Blowing Up the Bridge

"Blowing Up the Bridge:
This can be a helpful image for parents to remember to protect themselves from being set up for repeated  disappointment and frustration.

It works like this. Think of yourselves and your AD child  on opposite banks of a river with the goal being to bridge the river.

While the idea of “meeting halfway” seems the obvious plan, this can be a trap/mistake with many AD children. 

Why?
Your child has some success maybe a few good days at school or some unusually good behavior at home.

As parents, your hopes begin to rise, and you start walking out on the bridge to meet and congratulate your child. After you have gotten out on the bridge, your child “blows it up” with some new misbehavior that wipes out the previous spark of success.

Everyone winds up “in the river”.

You are feeling disappointed / frustrated / angry / betrayed.

Your AD child is feeling empowered: “Ha! I got them again.”

In order to avoid handing your child the power to disappoint you, you should stay on your side of the river and communicate your expectation that your child build the bridge all the way across with some reliable, real change.

You offer heartfelt congratulations only when your child steps off the bridge onto your side of the river.

It’s a matter of disciplined patience and timing on the parents’ part.

Your therapist can guide you in deciding when the child has accomplished sufficient change to be acknowledged"

The above passage is from an article

found in entirety at 

http://q87.com/rad/rad.synopsis.pdf

Author is not identified.  

I would LOVE to give credit where credit is due!!!  

(formatting, font size, boldness etc is mine)

*******************************************************************************

We have LIVED this over and over again.  We have learned through EXPERIENCE that we need to have compliance or we ALL will be devastated when "mid-bridge" our RADs bring out the "explosives."

We are not safe on the bridge with our RADkids.

"The Bridge" is a journey our kids need to make on their own... 

for the sake of their own mental health.  

Our "failure" as loving parents to "meet our kids halfway"
when correcting their RAD behaviors

has been perceived by some 

(ignorant of the complexities of RAD) 

to be "evidence" of

poor parenting at best 

and

"abuse" at absolute worst. 

Remarkably helpful... Origin unkown...

The earliest reference I see to this is a blog talking about the "blowing up the bridge" concept  back in 2007.  The blog's author had read "a story" about blowing up the bridge... somewhere... she wasn't sure... she thought perhaps the maryland site, but I couldn't find any reference to it.  Here's the whole article I've found  at: 
http://q87.com/rad/rad.synopsis.pdf  
I don't see an author to give credit to... but I would love to.

I don't want the article to be "lost"  it contains such awesome information. 

I wanted to talk specifically about the "blowing up the bridge" portion... I'll  copy and paste the bridge portion in my next post.

I have cut and pasted the article in entirety is below.  I'm going to shrink it really tiny so it will be preserved if the site it's currently on ever disappears.... (I don't know how to get it to format better here, sorry.  The http://q87.com/rad/rad.synopsis.pdf link CURRENTLY has the document formatted nicely in PDF form. It does not appear to be the site of origin. 

IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE THIS ORIGINATED, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!!!!


