Thank God for Bedbugs

Bedbugs.

Thank God!

They were the final inspiration that brought a friend's RAD son home from the very dangerous situation he had been living in. 

I had seen his mother's comment that Thank God her son who had been estranged for over a year had returned. 

I privately messaged her letting her know I was happy for her... but angry and doing my best to deal with my anger before the sun went down. 

Years ago our families attended the same little church. 

When her adopted son was very small, she and her family moved thousands of miles away.  Facebook helped us keep in touch. 

Many of the "good christians" who were our former pewmates who continue to be SO VERY HORRIBLE to our family during  and since our RAD's meltdown... were all "liking" and "commenting" about how wonderful it was my friend's son had returned home. 

It turned my stomach... and I was angry!

My gracious friend called me from THOUSANDS of miles away... and talked with me, and encouraged me. 

Together we prayed.  Together we were grateful for "whatever it takes" that would turn our kids hearts home toward the parents who love them. 

Together we thanked God for bedbugs, because bedbugs are what brought her son back home.

Naturally there is still a long way to go... but meanwhile together... we remain grateful... for bedbugs.

Our Daughter's First Sign of Attachment

The first time I ever saw our new daughter express genuine concern for our family, my heart was overwhelmed. 

Up until that day, most of the time our daughter walked around like a robot, and hugged like an ironing board, but as soon the social worker's car pulled up the driveway, our newest daughter would snuggle up to Daddy in a way that was far too "mature" and far to inappropriate for a little girl.  She'd giggle in in an saccharin sweet voice "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh Daddy.... tee hee hee!  You're soooooo funny!" while running her little fingers along his hair neck and shoulders. 

She'd stay in that spot until the social worker's car left the driveway.   Then she'd blankly-robotically go back to her room... and resumed her "ignoring" us behavior. 

I read it as "PLEASE SOCIAL WORKER DON'T MOVE ME AGAIN!"  

And I immediately notified the social worker that we ONLY saw that behavior when her car was in our driveway... we let her know it disappeared as quickly as it came. 

I think I've written about this before here... not sure if I ever posted it. 

The memories of who our kids were when we first met them, who they became as part of our family, who they became at the "age appropriate season of detachment as young adults" haunt me. 

Some memories haunt me more than others. 

The "attachment sign" memory is one that I don't mind popping up from time to time.  It continues to give me much hope.

Before we had a cellphone... hubby was stuck on the side of the highway with minor car trouble he felt he could fix if he could get his tools.  A good Samaritan stopped and loaned a phone for him to call me to come with tools. 

I piled the kids in the mommymobile (read minivan) and off we went. 

We had to pass hubby on the highway, exit, turn around and reenter to get to him on the other side. 

We spotted him.  Stuck on the other side. 

Our newest daughter began SOBBING.  She hated that he was stranded... and that cars were driving by... and that we had to drive by too. 

My heart breaks each time I remember the depths of her grieving her new daddy's lot. 

Those feelings were raw.  And REAL.  And CARING. 

This child who for as long as we'd known her SEEMED so indifferent to us all... really cared for him... for us.

I miss my caring daughter.  I believe she is out there... but the triggers of becoming a young adult... surrounded by "friends" tickling her ears about her "rights" as a young adult and "friends" my age who delight in poisoning her mind against us... because then she "needs" them.

Our daughter is out there wandering the junkyard of life out there in robot land... Officer RAD... big and tough... and ready to "take on the world."

She's heavily armored... She's been injured most by the "friends" trying to help her.  She's using everything she's got to protect the little girl we love... and miss.

Foster Care in the News

Huffington Post has a nifty article on traumatized foster kids overcoming great odds as a adolescents...

Cool article, I hoped to make an annonymous comment... not possible.  so I'll link the article here and the comment I intended to leave (but wouldn't have been able to even if I did register... because as usual, my comment is longer than 250 characters.)

Finding Hope After Trauma by Gary Stangler 

As an adoptive parent of a "special needs sibling group" adopted out of our state's foster system in 1994, I'm very grateful our adoptive children's adoption social worker had the foresight to "guarantee" psychiatric care until age 18 for all three!!!  I can't express how desperately psychiatric intervention for the three was needed "after 18!"

I'm not normally a fan of putting a video game in the hands of a child and calling them a "child" until they are 30, however ...in the case of mentally ill individuals (especially in the case of our "special needs sibling adoption group")  I 100% see the benefits of extending psychiatric care past 18 for "attachment disordered" adoptees!!!!!

"Over-18" is where our adoptees have had THE MOST difficulty! 

They have accomplished much... they still have so very far to go!  I remain hopeful!

