RAD Teens

One thing my husband and I have been learning on this road of therapeutic parenting is the younger you catch them the better the chance of success for them. We are glad that we have the information now but I, at least, find myself sometimes regretting that I didn’t know sooner. Some of the areas that make it harder for teens to open their hearts are:

1. There have been a lot of years of keeping it closed. Learned behavior both on their part and ours has partially hardwired their brain. Now remember the brain is an amazing thing and certainly correct itself with the right neurotherapy, it just still will have those pathways that are permanent.
2. We are also battling “teenager” behavior. One in and of itself, RAD or teenage behavior, can send the most level headed, loving parent off the cliff. But put the two together and it can be a powder keg. We definitely have to be on our “A” game to know which area we are dealing in. We do struggle some as our oldest was an easy, fun to be around teen. So we also were learning what teen behavior looked like too.
3. The choice. This comes into play as while they are really little kids inside, the outside world and some pathology tells them they can do it themselves. The problem is that they aren’t yet capable to make these independent choices but we can’t tell them that because they are a TEEN, who knows everything!

Is it hopeless? No of course not! It just might not happen until much later down the road, when their brain is fully developed and they start understanding that the hard life lessons they are experiencing are coming out of THEIR choices.

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.

About the author: By Julie Hellstrom

Julie is an awesome parent (along with her husband Matt) to five adopted kiddos and the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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