Attachment Issues / Reactive Attachment Disorder (AD / RAD)
You have to understand the problem, then understand what doesn’t work, then what does work, before you can begin
to understand how you can help the child and the parents.
What is attachment and bonding – what does this matter?
Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) happens when a child is not properly nurtured in the first few months and years
of life. The child, left to cry in hunger, pain or need for cuddling, learns that adults will not help him or her - and
thusly adults are hurtful and cannot be trusted. The RAD child therefore develops habits of dealing with the world in a
way she believes will keep her safe. He manipulates in order to control a world he literally thinks will kill him if he
does not control it. Without help, RAD kids never develop the attachments to another human being which teach them
to trust, accept discipline, develop cause and effect thinking, self-control and responsibility for their own actions.
They see no relation between their actions and what happens as a result because they never connected with or relied
upon another human being in trust their entire lives. They attempt to become their own parent with predictable
results.
These children learn quickly that the world is unsafe, they are worthless, have no value, and adults cannot be relied
upon to meet their needs. They function under intense fear. This belief paradigm forms a protective shell around the
children that helps them survive in a hostile world. This shell prevents them from accepting parental kindness and
direction. In fact, children with RAD feel most comfortable when they can recreate and control the chaos from their
pasts.
They are in a constant battle for control of their environment and seek that control however they can, even in totally
meaningless situations. If they are in control they feel safe. If they are loved and protected by an adult they are
convinced they are going to die because they never learned to trust adults, adult judgment or to develop any of what
you know as normal feelings of acceptance, safety and warmth.
Trust is the ultimate torture for these kids. No one is to be trusted. Everyone has a hidden agenda. Trusting
someone is like giving away all of the power. And, in a sense, it is. It gives them power and control to NOT trust
someone, and that is the one thing that they are fighting so hard to keep.
Submission to them is like a death sentence. The only control they feel they have is to submit in words, but do what
they choose to do. Submission is the same as being swallowed up. They may feel a fear of losing themselves if they
are vulnerable with/to someone else.
But aren’t these normal childhood behaviors?: The difference is the reason for their misbehaviors. RAD children
"forget" things over and over, and misbehave in an attempt to control their world, engage you, and generally make
you miserable. Their behaviors are more intense, more pervasive, and done for different reasons.
Hypervigilance is commonly seen in AD children. Hypervigilance is the directing of a significant proportion of energy,
attention, and thinking towards monitoring the external environment. Being hypervigilant, AD children tend to scan
situations very quickly for cues and then make interpretations of entire situations based on only one or two details.
This can lead to responses that are way off base. Because of the energy it consumes, hypervigilance limits an AD
child’s awareness of what is happening inside herself and interferes with the ability to think reflectively, problem
solve, or respond appropriately to external demands. Hypervigilance can be broken down into two kinds: threat
hypervigilance and resource hypervigilance. AD children who are threat hypervigilant feel a constant sense of lurking
danger and are always scanning situations for possible sources of danger. Those who are resource hypervigilant feel a
terrifying sense of inner emptiness, almost as if they don’t really exist. As a result, they are always searching out their
environments for external resources to “validate” or “prop up” their sense of existing. This validation is obtained by
getting others to interact with, or attend to, them in some way. In the absence of such external support, these
children begin to feel like they are disappearing, almost as if they were turning into ghosts. This causes their anxiety
to rapidly mount. In situations in which they are not sure how to respond, resource hypervigilant children will scan the
environment for clues as to how to assemble their response.
AD children have tremendous difficulty tolerating emotional experience of any kind. It is their own emotions that they
experience as potentially deadly though this thought usually lies beyond everyday awareness. Thus, their "24-7"
struggle for survival, while outwardly framed as being against the world, is truly against their own emotional
experience. Different emotions are seen as the deadliest for different children; for some it is shame; for others it is
sadness; for others it is rage; and for others still, it is anxiety. Often, AD children cannot distinguish one feeling state
from another, and different emotions can easily bleed one into the other. Their emotional regulatory skills are
primitive at best; and hence, behavior unravels quickly in the presence of feelings. AD children in general have very
high levels of anxiety, and this anxiety is very easily aroused. Its arousal will activate a given youngster’s control
mechanisms, and behavior will likely deteriorate.
Not knowing what to do is a potent source of anxiety for AD children and triggers familiar controlling behaviors as a
way of escaping the sense of not knowing what to do. It is for this reason that happiness and other positive
experiences can be so problematic for AD children. Lacking experience with feeling positive, AD children resort to
misbehavior, not so much to ruin the happiness per se, but to escape the anxiety of not knowing what to do. New
situations are also threatening because the child lacks a blueprint for how to behave.
Helplessness and sadness are, for AD children, equated with worthlessness. This is one more reason they go to such
lengths to avoid these experiences. Anything they acknowledge sadness or helplessness about becomes “evidence” of
their worthlessness that could be used against them.
When emotionally stimulated, AD children’s thinking can deteriorate very rapidly. They often drop to the level of the
concrete thinking of a toddler and truly cannot understand more complex language that they normally could
understand. Their thinking can get disorganized enough that they border on, or have, miniature psychotic breaks in
order to blot out their feelings. When their emotional reaction passes however, they can recollect themselves in the
literal blink of an eye. AD children often see the source of their emotional arousal as an enemy who was trying to
overwhelm them on purpose. This can result in an aggressive counterattack.
To protect themselves from their own threatening feelings, AD children learn to dissociate or disconnect themselves
from their own experience in the present moment. They seem able to almost slide their psyches up and down the
developmental scale as circumstances warrant. AD children can appear to shut down parts of their brain in ways the
average person cannot comprehend. This is denial in its most fundamental, absolute form- experience itself is erased
from consciousness as though it never happened {this primitive denial is beyond the reach of conventional forms of
treatment and a major reason why such treatment fails with AD children}. AD children learn how to move and hold
their bodies so as not to trigger physiologically stored emotions and memories. Threatening questions, as well as any
possible answer that might have immediately arisen can be obliterated right out of awareness. Overall, this
dissociative response is made up of many different tactics including: increased distractibility and fidgeting {can look
like ADHD}; becoming confused; circular answers; vague or contradictory language; inaudible or unintelligible
speech; loss of short-term memory; shutting down one or more of their sensory processing systems so they literally
don’t experience their own sensory input {can look like learning disabilities except that processing can improve
dramatically as attachment develops}; immature and/or faint tone of voice; loss of eye contact; eyes becoming
dreamy, glassy, empty, steely/piercing, or blank; body becoming markedly more limp or rigid; and bodily
preoccupations which serve to shut out the external world {picking at skin, scabs, bug bites; fingernail chewing,
itching and scratching, hair twirling, aches and pains, repetitive movements, playing with fingers}.
Outwardly, AD children present themselves as "victims of life" who are responsible for nothing. Inwardly, these
children feel responsible for everything that has happened to them; and this generates overwhelming shame. Avoiding
this shame is one reason AD children deny all personal responsibility. Closely connected to this shame is a deeply felt
{though usually out of awareness} self-hatred. This self-hatred presents a formidable obstacle to accepting love or
caring from anyone when it is offered. The offering of love triggers a strong sense of not deserving it, and so it must
be rejected along with the person offering it. In fact, the adult offering love may be looked at as rather dumb for
offering love to such an awful child. More likely, the AD child, believing that he doesn’t deserve anything of value from
another, will perceive the love being offered as something hurtful being trickily packaged by the adult. In either case,
the love and the adult are rejected; and the AD child remains caught in the bind of continuing to protest about what
he is not getting, but being unable to accept it when it arrives.
AD children generally lack integrative thinking. They view life as random. Everything just happens. They have
difficulty seeing connections between things, internally or externally. They also do not connect things across time.
Hence they often do not grasp things like cause-effect, actions-results, the impact of their behavior on others,
sequential events, etc. AD children have enormous trouble managing complexity. When faced with complex situations,
they become anxious and deteriorate both behaviorally and cognitively. Their thinking can drop to the concrete
thinking of a preschool child (sliding down the scale). AD children do not even see their own behavior as stemming
from choices they have made. Their behavior is like everything else: events that just happen to them. As a result, the
concept of personal responsibility seems like literal nonsense to AD children.
In terms of time, AD children generally live in the "eternal now". They don’t perceive time as being continuous, with
each moment passing into the next. Instead, each moment stands alone, disconnected from all others. This is the
time sense of the fight / flight / freeze crisis reaction workings of the oldest, most primitive parts of the brain where
much of the thinking of AD children goes on. Connections between past and present don’t get made, and thus there is
no learning from experience. Instead, the past gets imported directly into the present with no recognition that this is
happening. As a result, the present is mistaken for the past, over and over and over. As for the future, it simply