The age-appropriate season of "detachment" as young-adults to begin to embark on their "adult lives" reawakened the abandonment issues and RAD behaviors in our adopted children that were troubling to see in young children, and horrifying to see as they became young adults.   

Our "overcame-so-much" Honor-Rolled college student who completed most of her AA degree as a dually enrolled high school student went for one semester out-of-state to college... then dropped out and returned home a completely different person!!!

The Reactive Attachment Disorder we believed she was healed of, was back in ways we never imagined possible.

Her adoption benefit of unlimited psychiatric care had "run out."  Our daughter was eligible for care through our family insurance plan as long as she remained a full-time student... but she had quit school.  We offered to pay for her psychiatric care but she refused.  She continued to spiral downward under the unethical "counsel" of an overzealous student of psychology, who encouraged her to call her "mom."  That lady who bought our daughter's affections with expensive gifts she could not afford (like a car) became "mom" to our 21 year old daughter.  Three years later in the eyes of our adopted daughter that "RAD typically triangulated" woman is still "mom" and I am not. 

I have since learned this behavior of early-traumatized adoptees adopting gullible new families when they are young adults phenomenon is quite common behavior for Attachment Disordered individuals who were adopted out of orphanages or the foster system.

We learned, in our neck of the woods anyway,  parental rights regarding psychiatric issues expire before a child reaches 18. 

... Our simultaneously spiraling-downward (unofficially diagnosed "inhibited form" RAD) at 2-months-to-18-year-old son was supposedly getting the psychiatric "help" we so very strongly encouraged him to participate in, but we as parents had no right, according to his counselor, to information on his progress or lack-thereof... "It's not like medical records... the laws are different... I'm not allowed..."  

Like his "officially diagnosed RAD" older sister, our son chose his own set of "new parents" as is common for legally-adult adoptees with  attachment disorders to do.   

As painful as it is to experience this rejection from children we have poured the very best of everything we have into... their "coping mechanism" kind of makes sense.    It is familiar to them... their "roots" have been pulverized.  I don't fully understand their behavior because my life's experiences are so drastically different than theirs.  My family has always been my family.  They joined my family.  They have been grafted in... they have access to my roots, but my roots have not always been their roots.  Their roots have never been my roots. 

They have experienced traumas I would never wish on anyone.  They are coping as best as they know how.

Our adopted children had lived separately as foster children were only "placed together, 'as a sibling group' for adoption" when their bio-mom was required to terminate her parental rights for issues of abuse/neglect/abandonment. 

The oldest I was told lived 8 years with one foster family...

The middle I was told had an estimated 17 different families...

The youngest was removed from bio-mom's "care" shortly after birth and bounced between 5 or six homes that I'm aware of before coming home to ours. 

The three children (placed with us at ages 2.5, 6, and 13) had come to us at an "interim" foster placement after a "failed special-needs-sibling-group adoptive placement."  They EACH had experienced numerous psychological (and other) traumas before ever being placed in our family. 

According to our children's social worker, this beautiful, symptomatically RAD initially-charming child never lasted more than 90 days in any one foster or adoptive placement. 

The social worker wanted "this" adoptive placement to work out.  We did too! 

I'm grateful to see the overcoming the impacts of difficult beginnings related to foster adoption story in the news. 

I'm eager for the world-at-large to learn about Reactive Attachment Disorder and how to best support the mental health of individuals who have experienced trauma during the most important years of brain development.  

I too have tremendous hope for our children who had overcome so much before we ever knew who they were, who have accomplished so much as young adults, and who STILL have a lonnnnng way to go!!!! 

Finally!!!!

We have been asking certain family members for more than three years that IF they choose to have contact with our estranged adult adoptees...

PLEASE learn about Reactive Attachment Disorder!

PLEASE learn how to best be supportive of adoptive families as a whole!

PLEASE learn about triangulation that is symptomatic of RAD... and don't allow yourself to be triangulated! 

We never forbade family to see or talk to our children.  We have only asked for a consistent message of  "Your parents love you, YOU NEED TO TALK TO THEM NOT ME about what's going on between you."

Somewhere along the line the easily triangulated ones with the "rescuer" gene would fluctuate between,

"Let's all smile pretty and pretend nothing happened!"

and

 "Don't worry, just because your parents suck, IIIII still love you!  You'll ALWAYS have MY love!"

and

"I have to hear both sides of the situation before I can make a proper judgement about what's going on between you and your parents." 

It seems like last night FINALLY one couple of the most painful perpetuate-ers of strife in our family seemed to "get" how their "good intentioned" meddling has continued to hurt us and our family over the last three years. 

