RAD Moms Have It Tough

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RAD moms have one of the hardest jobs in the world. When I say “RAD” moms, I’m not talking about “Radical”, as in super-cool, though that’s a pretty good description of them. RAD moms are mothers of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder, and let me tell you it can be a nightmare!

I’m a RAD dad, and I don’t have it as tough. Yes, it’s hard parenting these kids, but my wife is the one that really gets the brunt of the pain. Why is this? It’s because when a child is a baby, it’s the mom that’s supposed to take care of him or her. It’s the mom that’s supposed to hold them, to look in their eyes, to be the primary care giver. When that connection is broken or damaged for any reason, the child then learns not to trust anyone, especially the one that is supposed to take care of them. So then as that child grows older, the adopted mom get’s the anger transferred to them that was directed at their birth mom.

What happens is that the RAD mom gets abused by the child – verbally, emotionally, and sometimes physically. It’s very, very hard for that mom. The sad thing is that quite often that child is a perfect angel around everyone else, and people don’t believe that the mom is suffering.

So what can you do for a RAD mom? Here are a few ideas – I’m sure you can think of more!

Believe the parents! This is the most important thing, in my opinion. RAD kids lie almost all of the time, and they’re very good at it. One of the main reasons they lie is to triangulate – they get other adults on their side against their mom. Nancy Thomas says that when she is asked what she does for a living, she quite often says that she works with abused parents. This is very true! Please believe the mom and dad of RAD kids when they tell you what they’re dealing with!
Don’t hug a RAD child. The RAD kiddo needs to get all hugs and physical touch from their mom and dad. They need to learn to trust their parents!
Don’t buy into a RAD kid’s line of “I wish you were my mom, you’re a lot better than the one I have”. Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder often shop around for new parents or better living situations.
Give her a break. RAD moms need an hour or two here and there to get their hair done or paint their nails. Go over to her house and let her do that.
Give her some time with the RAD dad. This is important – especially for them to have a weekend away from time to time. Learn to be a respite provider for this weary couple – click here for a good resource to teach you just that!
Most of all, be her friend. RAD moms feel isolated and defeated – they need all the friends they can get – mainly, to give them a shoulder to cry on and an ear for listening.

Those are a few ideas for helping out a RAD mom – put your mind to it and I’m sure you can come up with some more!

Are you a RAD mom looking for help? The best book we’ve found for parenting our RAD kids is When Love Is Not Enough by Nancy Thomas. For parents of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder this is a must have.

We’ve also had much success with Total Transformation by James Lehman. Though it’s not written specifically for RAD kids, the techniques we’ve learned in it have worked very well for ours.

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Disclaimer: We are not psychologists, counselors, or therapists. We are parents of children with special challenges, and the techniques, tools, and programs we recommend on this website have worked for us on our parenting journey.

Affiliate links may be used within this post for products we recommend. They in no way affect our judgment of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

Don’t Forget To Have Fun

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Working with kids who have attachment issues can give you tunnel vision. Really, any kiddos with child behavior problems can monopolize your time and drain your energy. I have found that I have to be purposeful in planning fun when one kid’s problem behavior is using a lot of my time.

My kids are always up for a good tickle, so just catching them as they are walking by and tickling for a minute or two gets both of our laughter juices flowing. Nothing perks up a house more than the sound of laughter. Or I will pull out a quick board game in that dead time right before or right after dinner. Uno is usually quick and 2 or more can play and there is not a lot of setup to get going.

Another thing I like to do is snuggle with them. I pick 1 or 2 each day that get extended snuggle time. Crawling beside me in bed right before bedtime and telling silly jokes makes for a great end to some very long days. Or sitting on my lap (yes even my 13 yr old!) in the mornings while I am drinking coffee starts both of our hearts off the right way!

Or if I am on the run from doctor to counselor to family therapy, whatever kiddo is in the car might get a $1 cone compliments of McD’s! I park in the lot for just a minute and have some eye to eye contact with them while slurping away. It always pays back in spades.

I have found if I have these moments to look forward to, the tense moments from my “working on their life” kiddo is much easier bear.

Do you have kids with Reactive Attachment Disorder?