doesn’t exist.
In terms of conscience / values, AD children typically possess little to none. They have not had the building block
experiences with early caretakers out of which conscience grows. In terms of present priorities, conscience is of little
value in the pursuit of survival.
Behavior can vary dramatically across situations depending upon the emotional significance of the people involved and
the situational expectations for relating emotionally. Generally as the emotional importance of others present, or the
expectations for relationship increase, the AD child's behavior deteriorates. This is why their behavior is usually worst
at home with their families.
AD children view learning as having minimal value except as it enhances their survival skills. Consequently, they have
a striking lack of curiosity about exploring the world. The first thing they are apt to do with any new information is to
try to figure out if it can be used to generate any new self-protective control strategies.
POWER
AD children believe that they have power beyond anybody else's. They need to believe this in order to assure
themselves that they can maintain the “24-7” control that they believe their survival requires. Hence, they are prone
to engage in misbehavior or power struggles. Like a toddler, AD children derive power simply out of saying "No." In
addition, AD children believe they have the power to define reality itself. It is this belief that allows them to deny a
misdeed that an adult caught them in the middle of performing. In the AD child's mind, his denial "rewrites history". If
he says that it didn't happen, then it didn't. The adult is essentially told that he didn't see what he saw because it
never happened.
Information is power and AD children know this very well. They will go to great lengths to control the flow of
information about them in order to maintain their power to manipulate others' image of them. AD children give out
very little real information about themselves, for they view that as giving away their power to others. Telling the
truth, therefore, is to be avoided as a matter of policy. Much of their fabricating is intended to keep adults confused
about what's real and what isn't. When asked questions, AD children often stall by “playing dumb” or “forgetting”,
hoping that the adult will get impatient and give a prompt or clue around which the child can fashion an answer that
will please the adult while giving away no information.
When AD children escape consequences and / or responsibility, they usually see this as "proof" of how powerful they
are. When they are disciplined or given consequences they can't escape, they interpret this as a personal failure {"I
wasn't powerful enough or clever enough to get myself out of that situation}. This in turn can trigger a feeling of
helplessness and the subsequent efforts at control this brings.
INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS / AUTHORITY FIGURES
AD children harbor a pervasive distrust of others. The more an adult seeks to earn an AD child's trust, the more
dangerous that adult is likely to appear because efforts to earn trust are usually seen as elaborate "tricks" hiding an
intent to hurt the child.
Love is defined as weakness and sometimes used against those who offer it. Sympathy or empathy is understood by
AD children as entitling them to receive whatever they want from the sympathetic person. Then, if what they want is
not offered, the child takes that as proof of adults' dishonesty and as a legitimate basis for revenge. Sympathy or
empathy may also be seen as “pity”, and in this case, an angry counter-response is likely.
Other people are often seen as essentially interchangeable and are evaluated on the basis of, "What have you done
for me lately?". Past history carries little or no weight (time perception). Thus, an AD child’s attitude towards anyone
else can change minute-to-minute depending on what you most recently have or haven’t done for her.
Adults, as a rule, are viewed as unreliable, unintelligent, and rejecting, if not outright abusive. Adults who are giving
to an AD child are generally thought of simply as resources to be exploited. Authority figures are seen as especially
threatening should they gain any measure of control over the child. AD children have no faith in anyone's control but
their own. This leads them to avoid asking for help when they truly need it because that creates a dangerous context
of dependence.
Discipline is viewed as arbitrary and intended to humiliate the AD child, and so it only provides further proof that
adults cannot be trusted. Discipline is also seen as a failure on the child's part to have effectively manipulated his way
out of the situation, and thus it pricks the shame of the AD child. This potential of adult authority figures to activate
the AD child's shame is part of what makes them seem so threatening.
AD children are likely to assume that if they have not been directly prohibited from engaging in any given behavior
beforehand, no matter how outlandish, then it is alright. If consequences are subsequently imposed, the AD child will
see this as a betrayal and protest that he was set up by the adult. Similarly, AD children are liable to interpret adults
who simply disagree with them as literally lying to them. In both instances, they will see the “adult crimes” as giving
them the right to retaliate.
For AD children who need external validation of their sense of existing, this validation is often obtained through
repetitive nuisance behaviors such as chattering on, asking numerous questions, interrupting, minor behavioral
infractions, minor property damage, claiming to forget to get others to tell them things repeatedly, stealing of objects
of little value, etc. The purpose of all these nuisance behaviors is to keep others engaged.
AD children often display indiscriminate affection towards strangers, and this serves several purposes. It is a tool of
“personal image management” to get others to see the child as charming, polite, etc. This created image can be used
to foster the illusion that the parents are the source of the problems at home since such a “charming child” could not
possibly be at fault. Indiscriminate affection is also used as a way to procure attention and gratification from others
who “don’t know any better”. It is also one more way for the AD child not to be real- just another disguise pulled from
the closet.
AD children commonly inquire of authority figures what will happen if a given rule is broken. The purpose here is to
gather information to be used to maneuver around that adult in the future. More immediately, the child may use the
answer given to conduct a little “cost-benefit analysis” to decide if the contemplated misbehavior is worth the price.
This is one reason why being somewhat vague about the range of possible consequences is useful- it blocks this costbenefit
analysis.
During what is termed the honeymoon period in a new situation, AD children generally seek to gather information
about parents’ and other adults’ weaknesses / vulnerabilities. This information is used subsequently in efforts to wield
influence. In general, AD children are skilled at doing this because their years of hypervigilance have made them keen
observers of adult behavior and vulnerabilities.
AD children by and large use their behavior to manage interpersonal closeness/distance. Oppositional, aggressive,
and extreme bizarre behaviors are reliably resorted to when the AD child feels a need to generate increased
interpersonal distance to feel safely in control.
Peer social skills are mostly, to entirely, lacking in AD children. Friendships, if made at all, usually last only for a brief
time. AD children too often seek to dominate peers or set them up to get in trouble with no understanding of the likely
future consequences for the friendship. Then when peers later reject, tease, or avoid the AD child, she does not
understand why and feels victimized.
IMPACT ON THE FAMILY
The parent in the primary caretaking role generally receives the brunt of the child's acting out as she is usually seen
as the symbol for all of the ways adults have failed the AD child previously. Behavior is typically better when the other
parent is home. This can create parental conflict, wherein the parents see each other as either minimizing problems or
overreacting. The child will nourish this split and take full advantage of it to exercise control over the parents.
AD children are quite capable of blending their internal images of adoptive/step parents and birth parents without any
recognition that they are doing so. It is almost as if they look at adoptive/step mother and see birth mother. In
interacting with his adoptive mother, the AD child applies beliefs, feelings, and behaviors that developed with his birth
mother, while thinking that he is interacting with his adoptive/step mother in present time. It is important that
parents and child become aware that this mixing up of mothers is going on inside the child and that the maternal
images get separated out, identifying birth mother with then and adoptive/step mother with now.
Because AD children are so skilled at charming others, and because the parents are struggling so hard, extended
family and friends often offer little support and may even blame the parents for the child's extreme behavioral
problems at home. Worse still, professionals all too often make this same mistake.
AD children have a knack for ruining planned, pleasurable, family activities. Partly because they don’t know how to
engage in such activities, partly because they fear being overlooked if everyone else is enjoying themselves, and
partly because they are terrified of handing their parents the power to give them happiness.
If there are siblings, eventually they become jealous and angry about the amount of family resources in terms of
time, attention, energy, and money that the attachment disordered sibling is using up.
Success or failure in adult love relationships corresponds to the experiences people had as infants and young children.
This correlation between what happened so long ago and what continues to happen is no longer mere speculation but
observable, verifiable fact. Breakthrough advances in brain science and imaging technology in the past decade and a
half leaves no question about the impact of this first love relationship: it is the basis for survival and serves as the
cornerstone for mental, physical, emotional, and intellectual development. The future of the brain, its development
and structure, are determined by the first love relationship, known as the attachment bond.
What doesn’t work with these kids?
• Unconditional Love: in many cases, families have the mistaken belief that if they simply bring their child home
and love her very much, she will heal and attach to them. When this does not work, parents often feel they
have failed. Children with AD need love in order to heal, but love by itself, cannot and will not heal them.
• Physical punishment (spanking, slapping, etc) is not only not helpful, it is destructive, for it reinforces the AD
child's view of adults as abusive. This will, in turn, fuel the child's distrust.
• Depending on the severity of a child’s attachment problems, traditional behavior modification techniques (the
use of rewards and punishments) may be useless. Time-outs don’t work with RAD children. Being reasonable
