts boy spending most of the evening sitting on the floor with his head in my lap, barely able to function.

Small triggers open big wounds.

We'll keep trying to stitch them back up.






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Broken Child

With the help of my other sons, we righted the table.
Rolling fruit was gathered and washed.
Jagged ceramic lay in pieces on the floor.
The dish, a gift, looked broken beyond repair.
I gathered the fragments together and began placing them in a sack to be discarded.

The dish wasn't the only broken thing here.
My son, full of teen angst and layers of past traumas, had flipped this table over in a moment of rage.
Not a rage over the losses in his life or the hurts he's endured, but over the latest insurmountable injustice. He didn't get the seat he wanted when it came time to watch a movie, and this insignificant precipitator had escalated and swollen till its enormity could not be controlled.

Sweeping up the broken bits too small to be gathered by hand, I wondered,
Could I fix my child?

Such arrogance to pose that question.

Logical Me knew well enough that you can't undo the hurt caused by years of neglect, drug use, lead paint, institutionalization, and abuse physical, mental and emotional simply by gifting a child a room of his own, nice clothes, a pool, and a family vacation down the shore.

But Melodramatic Me fantasized that by showering him with our unconditional love and support (and a good dose of professional therapy), maybe, just maybe, he could turn whole again. That if the light of our love could seek out and illuminate the darkest recesses of his hurt, it would be enough to negate all that happened in his past.

Could love, support, and Stuff eradicate a person's traumatic past?

Listening to the muted rumble of him trashing his room upstairs, it was looking as if the answer was no.

Still, I had to believe that all this drama is part of the healing process he must go through to recalibrate. He was functioning just fine in his old life until I came along and opened up his wounds. He barely gave a thought to his scars, his lack of a family. A pack of rowdy boys roaming the streets and doing the things unsupervised boys do served fine as a family. And scars were just that, scars. They had long ago healed and were nothing more than part of his physical terrain. He gave them no more thought than he would one of his freckles.

A person could walk along through life impaled by a staff. Perhaps once in a while, if he weren't careful, it might become a problem, it might hurt if he got it caught on something. But if it spared organs and arteries, a person could function, certainly. Remove that staff, and now you've got exposed, raw, painful flesh. That wound will ache. It will heal, but it will take time and it will hurt like the dickens for a good long while. And without proper care, the gash could become worse before it gets better. Could become inflamed, infected.

Of course this is Melodramatic Me at my finest here, but I'm trusting that's what we're dealing with. A case of old wounds opened up and aggravated. Every instance of loss of control becomes like a cattle prod in the bared gash. On a good day he can bite the bullet as he controls himself and the pain subsides. On a bad day he becomes a wounded, cornered, wild animal acting out in self preservation.

I cut my finger on a piece of the shattered ceramic. I watched the blood trickle down my hand and drop to the floor, mingling with the dust of the broken dish and my tears, which had been raining down steadily. I stood and moved to the sink, and washed the blood from my negligible nick. Probably wouldn't even need a Band Aid.

In a moment, my son appeared, standing at my shoulder.
Through his own tears, and barely able to look at me, he murmered his apologies, then walked outside. I completed my task, then went outside to talk to him, Big Lectures beginning to form in my mind. But as I closed the kitchen door and walked into the night, I turned and found my son leaning against the deck railing, looking out over the pond and illuminated by the light of the moon. He was crying. Sobbing.
The lecture could wait. I stood beside him and reached up to put my arm around his shoulders. And we stood together like that for some time, quietly crying together.