The best book we’ve found for parenting our RAD kids is When Love Is Not Enough by Nancy Thomas. For parents of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder this is a must have.

We’ve also had much success with Total Transformation by James Lehman. Though it’s not written specifically for RAD kids, the techniques we’ve learned in it have worked very well for ours.

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Disclaimer: We are not psychologists, counselors, or therapists. We are parents of children with special challenges, and the techniques, tools, and programs we recommend on this website have worked for us on our parenting journey.

Affiliate links may be used within this post for products we recommend. They in no way affect our judgment of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

ComputerTime – Parental Monitoring Software

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One of our children would spend 24 hours a day on the computer, if we let him. Obviously, this is not a healthy thing! So we started searching for some parental monitoring software to limit his (and all the kids) computer time, and we found a few programs that looked like they would work. As we started digging deeper, however, we discovered that most of the programs had to be loaded on one computer, and if you had multiple computers on a home network, they wouldn’t keep track of their time across computers. In other words, our ingenious little hacker could use up all his time on one computer then move over to another. Including my work computer, we have 7 computers in our house. This would not work.

Then we stumbled across ComputerTime, a program from a company called Software Time. This parental monitoring software was different in that you would load it on every computer, but there was one “master computer” that held the database of users (kids) and all of their limits, etc. In order for the child to use a computer, he has to put in his username and password, and the computer that he’s on checks the master computer for his time limits, and whether he’s used up his daily allocated time. If he has, he can’t get on – even if he tries another computer, same result. This was the only software we could find that worked this way.

For us, this was a no-brainer. The software costs $50 last time I checked, and it has totally taken away the parental monitoring problems we’ve had in the past. (For $40 you can get a single computer license, but for $10 more you can get it for all of your computers). This is the beauty of this software.

There are many options that the software has that makes it very customizable and user-friendly. A few features are as follows:

Ability to set different limits each day, by hour, in 15 minute increments.
Ability to set a “per session limit”, so for instance they can only be on for an hour, then they have to be off for an hour. Those periods of time are totally configurable.
You can make it so they have a daily limit, for instance 3 hours per day.
They have a thing called “time tokens” that you can give them an instant token, that kind of overrides all of their settings and gives them some time to use whenever they want. You can also set up some tokens and print out a list that you can give the kid a number off of so that he can enter it at any time to use his “special token”.

This is a very cool software program, and it’s helped to keep the peace and control the computers in our house totally. If you’ve got several computers and kids that use them, this is the software for you. Click here to learn more about ComputerTime.

Note: This software does not limit the websites that a child can view! In order to do that, you need to get a program like K-9 or Safe Eyes. Click here to read our review of Safe Eyes. It’s the one we use at our house, and it works great!

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Disclaimer: We are not psychologists, counselors, or therapists. We are parents of children with special challenges, and the techniques, tools, and programs we recommend on this website have worked for us on our parenting journey.

Affiliate links may be used within this post for products we recommend. They in no way affect our judgment of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

Neurotherapy for Reactive Attachment Disorder and ADHD

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We have been learning SO MUCH about Reactive Attachment Disorder and ADHD over the last couple of years, and much of what we learned is very scientific. One of the things we’ve learned about is neurotherapy (or neurofeedback) and how that can help with these disorders.

We have five adopted kids, and one of the main things you need to be aware of if you’re going to adopt is that the child is most likely going to have some attachment issues. Reactive Attachment Disorder is a very real and very serious problem, but it is one that can be reversed and the child can become whole and well again.

What happens when a child is abused, neglected, or any number of other things, is that their brain does not fully develop in a healthy way. They get used to doing all of their thinking in the back or “Flight, Fight, or Freeze” part of their brain and the neural pathways never develop to the logical, front part of the brain. This is a very simplified explanation of what happens and being that I’m just a dad and not a doctor or scientist, I’ll leave it at that. You can learn more from a neurotherapist in your community if you’re interested. However, I can speak to what happens to the behavior of the child.