and explaining why things should or shouldn't be done, doesn't work, because children with RAD aren't
reasonable. They are doing the behavior intentionally, often in an effort to engage you, thus controlling their
world. In order for such techniques to work, the child must understand cause and effect and be motivated by
gaining the rewards or avoiding the punishments or both. Children with AD generally lack cause and effect
thinking and their desire to remain in control of caregivers often overrides any concern for rewards or
punishment. When an AD child does things “his way”, he feels gratified at having subverted the adults’
authority. This is usually a more powerful payoff than any reward.
• Predictable responses to behavior by parents: Children with significant attachment weaknesses are gratified
by their ability to manipulate their parents. They put learned information to use in the service of further
manipulation. That these children have a secure base with their parents regarding the basics of being fed,
kept safe, and cared for. However, it is often not in the AD child’s best interest to have full information about
what will happen next in any given situation as this information is likely to be misused.
• Attempting to persuade the AD child to change his mind by presenting “logical, reasonable, or practical”
information”.
• Traditional problem solving questions such as: What happened? What was your part in it? What could you
have done differently? AD children will learn to spin off the "desired answers", but they will be meaningless
answers. The time spent on this exercise will be wasted time.
• Vague praise, such as “you are handling things well today” is generally seen by the AD child as a manipulative
control strategy on the adult’s part. In addition, overt praise for expected basic behavior such as sitting in
one’s desk is likely to provoke an oppositional switch into the undesired behavior.
• Conventional behavior management plans / level systems: Such plans are based on consistency, and this
consistency makes these plans easy targets for the strategic thinking of an AD child. AD children will see a
behavior management plan, not as a way to change behavior, but as simply one more thing to learn "how to
work" for their own purposes. Their movements up and down the levels has all to do with their own purpose at
any given moment and little or nothing to do with success / failure or earning adult approval. AD children may
even use behavior management systems as bait to draw the adults into useless discussions about how to
sustain progress. The end result can be that it is the teacher's behavior, rather than the child's, that ends up
getting "managed".
• Consistent zero tolerance stances run a high risk of dragging the teacher into a cycle of escalating
misbehavior followed by increasingly severe consequences. Zero tolerance also does not allow the teacher
sufficient creative flexibility to approach the AD child in a useful way that the AD child could not predict.
• Believing the child’s tales about horrendous treatment at home by parents and offering support and sympathy
in an effort to “compensate”. In the case of an AD child, this is probably the worst possible thing an
educational professional could do.
• Challenging the AD child's perspective with "objective evidence" in order to persuade her that her thinking is
somehow incorrect. This approach assumes that the teacher and child share a common view of "reality"- not
true. The teacher's view will make little or no sense to the AD child. In fact, the AD child is apt to see this
approach as a manipulative attempt on the teacher's part to set the child up in some way.
• Setting the parents up to be the “heavies” by leaving it to parents and home to impose consequences for
school infractions or work not done.
• Teachers taking AD children's behavior or statements personally. This usually takes some practice as AD
children are skilled at discovering adults' tender spots and going after them.
• Reacting emotionally to AD children's behavior. This only reinforces the AD child's sense of being in control of
the adult's emotions (a goal they generally pursue). This really takes some practice as AD children's behavior
can be relentless, day in-day out, as any parent can testify.
• Looking for THE answer. There is no “The Answer”. “The answer” leads to doing the same thing the same way
every time. An AD child will have a field day with such an approach.
What does work?
• For the child to acknowledge their anger, fear and desire to control others.
• For the child to work on developing assertiveness skills such as using “I” rather than “you” to state feelings or
problems.
• Be PROACTIVE, not REACTIVE. To create and maintain a healing environment you must be proactive: you set
the emotional tone, create the emotional climate, take the initiative, and maintain the rules. When you are
reactive, you are allowing your child to set the emotional tone, placing him/her in a position of control. Being
proactive involves remaining calm, not taking your child's behavior personally, and dealing with issues and
problems as soon as they occur – on the front-end – not waiting until the situation escalates out of control.
AD children experience parents' frustration, anger, and retaliation with threats/recriminations as proof that
they are effectively controlling their parents' emotions. This reinforces the behavior instead by inflating their
grandiose sense of power.
• It is not the child's job to attach to his or her parents but rather the parents' job to prove to the child that
they are worth attaching to. How can parents of an older child prove they are worth attaching to? There is no
better answer than shared experience, including shared humor and shared laughter. Shared laughter
between parent and child is an incredibly effective way to cement a new parent/child relationship and to speed
along the attachment of that relationship.
• Make sure that you can and will follow through with whatever you say you will do.... They will call your bluff.
• It takes two people to play the passive-aggressive game of getting you mad, so if you bow out, they either
have to find someone else to participate, or it's over.
• They will cloud issues with petty arguments. Do not let them get you off the subject. Stay focused and
restate your point.
• Stay in the here and now. Focus on the issues at hand. Don't bring up past issues or speculate about the
future. And, don't let them steer you away either.
• Make reasonable agreements that are appropriate, reliable, verifiable and enforceable.
• Be prepared for consequences. Always remain aware of the covert-aggressor's determination to be the victor.
It is important to be prepared for this, and to take appropriate action. Avoid making threats. Be clear with
the consequences, and just take action.
• When you see/feel a "game" coming on.... walk away, stop the conversation, do whatever it takes not to
become involved in the game. Remember that their goal is to manipulate and control you and the situation.
• In all areas of your life let them know unequivocally that you will not play their games any longer.
• Overcoming attachment disorder is a process which takes time, and requires the commitment of the primary
caregiver as the change agent. The mother must be empowered with techniques to gain the trust of the child.
Attachment is based on trust, and trust develops only after repeated testing. The child will not develop trust of
an adult they can control and manipulate, so the adult must be strong enough to take charge in a loving way.
Normal attachment takes a couple of years, during which children cycle through mutually positive interactions.
The child learns to love, and believes that he or she is loved. The child learns to trust that his/ her needs will
be met in a consistent and nurturing manner and that he/ she “belongs” to the family – and the family
“belongs” to him/ her. It can take many years for a child with attachment disorder to learn to trust, and some
never do. If attachment problems are recognized, they can be treated with appropriate therapy and parenting
techniques, but it is a long, difficult journey. Attachment Disorder cannot be cured by waiting. Waiting
for a child to outgrow the behaviors associated with Attachment Disorder does not work. The condition, left
uncontrolled can destroy a child and family. The behaviors can become more destructive as the child gets
bigger and can do more damage.
• Structure choices so that you remain in control ("do you want to wear your coat or carry it to the
playground?", "you may complete that paper sitting or standing", "you may complete that assignment during
this period or during recess"). Remember to keep the anger and frustration the child is seeking out of your
voice. Try to "smile all the way to your eyes" if you can, otherwise simply stay as neutral as you can.
Structure and control without threat.
• Establish EYE CONTACT with this child, and insist upon it as often as the opportunity presents itself. Do not be
deceived by the child's focusing on your forehead or chin. RAD kids do not like eye contact and will do just
about anything to avoid it unless they are lying or trying to manipulate you, at which point you will be hard
put to avoid a staring contest. Be firm, be consistent, be specific.
• Try to remember to ACKNOWLEDGE GOOD DECISIONS AND GOOD BEHAVIOR ("I see you made a good choice
and finished your homework last night", "I see you decided to sit out the game rather than get into a fight
with Sally, that's a good choice".)
• Consequence poor decisions and bad behavior. – Poor decisions and choices like incomplete homework, wrong
weight jacket for the weather, also need to be acknowledged ("I see you chose to have incomplete work from
this activity period. You may finish it at recess while the other children who chose to finish their work go
outside and play. Better luck next time.") Nothing mean or angry or spiteful – it's just the facts. Remember
they have difficulty with cause and effect thinking and have to be taught consequences. Normal reward
systems like treats and stickers simply do not work with these children – you will continue to see Jekyll and
Hyde from day-to-day with absolutely no correlation to standard reward systems. Standard behavior
modification techniques do not work with this child – she doesn't think the way nurtured children think. Her
entire being is centered on being in control so she can be safe. If anyone else is in control she is anxious and
certain she is going to die – no kidding, it's that serious.
• Remain calm and in control of yourself. No matter what she does today. If she manages to upset you, she is
in control, not you. Remove yourself or the child from the situation until you are able to cope.
• Bonding and attachment is the two-way feeling of acceptance and reciprocal give and take that occurs
between two people who care about each other. Anything you can do that involves eye contact, motion,
smiles, skin to skin contact, and music will help form and cement that bond.
• Parenting children with attachment problems is challenging and provocative. It requires maturity to remain
calm and loving in the face of repeated assaults, firmness to set limits, and the flexibility to meet the child's
unique needs.
• You did not create the problems. You are responsible for creating a home with love, understanding, sensitivity,
