Reactive attachment disorder

[jeliphish]

Does anyone have experience with this? I won't discuss specifics in order to protect my clients but I need some ideas to help.

[sbgrace]

You might check on the adoption forum too (as well as here).

You might contact Howard Glasser, who created the Nurtured Heart Approach, and see if he has any experience using his approach with RAD kids. I know he deals with challenging kids including ODD and some serious issues (fire starting the like) so it's possible his approach is successful in this area too.

I've got a challenging kid, though not RAD at all, and this is the closest I've ever come to helping him in many areas--including developing empathy and care. So it would be worth checking into I think.
http://www.energyparenting.com/ I don't know if these people might be able to give you contact information or contact him directly.

[Mirzam]

I would recommend contacting Heather T Forbes of Beyond Consequences. She works with RAD kids. She is also the mother of two adopted children from Russia who had RAD.

[BellinghamCrunchie]

I liked Nancy Thomas' stuff; here is her website http://www.attachment.org/

[lauren]

See Daniel Hughes, Ph.D's work.

Also the Trauma Center in Boston and the ARC model of treatment. Many in the field see RAD as appropriately renamed "developmental trauma" due to the factors that contribute that are consistent with severe traumatization.

[MommyKelly]

I 2nd Nancy Thomas.

There is also a young girl with a blog that writes about living with RAD, and how she feels. I will try to find the link.

[kathteach]

I think I know the blog you're talking about--it's called Journey to Becoming a Normal Little Kid

http://lifewithoutrad.blogspot.com/

[Ranjeet]

Originally Posted by jeliphish

Does anyone have experience with this? I won't discuss specifics in order to protect my clients but I need some ideas to help.

My cousin is suffering from RAD.RAD is hard, RAD is tiring, RAD is something that makes us get on our knees and give it all over to God. I was unaware of RAD until my aunt adopted child.There are various websites of Consultancy and forums where people share their view about RAD.If you want to know moe about RAD, you can visit this site.It has some useful information.

reactive attachment disorder

[lauren]

Be cautious with N. Thomas. She has not had professional training and makes recommendations as though she has. People often misinterpret her ideas and go in a direction that can be harmful to a child.

[AllyRae]

My daughter (adopted from a Vietnamese orphanage) has RAD. She's been in therapy for 2 years for it and has made huge progress over the past couple months. What can I help you with?

[heatherdeg]

Also check fosterparents.com message boards. It's more COMMON in foster/adoptive kids, but it CAN happen in bio children. Especially if those children had other issues in early childhood (first 3 years). If they had extensive health issues that interrupted their normal life in a significant way or developmental issues that kept them from attaching, they can also have varying degrees of attachment issues. There is ONE paragraph devoted to this in the Beyond Consequences book and it was such a relief to see it SOMEwhere because we dealt with this with our bioson. He wasn't full-blown RAD, but his behavior was severe and he DEFINITELY had attachment issues. But despite having been nursed, he had no idea who me or dh was or that we were even in the room until he was nearly 2yo. So it CAN happen.

The theories on dealing with it vary significantly.