This is huge!!!!

We are grateful for progress. 

We are grateful for family and friends who support our adoptees' return to mental health by supporting our family as a whole. 

We continue to pray for the rest. 

Desperately Seeking Shock and Horror Sympathy and Gifts

Before there was Barney... I was a kid.

Even though there was no Barney, I watched a TV kid show with a singing Dinosaur called H.R. Pufnstuf...

I remember me and the siblings laughing and giggling and singing Witchiepoo's song...
even though we got the lyrics wrong...

As a kid I thought the lyrics were "Oranges Poranges Who Cares!"

Oranges Poranges

When I think "who cares?!" 

I think "Oranges Poranges." 

Feel free to thank me for getting that song caught in your brain!


I've been trying to figure out our estranged "officer RAD"'s motivation for reaching out to our more gullible  extended family to "visit" on a trip up to our home town. 

Yes, there's always the symptomatic RADtypical Triangulation aspect. 


It occurred to me this morning her "audience" of sympathy back here in the town she was raised might actually be waning.

As I think, I wonder...How long can gainfully employed "young adults" continue to gain sympathy, gifts, money, affection, and attention for the various abuses they're pretending to have endured in our care?  Sooner or later the gravy train will dry up. 

The act gets stale... at least that's what I would think.

 Shoot, I can't imagine what motivates the crazies who slurped up our RAD's drama and ended up drooling for more... these nutsos pay for their "real-life-is-better-than-soap-operas" brand of entertainment rewarding our adult RADs with "love" and money and gifts, and sympathy and attention, but I think...I hope... that eventually they might tire of the same old drivel. 

I think perhaps the long-standing local :rescuers" may finally be picking up on the fact that our loving-attached-well-adjusted daughter who grew up in the same home with the same "abusive" parents doesn't want or need them to rescue her from us.  Perhaps the self-appointed-"saviors" are picking up on the "You make me sick, what's the matter with you? Leave our family alone!" vibe our oldest has toward the "church community" who have continued to meddle, and drool and meddle and drool and "rescue.

Certainly they must pick up on the fact that for every week-long+ visit our oldest only willing to spend about an hour or less with the siblings who have attacked our family and perpetuate tales insane falsehoods.

Our now 3-years-older-adult-RADs are not as pitiful as they first appeared when they started their RADtypical triangulation of the community at large against us.

Shoot, in the land of the gainfully employed our "pathetic abused little darlings" are doing better than most of the adult children of their RADtypically triangulated meddlers!

I imagine somewhere even in "rescuers" whose brains have faulty wiring... would eventually have a light come on!!!  How could it not?

Some parents have always been bums.  I'm not saying that to be mean... I'm saying that because generations upon generations of our adoptees' bio-family have allowed "the system" to raise their kids. Lousy parenting is a generational way of life for them... for people in their drug infested environment.  I

We are not lousy parents.  We never have been. 
Half the shock and horror effect that has the insanely deranged audience captivated by... 
THE SCANDAL of our "Beautiful Family"
... is the supposition that we have had this "plastic perfect" exterior while living a secret life of abuse that  would make the next great scandalous reality show.

Our "story" would be far less captivating if we had always been bums in their eyes.  These drama hungry goons put us on a pedestal in comparing our beautiful family to the mess they had made of their own.  They have since enjoyed pushing us off their pedestal, trying to make us crumble, because they are eager to dance in our dust.  It makes them feel better to think we are at least as horrible as they know they have been. 

As our adult RADs broaden their adult-circle in the big outside world and begin to encounter people who were left to grow up in the environment social services removed them from...BEFORE they came to us...  I'm sure there is not much tolerance for our adoptees' "tales of woe" having been raised in our nurturing home... especially as they encounter individuals who were REALLY raised in abusive/neglectful/deprived environments. 

Anyway It seems officer RAD, in reaching out to family she's only related to through the parents she denies, with hopes chasing down a new audience, looking to renew reactions of shock-horror-and-sympathy-and-gifts with those gullible individuals most likely to be generous once entertained by RAD drama. 

I suspect the drama is finally loosing it's power. 
Drama that has been officer RAD's bread and butter;
her roof  and pillow;
her transportation and gifts;
her attention and sympathy...
let's not forget her "only" source of "love."

Oh how I would love for our daughter's RADtypical drama to start to get "Oranges Poranges! Who Cares!" as a response instead of Shock and Horror and Sympathy and Gifts.

When our RADs stop getting tangible and not so tangible reinforcement for their RADtypical behavior, I'm certain they will begin to be encouraged to make healthy choices along life's path.