caring, security, and empathy.
• Children with attachment problems are treated in a manner that expects them to be responsible, respectful,
resourceful, and reciprocal. Children are responsible for their conduct. They are expected to be respectful to
their parents, other adults, and siblings. They learn to be resourceful by developing their inner strengths to
effectively solve problems and cope with life's challenges. Children are taught to engage in "give & take"
instead of using controlling and manipulative behaviors.
• Use eye contact and touch to encourage your child to listen and hear you; Make positive rather than negative
statements. For example, instead of, "you can't watch TV until your room is clean," say, "Feel free to watch
some TV after you've cleaned your room."; Since emotions reinforce behavior, remain calm and neutral in
response to a child's negative behavior and become emotionally animated in response to positive behaviors.
• Use consequences rather than punishments. The goal is to teach your child a lesson that results in better
choices and positive behaviors, not to punish, inflict pain, or seek revenge. - Naturally occurring consequences
are best. For example, if the child does not set the table as expected, the child cannot eat with the family.;
Impose consequences if naturally occurring consequences are not available. These consequences must be
enforceable. For example, sending the child out of the room if the child is being disruptive by saying, "feel free
to join us when you can let others talk."; Consequences do not have to be immediately presented. You can
take time to think about it and then get back to your child.
• Encourage participation in family life. An important way to enhance a child's involvement in the family is by
giving chores. Chores help teach life skills by enabling the child to assume responsibility and to function
independently. Chores also help develop self-esteem and a sense of competence and achievement. -
Encourage your child to do chores quickly, right the first time, the way you like.; Avoid control battles when
your child refuses to comply. Have a consequence ready.; Commands and directives from you will lead to
control battles or power struggles with oppositional children. Providing the child with choices is more
constructive and productive. Choices encourage the child to think, to solve problems, and to learn from
mistakes. Choices can lead to the internalization of conflict rather than allowing the child to externalize
conflicts – (!) It is vital that all choices be acceptable.
• Parent creatively. You have to try to be one step ahead of your child and anticipate. Encourage the
development of reciprocity in the relationship. -- Help develop reciprocity by "repayment." If your child gives
you a hard time, have them repay you. For example, "you owe me 15 minutes of work for annoying me when
I was just on the phone.; Go on strike. When your child refuses to be compliant or responsible, you can stop
optional "services." For example, rides to friends homes, trips to he store, movie rentals can be stopped,
"Sorry, sweetie, I'm not going to get you that movie. But ask again when you decide to be more responsible
and I'll be glad to get it for you."; Use the one-minute reprimand. When your child engages in negative
behavior, confront him or her directly. Look him or her in the eye and firmly but gently touch the child's arm
or shoulder. Be direct and explicit about what you are not happy, or angry, or frustrated about. This is your
opportunity to model the appropriate expression of anger. It also is an opportunity for your child to be directly
confronted with the consequences of his or her behavior on others. Keep the confrontation brief. When you
are done, offer support, love, and warmth by reaching out to hug your child.
• “Why are you so strict with your child????” – RAD behavior is often an effort to feel safe. But in a perverse
way, what they're trying to do is prove that no one is strong enough to be in control of them. They make
efforts over and over to prove that you can't control them, which then reinforces their fear that no one is
strong enough to keep them safe. At the same time, they can be very manipulative, in extremely subtle ways.
Three reasons for being strict: 1) To reinforce to your child that you are strong enough to be in control (of
their behaviors, manipulations) and be their parent. 2) Because their cause and effect "mechanism" needs
work, you are able to repeatedly re-enforce that wrong choices result in consequences. 3) Behaviors can
escalate very quickly, so this doesn’t let anything slip past.
• When you understand your child's behavior as symptoms of compromised attachment, your goal is to find a
way to connect with, not control, your child.
• Teenagers are renowned for not communicating directly. Attachment Communication Training (ACT) is a way
to learn effective communication skills, including honest sharing and empathic listening. There are basic
ground rules: no blaming, criticizing, defensiveness, or stonewalling; take turns, no interrupting; agree to
disagree, each person can have their own viewpoint; no running away. There are four steps. (1) Share: One
person speaks while the other listens; tell about your own feelings and thoughts; be honest and brief; be
aware of your tone of voice and body language. (2) Listen: To really listen, you must have empathy (think
how the other person feels), be non-judgemental (don't judge, try to understand), be aware of yourself (is
your body language telling the sharer that you are safe or threatening?). (3) Re-state: Tell the sharer what
you heard. "I hear you saying..."; This prevents misinterpretation -- message sent, message received. (4)
Feedback: The sharer tells the listener how he or she did; "Thank you, you heard me" or "No, I didn't say
what you heard; let me try again." Make sure there are plenty of opportunities for each person to share and
listen. With practice, ACT leads to safe and constructive confiding. You and your teenager will be practicing
effective communication skills which are a part of healthy attachment.
• Put on a "tour guide Barbie" smile when your child is trying to push your buttons.
• Blowing Up the Bridge: This can be a helpful image for parents to remember to protect themselves from being
set up for repeated disappointment and frustration. It works like this. Think of yourselves and your AD child
on opposite banks of a river with the goal being to bridge the river. While the idea of “meeting halfway” seems
the obvious plan, this can be a trap/mistake with many AD children. Why? Your child has some successmaybe
a few good days at school or some unusually good behavior at home. As parents, your hopes begin to
rise, and you start walking out on the bridge to meet and congratulate your child. After you have gotten out
on the bridge, your child “blows it up” with some new misbehavior that wipes out the previous spark of
success. Everyone winds up “in the river”. You are feeling disappointed / frustrated / angry / betrayed. Your
AD child is feeling empowered: “Ha! I got them again.”
In order to avoid handing your child the power to disappoint you, you should stay on your side of the river and
communicate your expectation that your child build the bridge all the way across with some reliable, real
change. You offer heartfelt congratulations only when your child steps off the bridge onto your side of the
river. It’s a matter of disciplined patience and timing on the parents’ part. Your therapist can guide you in
deciding when the child has accomplished sufficient change to be acknowledged.
• Behavioral rules need to be specific, clear, and phrased in behavioral language that states what the child
needs to do vs. not-do or stop doing. The rules need to be stated proactively. Negatively stated rules can
actually increase the future chances that the undesirable behavior will reoccur. The rules need to be
communicated with the definite expectation that they WILL BE learned and followed. This is best conveyed
with a matter-of-fact tone of voice that is free of any emotional edge. Example: You will go to your room right
after dinner and do your homework.
• Thank the child in advance for his cooperation. This can improve compliance. The interaction should be broken
off right after the parent expresses gratitude for expected compliance.
• After an AD child reluctantly makes a cooperative choice, appreciation is often a better parental response than
praise. Appreciation puts parent and child on the same level for that interaction. Praise, on the other hand,
can suggest that the one offering praise (parent) is the more powerful, and therefore able to pass judgment
on the less powerful one (child). Praise is, after all, every bit as much judgment as is criticism. Praise can run
the risk of the child feeling the parent is rubbing her face in "the parent having won". This can generate anger,
which may undo the cooperative decision right then, or may fuel oppositional behavior in the future.
Appreciation can avoid those risks and can strengthen the parent-child relationship.
• Provide emotional support, when imposing a consequence, for the hardship that the consequence will cause
the AD child. Communicate your understanding that this hardship, and the fact that being disciplined will
probably feel like being humiliated, may lead your child to want to misbehave. Nonetheless, you expect that
she will make a good choice and cooperate even though she does not want to.
• Behavioral interventions are best carried out in a matter-of-fact manner, in the style of: “Nothing personalit’s
just business”. These interventions should not be emotionally driven. Emotionally charged behavioral
interventions tend to be ineffective because: 1) they are more reactive than thoughtfully strategic and, 2) AD
children tend to repeat behaviors they know will upset their parents. Behavioral interventions should be
thought of as “technical procedures” and not as emotional or personal exchanges.
• NEVER negotiate, bargain, or make deals with, an AD child who continues to behave in untrustworthy ways:
lying, not following through, avoiding responsibility, putting on appearances etc. Negotiating with an AD child
who is not "bargaining in good faith" erodes the chances of the child coming to trust her parents. Remember-
AD children will not trust any adult they can reliably fool.
• Some AD children have neurocognitive deficits that impair memory functioning. Other AD children have intact
memories but use “I forgot” as a strategy to avoid responsibility and / or consequences. If it has been
established that your child’s memory is intact, then "forgetfulness" should not be accepted as a valid reason
for avoiding responsibilities or consequences. Instead, forgetfulness is framed as an intentional choice and the
AD child should be complemented on how skilled he is at teaching his brain to forget things he doesn’t want to
remember. The solution that is presented to the child in this situation is to sharpen his memory in the future.
Responsibility and consequences still apply.
• Establish the ground rule, always in effect, that the AD child needs to ask, ahead of time, what the rules might
be for anything that has never been discussed before. This removes the plea of ignorance from the AD child's
repertoire.
• It is useful to make a distinction between causing a problem to develop vs. perpetuating a problem that