Our kids have been having neurotherapy sessions once a week for 3 months now and I can truly say the results are astounding! One of them would get very stuck: if he didn’t want to do something or thought it wasn’t fair, he would become extremely belligerent, verbally abusive, he would act out, and be totally illogical for hours or days on end. He didn’t care who he hurt or offended – he was miserable to be around! In the last 2 or 3 weeks, we have seen the most remarkable change! He is able to articulate his feelings and to handle adversity and the word “no” much better. It seems like he’s grown up 5 years in the last 2 months – we can’t believe it!

We have another kiddo that is 11 and has always had the worst handwriting. About a week ago my wife looked at one of his papers and said “Who wrote this for you?” He stated that he did it, and she couldn’t believe it! It was 50 times more legible than it had ever been in the past.

Another one of our guys is 12 and he’s always been pretty ADHD. Since we started the neurotherapy, we’ve taken him off of his medication, and he’s much calmer and doesn’t have to be in control like in the past. It’s great!

So how does this work?

The first thing they do is go in for a “Brain Map”, which involves putting a electrodes all over their heads and measuring their brain waves – basically an EEG. This is how the therapist determines which areas to work on.

Then the therapy starts – watching movies and video games! They put these little sensors on the kid’s fingers which measure heart beat, breathing, and sweat, then they make a car go in a video game if they’re able to stay calm. This helps to remap the brain somehow – don’t ask me how, but I know it works!

After that, the child picks out a movie and the therapist puts sensors on each ear, and on one spot on their head (in the area they want to “fix”). The kid watches the movie, and if the brain does something that it’s not supposed to, the movie stops for a split second. The brain then “reprograms” its action, using a different pathway that’s more appropriate and the movie starts again. This teaches the brain to use the right pathways instead of the wrong ones, and builds up that communication between the back and the front of the brain.

It seems wild, I know, but it works! If you’ve got a kid that has RAD, ADD, ADHD, or autism I would highly recommend trying out this therapy! What have you got to lose? Here’s a video I found about one child’s experience, take a look.

What else can you do?

The best book we’ve found for parenting our RAD kids is When Love Is Not Enough by Nancy Thomas. For parents of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder this is a must have.

We’ve also had much success with Total Transformation by James Lehman. Though it’s not written specifically for RAD kids, the techniques we’ve learned in it have worked very well for ours.

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Disclaimer: We are not psychologists, counselors, or therapists. We are parents of children with special challenges, and the techniques, tools, and programs we recommend on this website have worked for us on our parenting journey.

Affiliate links may be used within this post for products we recommend. They in no way affect our judgment of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

Reaching a RAD Child’s Heart

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One of the hardest things for me to learn in parenting my RAD kiddos is that it is NOT about child behavior management or child behavior problems. You see I am very, very skilled in organization and behavior management, so parenting them thus far has been successful mostly due to this. However, as is seemingly true for any parenting skills, it’s especially about the heart.

Let me explain how this looks different:

A stern or mad face is a scary face. These kids see monsters when they see anger. The trauma that most experienced as infants causes them to live in the fight/flight/freeze/freak area of their brains. So anything other than loving or neutral eyes scares them and puts them back to that place they were as infants, no matter their age.
Chaos keeps them in control. Now that sounds like my behavior management program would shine here, but it actually was me doing all the work and not them. As they say in the “attachment” world, they were using my brain. So if they become defiant or out of control, saying “not a problem” (for me, not so for them) and walking away forces them to use the good part of their brain to solve the problem. Man, this is big in removing the stress in a situation.
They, falsely, believe they are strong. When they choose to operate out of the back of their brain, they are weak. And they don’t like to be told they are being weak. This works like reverse psychology actually, and when you tell them that they are being weak for themselves (in their bad behavior), it causes them to use their brain and figure out how to become strong for themselves (doing the good behavior).

So how does this all hit their heart? As they use the front, logical part of their brain more and more, they leave the area that causes them to protect themselves and they learn how to trust and love their parents. And the best part is they learn to accept our love for them.

Mom’s note: The most important resource we’ve found is When Love Is Not Enough by Nancy Thomas. For parents of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder this is a must have. If there is only one resource you buy, make it this book!

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Disclaimer: We are not psychologists, counselors, or therapists. We are parents of children with special challenges, and the techniques, tools, and programs we recommend on this website have worked for us on our parenting journey.

Affiliate links may be used within this post for products we recommend. They in no way affect our judgment of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.