already exists. In attempting to respond helpfully to the severe challenges that attachment disordered
children bring into their families, it is easy for parents to develop some patterns of responding that wind up
supporting the very behaviors the parents are working hard to change. Because parents are unintentionally
feeding into a problem doesn’t make them responsible for causing it. Parents who are willing to look openly at
the effectiveness of their current practices with their child, despite the discomfort of doing so, and are willing
to try new strategies in collaboration with their therapist, usually make quicker progress.
• Offer AD child empathy, not sympathy. Many AD children have traumatic early histories, and parents can be
tempted to make allowances for their child’s behavior, given that history. Parents are most supportive of
growth when they help their child understand how historical factors are influencing current behavior. A parent
can empathize with past hurts. However, sympathy encourages a sense of helplessness and victimization in
the child which will undermine behavior in the present. Parents need to maintain appropriate expectations for
current behavior while conveying faith in their child’s ability to make better choices as she grows.
• PHYSICAL TOUCH: AD children are often touch avoidant. However, parents should not let this intimidate them
into never touching their child because touch is a cornerstone of attachment. Therefore, continue with periodic
touching during calmer moments. AD children often need to be taught how to relax into being touched as they
frequently develop an almost reflexive stiffening or bracing in response to touch. It can be useful to try
different pressures and different locations to find out what is most manageable for your child.
• AD children also need to be taught about their feelings. Some of them are so disconnected from their bodies
that not only don’t they experience their feelings, they often are unaware of physiological sensations like cold,
warmth, pain, hunger, tiredness, etc. They need help with just identifying that they are having a feeling or
sensation. In addition, they need to be taught the language of feelings and to apply the correct word to the
correct feeling state (much like would be done with a pre-school child). This task is usually best accomplished
if feeling words are limited to the following choices: happy, sad, mad/angry, worried/nervous/afraid,
embarrassed/ashamed. AD children need help learning to read physical sensations (knot in stomach) as
signals of the feeling (nervousness) happening at the same time. As with behavior, AD children need help to
make the connections between what triggers their feelings, the feelings themselves, and the behaviors used
to express them. Painful feelings should never be accepted as a legitimate basis for destructive behavior.
• AD children need to be taught, over and over, with both words and direct experience, that behavior is
connected to triggers on the front end, to choices in the middle, and to consequences on the back end. Thus,
if the child is unhappy with the consequences that fall her way, the solution is defined as her learning to make
better choices rather than seeking to intensify her efforts to control her parents.
• AD children tend to see only the payoff of their strategic behaviors, and rarely have any real understanding of
what their behaviors may be costing them. It is useful for parents to point out these costs to the child and to
set up experiences to make those costs "real " (Example: A child who lies has almost never given any thought
to the fact that this behavior costs him his believability. Besides pointing this out to the child, parents can
warn him that the time will come when he will really want to be believed about something, but the parents
won't be able to. Then just wait for that opportunity to arrive- that's when the learning will begin to set in.)
• When accepting a promise from an AD child, remind her that should she choose to break it, she will really hurt
herself because she won’t be able to use promises in the future as a way to obtain something she wants from
her parents. She will then have the added burden of having to figure out, with no help from the adults, how
she can earn the adults’ trust back. Leave that problem squarely in the child’s lap.
• Never offer an AD child help or advice without first asking the child if she wants it. This question forces the AD
child to take some responsibility for stating what she wants in order to get it- this is priceless practice.
Additionally, it helps parents avoid the frustration of offering advice only to have it rejected out-of-hand
because the child wasn't interested in solving the problem in the first place. If the child says she does not
want advice or assistance, DO NOT offer it anyway. Just drop the subject and move on. This holds the child
accountable for her negative answer. When the child gives parents orders, as AD children do, politely inform
her that you did not ask for her advice and when you do want it, you will be sure to ask her ahead of time.
This can work better than reprimanding the child for being rude or disrespectful.
• Only offer the AD child expressions of love and affection when he is open to receiving it. Otherwise parents
end up giving their AD child further opportunities to practice rejecting love. AD children have this skill down
pat and need no further lessons in it.
• Prohibit access to any item that is not used for its appropriate purpose (Example: using toys to ignore the
parent). The child’s misuse of the item is explained as a lack of knowledge (Example: “Toys are for playing
with- not for ignoring your parents. So it seems that you are confused about the purpose of toys. Therefore, it
wouldn’t be good for you to keep using things you are confused about”.) Access is allowed again only after the
AD child has: 1) behaviorally demonstrated responsible behavior for some significant time period, and, 2)
given a verbal promise to use the item only in the proper fashion in the future. This promise must be restated
by the child, word-for-word. Just agreeing with an adult's rendition of the promise is insufficient.
• When denying access to an item, or imposing most other time-limited consequences, don’t give the AD child a
definite amount of time that the consequence will last. Instead of making the consequence end after a certain
amount of time has passed, base its ending on a criteria such as: “You can have access to the toys again
when I feel I can trust that you know what their proper purpose is, and you will have to figure out how to
teach me that I can trust you about this.” This puts the responsibility for the consequence ending totally on
the child, and the control of the consequence ending totally in the hands of the adult.
• Conversations in which an AD child is protecting himself and his sense of power are inevitably useless. Such
“conversations” go in circles, wander all over the countryside, are full of contradictions, and can become
argumentative confrontations. Parents should make themselves unavailable for this kind of conversation by
simply withdrawing from it. In addition, since AD children are not influenced by reasonableness, parents
should avoid efforts to “persuade” the child to change his mind. Such discussions are usually useless as well.
• Unintelligible speech: AD children frequently speak so that what they say cannot be clearly understood.
Sometimes they mutter. Sometimes they speak very softly. Sometimes they make up words. Sometimes they
scramble the order of words in a sentence. While some AD children do have language disabilities, the majority
of unintelligible speech used by AD children is a purposeful control technique. Like lying, unintelligible speech
is another way to keep parents in the position of “not knowing and trying to find out”. Thus, if asked to repeat
what was said unclearly, the AD child is likely to say it unclearly again, or refuse to repeat it, or blame the
parents for not listening, or tell the parents that they had their chance and blew it. This follow-up frustrating
of the parents only adds to the child’s unhelpful sense of power. Therefore, assume that if it was said
unclearly, it wasn’t important, and move right on as if your child never spoke. If she later says that she
already told you something, just put yourself in a one-down position on purpose and say that maybe what she
said must have gone right over your head. Then instruct your child that, in the future, when she has
something that she wants you to know, to check with you when she tells you to make sure that you
understand. If she doesn’t double-check with you, then she runs the risk that you don’t know what she wants
you to know. This shifts the responsibility for communicating clearly onto the child. These interventions, taken
together, can go a long way towards eliminating unintelligible speech as a control strategy.
• WHY QUESTIONS: "Why?” questions from AD children are almost always maneuvers to regain control from
parents by getting information the child can use to argue with the parents’ position. They are also usually
false questions in that the child already knows the answer. The best responses to “Why?” questions are either:
1) point out that the child already knows the answer; 2) ask the child to tell you the answer to his own
question; or 3) a ridiculous humorous answer (Example: child asks why he has to sit and eat dinner with the
family; parent replies that it helps his body digest food to eat with other people and talk). Probably the least
useful thing a parent can do with a “Why?” question is to take it as legitimate and to provide a serious answer.
• Questions parents should avoid asking your AD child:
“Did you…?”- the answer will most likely be “no”.
“Why did you…?”- the answer will likely be completely made up or “I don’t know.”
“Do you remember…?”- the answer will be “no”.
“What did you say?”- see unintelligible speech, above.
• It is fine to withhold information from AD children, even information they directly ask for, when parents have
a sense that that information will be misused. It is instructive to tell your child that you are not providing the
information requested because her past behavior (you are teaching both cause-effect and behavior has
consequences by doing this) has shown you that she is most likely to use the information poorly.
• AD children sometimes try to obtain what they want by asking for it repeatedly, hoping parents will eventually
give in. There are a variety of parental responses that can undercut this behavior: 1) the broken record
technique- each time the question is repeated, the parents repeat their original answer word-for-word; using
different voice tones can make this approach more effective still; 2) each time the question is repeated, the
parent just says "What?"; 3) predicting the question will be repeated ahead of time; 4) when the question is
repeated, the parent tells the child to ask again one or more times; 5) ask the child to estimate how many
times in a row he can ask the question- then tell him to show you before answering the question at all.
• FORCED CHOICE: With this strategy, parents give the AD child two choices, both of which are agreeable
outcomes to the parents. Example: choice one: go to bed on time tonight and you get to stay up until your
regular bedtime tomorrow night; choice two: for each minute you are late getting in bed tonight, five minutes
will be taken off your bedtime tomorrow night. The parents then step back and allow the child's behavior to
"tell the tale" of what will happen. The fact that both outcomes stem directly from the child’s behavior teaches
the concepts of both choice and cause-effect and makes it more difficult for the child to frame the outcome as
resulting from the parents' just being “mean”.
• OVERPRACTICE: After a child breaks or "forgets" a rule, she must practice following the rule. Example: Child
orders parents around rather than making requests. Rather than correct the child and then grant the request
after it is phrased respectfully, the parent has the child approach the parent several times in a row, repeating
the same request each time. It might then be honored after 3-4 practice rounds. The whole exercise is defined
as practicing the “skill of making requests” since the earlier behavior indicated that the child did not how to do
this properly.
• SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN: Rather than confronting the AD child with a specific consequence, it can be very
effective to say something like: "You can make that choice. I don't think it's a good move and something will
happen." Parents must be ready to follow through in some specific way should the child make the poor choice.
However, the follow through can come several days later. That intervening period of waiting for the other shoe
to drop often has significant impact on the AD child (though not the first time around). It is a good idea for
parents to have brainstormed a list of possible consequences which can be used on a rotating basis so nothing
becomes too predictable.
• PLANNED REGRESSIONS: This involves setting aside specific time periods during which the child is allowed to
regress to whatever age he would like to be. This is set up as a special game or play-time between parent and
child. As part of these planned regressions, the parents actually handle the child as if he were the younger age
he's pretending to be. One common technique is feeding the child with a baby bottle. Such planned time for
being immature can help AD children pick up missed developmental pieces. This approach generally works
better the younger the child is.
• For siblings who are being chronically mistreated by an AD sibling, parents can set up a payment plan in which
the sibling is paid for the very difficult job of having an AD brother or sister. Specific kinds of mistreatment by
the AD child are defined as the things for which the non-AD sibling(s) is paid. Such a plan can be both a
support to the non-AD child(ren) and a deterrent to future mistreatment by the AD child.
• PARADOX 1: Playful and open agreement with the child's critical views of the family. Example: Openly
agreeing that the child has gotten a raw deal in having to live with such a stupid and boring family and, the
parent is impressed that the child has enough self-control not to be even angrier.
• PARADOX 2: Predicting and giving permission for misbehavior. Example: I know that you are probably going
to argue, complain, be rude, get silly, whine, ignore me, and have a tantrum about____________. Would you
tell me how much time you need to finish your outburst?”
• Occasionally give them a consequence that they like so they have a chance to succeed at something. Have
them count out all of the M&M's and eat all of the red ones one at a time. Or, if it's a hot day, have them put
on their swim suit and test out which outdoor hose water is warmer, the front hose or the backyard hose.
• Create a consequence bag where your child pulls the consequence out. Have slips of paper with varying
consequences: clean toilet, 20 good jumping jacks, 5 minutes strong sitting, raking leaves. Include a few
funny/surprise consequences: 10 sloppy sit-ups, 30 seconds of strong sitting, 10 minutes of coloring, eating
ice cream.
• For the child who's refusing to do a chore in time for dinner: "Dinner time. Let me inspect your project.
Hmmm... It doesn't look finished to me but as soon as you're done you can have dinner." If your child is at all
like mine you'll hear, "You mean you're going to let me starve! That's not a very good mom. I thought you
were a good mom. You don't even take care of your child. I hate you." Your response is to smile and say, "I
bet it feels like that" and you walk away.
• Words for the child who is refusing to do a chore or consequence: "Gosh, you don't look strong enough to pull
weeds. Do you think 10 jumping jacks will make you strong enough, or would you rather do 20?" Or, "Oh my,
you look tired. Go on upstairs to your room and take a rest until you're strong enough to rake the yard. It's
not a problem."
• Another alternative when a child won't do a chore or consequence properly. "Look at that! You did such a
sloppy job that I'm going to have to do it over. I'm happy to do it for you and now you owe me $5 (or
whatever amount is age appropriate)."
• If your child is breaking things and having trouble keeping their hands to themselves, give them "practice" for
their hands: counting rice, tearing up magazines, or carrying Legos (one piece at a time) from one place to
another and back again.
• Expect misbehaviors and always have a back-up plan in place. For example, if your child is joining a friend
and you for the day, have another friend on-call so that if she misbehaves you can say, "I'm sorry you're not
in the mood to have fun today. You can spend the day with Miss Cheryl while we continue with our fun day."
• Give yourself a break when your child is in a challenging mode. Instead of forcing them to comply, give them
two limited choices i.e. playing Legos or reading. That at least lets you be calm and do what you need to do,
and they're contained within "the box."
• If your child is mean to you (hits, yells, says mean things), have them do restitution to you. Fold your
laundry, write you a nice note, rub your feet, make you a snack.
• Vary the consequences. Chores, jumping jacks, doing the annoying thing over and over, running up and down
the stairs, paying a dollar.
• No matter what age your child is, implement rest time for at least one hour on weekend days. It's not for
them, but for you. Read the paper, make a cup of tea, take a nap.
• On tough days, put your child to bed early. When they complain, tell them they've drained your mama energy
away so you need time for you.
• Being somewhat unpredictable on purpose. Such unpredictability is necessary to get past the AD child's vast
array of avoidance maneuvers. An adult an AD child can predict is an adult an AD child will "work".
• Make some rewards absolute and not contingent on anything. This effectively subverts AD children’s strong
tendency to sabotage themselves and thereby prove to the adults that they can’t “make them succeed”.
(Example: AD child participates in a “fun Friday” activity regardless of their behavior, barring any safety
concerns). This approach puts the child’s succeeding under the complete control of the teacher.
• Drilling in the concept of "choice". Choice is an idea that is often absent in AD children's thinking. It is not
simply that they refuse to accept responsibility- the ideas of people making choices and having responsibility
literally makes no sense to AD children. They need to have it pointed out to them, matter-of-factly, over and
over, that they are making choices all the time. Then discussion can begin to move towards making better vs.
worse choices.
• Approach AD children with a matter-of-fact, firm, no nonsense, not hostile, tone of voice. Directions should be
phrased as directions, not questions (Example: “Do…” vs. “Would you...").
• AD children can compose eloquent answers to adult questions that mean absolutely nothing. A question to an
AD child is too often an invitation to trick an adult. It works much better to phrase statements as guesses and
let them react to the guess. (Example: rather than “Did you break your pencil?” try “I think you broke your
pencil to get out of doing your work.”). AD children’s reactions to guesses will tell you much more than their
answers to questions.
• Keep praise very concrete and specific and do not connect it substantive rewards. Use humor to deflect AD
children’s attempts to be deliberately provocative.
• Teachers should follow the parents’ lead in matters of behavior management. Parents will almost always have
seen behavior far in excess of anything the school will ever see. This gives parents irreplaceable experiential
knowledge about working with their child’s behavior. The school needs to partner seamlessly with home and
parents in order to undercut the AD child’s considerable strategic wilyness. However, school and home should
be kept separate in some matters. Incidents at school should be handled at school and not referred to the
parents to provide consequences at home in the evening unless this is part of a collaborative plan arrived at
beforehand. In general, parents SHOULD NOT be expected to be intimately involved with nightly homework.
AD children will simply use “homework” as a stage to play out their attachment related conflicts and everyone
loses.
• Use of the word "trick" to describe AD children's strategic behavior works better than the more loaded words
like "manipulative", "lying", etc.
• Become a good observer of AD children's nonverbal responses (facial expressions, body position and
movements, eyes, voice tone, etc). These are the most accurate signs of what is going on inside the child. If
you listen only to what AD children say, you will go in circles repeatedly, getting nowhere.
• Act as historian for the AD child. As AD children live in the moment, they need adults to remind them of past
events that have gone successfully to help them maintain more perspective on the present.
• Be as silly as possible (ASAP). Children love to see their parents act silly and playful. Even those teenagers
who seem not to appreciate anything and who never show appreciation for anything really do appreciate it
when the adults in their lives act silly, are playful, and smile. What sorts of silly and playful things can you
do?: Take your children to a local magic store; Send your child a funny greeting card by mail; Find a photo
booth to take funny-face photos of the two of you together; Teach your child a few simple riddles and/or
jokes.
• Share your imperfections. Let your child play with your vulnerabilities, telling your child about your most
embarrassing moments and encouraging your child to share with you his or her most embarrassing moments.
The next time you stumble on the opportunity to share an imperfection or two with your child, do so. It is one
of the most wonderful attachment experiences there is.
• Develop a “Joy Journal” – Taking the time the time to help your child develop his or her own "joy journal" is
another wonderful attachment experience. Kids love to be able to tell things that make people laugh. Keeping
a joy journal full of funny stories will continuously remind them of the good times they have experienced with
you, which can only help cement the parent/child relationship and bond. Shared moments of joy can be times
that are remembered most. Don’t forget to keep your own “Joy Journal.”
• A strong attachment bond includes the full range of shared emotional experience, including not only joy, but
fear, sadness, anger and shame.
Also to consider
• Although they try to anger you, they are afraid of strong emotions, they view them as a sign of weakness and
have no respect for you. If you stay in control, they cannot only "hear" you better they realize that you are
serious.
• The passive-aggressive kids find among them mates that are independent but are also very caring, giving,
rescuing, outspoken, secure, and generally have very big hearts. This child zooms in on that right away.
• Don’t over-intellectualize why they do what they do. They merely fight to gain advantage over you for
emotional protection.
• Manipulators make uncertain commitments. They create confusion and blame others for misinterpreting the
mixed messages they send.
• Reality-twisters turn situations around so that THEY are the victims suffering YOUR anger and discontent, no
matter how wrong they are.
• Never rely on these people in a crisis. They are the people most likely to freeze or withdraw when you need
someone to act fast and wisely.
• What those outside the family unit will see is a child who is, initially, surprisingly charming, even seeking to
hold your hand, climbing into your lap, smiling a lot, and seem affection starved. A few months into what you
thought was a working relationship the child is suddenly defiant, moody, angry and difficult to handle; there is
no way to predict what will happen from day to the next; the child eats as if he hasn't been properly fed and is
suspected of stealing; the child does not seem to make or keep friends for extended periods of time;
Organizational abilities are limited and monitoring is resented; There may be a sense of hypervigilance about
them that you initially perceive as no sense of personal space and general "nosiness. " They seem to want to
know everyone else's business but never tell you anything about their own. There is no sense of conscience
for their actions, even if someone else is hurt. They may express an offhand or even seemingly sincere
"sorry", but will likely do the same thing again tomorrow. These kids thrive on having made you lose it. They
are not motivated by self or parental pride, normal reward and punishment systems simply do not work;
kindness, sympathy or concern only exacerbate their poor behaviors – you are simply a sucker to be
exploited.
• RAD kids sometimes feign fear of parents when in a public place simply for the reactions it elicits from other
adults. They are masters at triangulating parents and teachers with any number of half or completely false
stories.
• Begin to understand what this child's parents must face on a daily basis. The parents are often tense, involved
in control battles for their parental role every minute they are with the child. They have only recently learned
that normal parenting will not work with this child; that much of what they have tried to do for years simply
fed into the child's dysfunction. They are frightened, sad, stressed and lonely. Many feel unmerited guilt for
their perceived "failure" with this child. The mothers often bear the brunt of the child's actions and the child is
often clever enough to make certain none of it occurs in front of the father. Hence they even triangulate the
parents – because it puts them in control of the situation, which makes them feel safer.
• What happens when you let them stay with someone else, even to just get a break for a few days?: Staying
with someone that doesn't follow the same parenting techniques as you results in two outcomes. One, the
child is given too much freedom and feels that the adults she's with are not keeping her safe. And, two, she
concurrently thinks, "Hey, this is fun! These people don't catch on to me like my mom does. What a pain to
think I have to live with someone who expects me to be so totally responsible for my choices, and who
expects me to work so hard to get better…" It's as if your child had diabetes and was following a strict plan of
proper eating, daily exercise, and twice daily injections to help them stay healthy. You wouldn't send him/her
to stay with someone else unless you knew they understood, and were willing to give her what she needed to
be safe and healthy.
• There are certain characteristics of children that makes it difficult to give them what they need. First, they
commonly behave in alienating ways toward caregivers: will not show their needs for nurturance or
reassurance; will turn away or push away, as if to say, "I don't need you." You must realize they are afraid to
connect. Don't focus on their rejecting behavior; deep down they need love and support. Second, they
developed a viewpoint or belief that caregivers will be hurtful, and they will expect the same cruel and
insensitive treatment from you. You must show them something different and better, and eventually they will
learn to trust. Third, many of these children are biologically and biochemically imbalanced, due to prior abuse,
neglect, prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, and multiple moves. They are unable to cope with stress,
lack self-control, and are difficult to soothe. You must provide a consistent, predictable, and structured
environment to help them feel safe. Lots of hugs and love helps, but you must be patient and respectful of
your child's timing. Last, it is important to remember that your child is bossy and controlling because he
learned that control means survival. So, when your child is being manipulative or defiant, it is really about
fear: afraid to trust, connect, and be emotionally vulnerable.
• A child with RAD is completely satisfied with the least when he is in control. For example, say a child with
RAD steals a box of cereal and angers his brother by eating the whole box without sharing. The brother yells
at the injustice, which prompts Mom to intervene. She ends up yelling even louder and threatens punishment
(which proves to the child that Mom is bad), and when Dad gets home, the whole family is in an uproar. The
child has successfully recreated the familiar discord and turmoil of earlier days and feels comfortable. He is
happy that he ate the cereal, too; at least he’s not hungry.
How can you TRULY help the child and the parents?
• REAL change can only occur IF they recognize and acknowledge that THEY have a problem, then desire – and
seek – help. Nothing will change for them if they can't see it and admit to it. Their life might be screwed up,
but until they can admit that they are at least a part of the problem, and see the hurt inside of them, there's
no reason for them to change. It's comfortable, it's familiar and it's SAFE. It's also sneaky, manipulating and
extremely damaging to relationships.
• It takes a tremendous amount of work to turn these kids around so that they can experience real feelings and
learn to trust. Parents who have embarked on this healing journey for their child need support and
consistency from other adults who interact with the child.
• Communicate with the parents about their child. They will likely not be real warm about this child and can be
perceived as too harsh until you get to know them better. Talk with them about this issue. They are often
hostile to outside commentary because no one without RAD information really knows what these folks are
living with every day. Ask if they have any other strategies for managing things. If the parents can open up to
you, you'll all be able to help the child get healthy or at least not contribute to his dysfunction. Remember the
child's primary objective is to triangulate others from their parents so that he/she controls the relationships on
his/her terms, not yours. He/she may also seek to triangulate you from other supervisory or authority figures.
• Parents will tell you if time is precious on a particular occasion due to ongoing therapy, or whatever, don't feel
put off or shut out. They will talk to you when they have time and time is one of the things RAD parents often
run out of as they work desperately to save their child's future. The therapy and home parenting techniques
are exhausting and time consumptive.
• Don't feel you need to apologize if you have believed this child and blamed the parents. If the parents have
shared this information with you about their children they already trust you and do not blame you for not
having the information you needed – likely they only just recently got it themselves.
• Remember you are not the primary caregiver for this child, and this child will not get better until they bond
with their parents. Remind the child that her parents are where she can get hugs, cuddles, food and treats.
Understand that this child will consider moving on to the next stage of their life as your having abandoned
him. The only way to avoid that is to remain in a role to support the process of helping this child learn to be a
whole human being as best you can in the time you have with them.
• DO NOT SYMPATHIZE with this child. Feeling sorry for her will only give her power over you, and prevent you
from being effective in helping them. Remain consistent in your expectations, do not lower them for this child.
The RAD child has even more to learn than "normal" kids.
• The child who is losing control at home and in the classroom because folks are "on to him" will get a whole lot
worse before he gets better. Listen appropriately. Absolutely redirect this child to her parents for choices,
hugs, decision-making and sharing of information you believe is either not true or is designed to shock or
manipulate you. Follow up with the parents.
• This child can and will be helped to get healthy and you can be a part of that process with the right tools.
Keep in touch with the family. Remember that what you see outside the home is only the tip of the iceberg –
family life is terribly threatening to these children and what the parents have to deal with every day is nearly
unimaginable to other uninformed adults. Blaming the family or failing to communicate with them adds to the
dysfunction and puts the child at greater risk of never getting healthy.
• This child is learning to be respectful, responsible and fun to be around. It will take time, it will be an effort, if
in the end it is successful it will be because the adults in her life were consistent and the child decided to work
at getting better. Your contribution cannot be underestimated or undervalued – his parents will be grateful for
the support and knowing there are fewer inconsistent venues to sort out while helping the child to heal.
• DON'T: Tell me it's just a phase and she'll outgrow it; Give me parenting tips; Suggest that my approach
seems out of line; Tell me I'm too strict; Tell me I'm too easy; Tell me that your child is just the same, unless
you think they are RAD, too.
• DO: Realize this is very draining and extremely stressful for the parents; Understand that the child will have
to work very hard to overcome this; Call to check in; Send me an occasional card or note; Take the parent(s)
to lunch; Give parents a hug; Come watch the child in an activity; Offer to take the child hiking, for a bike
ride, or other physical activity with lots of structure for a few hours; Offer to learn how to give the child the
structure he/she needs to feel safe when she stays with you; Keep all information parents share with you
confidential; Tell the child how lucky he/she is to have the loving and concerned parents he/she has; Say
prayers for all of us.
• Parents must have sufficient support from both inside and outside of the family. A united front is crucial in
the parental team, as is support from extended family.