The difference between Inhibited and Uninhibited RAD

     It's time for another post on Granny Dew's "Rad"ical News. On one post I explained a little about Reactive Attachment Disorder. Did you know there are two different types of RAD? The first type is "inhibited" and the second type is "uninhibited". Let me explain the difference between the two types.
     The child with uninhibited Reactive Attachment is the life of the party! He/she will be so charming and alluring it would be hard to believe there are any problems at all for this child; but there are hidden truths and fears that control his/her life. Neighbors, teachers and clergy do not see the messages of self sabotage being displayed before their eyes but they may ask why does that child keep losing his scout shirt over and over again? Because the child is losing his shirt on purpose! The child may be gifted in so many ways. It may seem that this child could be a genius and the grading scale in the elementary years of the child's life can look very successful. Why? Because the child is not worried about peer pressure or emotionally being accepted by others and can therefore focus well on the lessons at school. The teacher seems confused when the mother comes to the school to tell them the child they are teaching is not emotionally well. The parent worries that the child's main goal is to gain control over the teacher's classroom. The parent worries that the child might be stealing objects from within the classroom. The parent worries that the child might even perpetrate against other class members when the teacher is not looking. The teacher thinks the parent is crazy because this is the child who gives her a hug each day and looks lovingly into her eyes to gain her trust. The teacher is often surprised at the end of the school year to see a shift in the relationship she thought she was building with this most loving child. The teacher will ask the parent what happened, why does this child seem so hateful toward me? The only response the parent can give is, "Congratulations...the child saw attachment forming with you and decided to hate you as much as he/she hates me because attachment is the deepest fear this child has." By the way, these kids do not like success and once they figure out they are succeeding they will do anything in their will power to fail. Success means they believe in the systems the world has set up for people and they do not believe in trusting people.
      Let's talk about inhibited Reactive Attachment. The inhibited child will have no preferred caregiver, will rarely seek comfort in times of stress, show a minimum of positive affection and experience difficulties regulating their emotions. This child will seem very aloof to most people and will often scowl if people approach them. They have no friends because of their lack of communication skills in their childhood years and when children try to reach out to the RAD child they are snubbed and ignored. It takes many years of therapy to help these children learn how to stabilize their emotions. It's very hard to raise a child with RAD, whether the child has inhibited or uninhibited RAD. The parents in the home are dealing with hours of raging, oppositional defiant behaviors, eating disorders, destruction of family possessions, stealing, lying, killing pets, fecal smearing, urinating into heat vents and a few other problems I dare not mention.
     I believe this is a good place to stop for this discussion. The main point I want to make is how much the families love these kids. We want to help them in any way we can. It is not the child's fault in any way. These kids were dealt a very discouraging hand as they came into this world of unfair.

#dewcrewbooks #reactiveattachmentdisorder #complextraumadisorder #developmentaltraumadisorder #childrensbooks

Why "Rad"ical?

     I promised to write a blog for Granny Dew's "Rad"ical News. Still figuring this blog stuff out. Are you wondering why I chose the "Rad" in my news? It's because I have learned a lot about Reactive Attachment Disorder during this past twenty-four years and want to share a few things that I have learned along the way. The reason I wrote my children's book series is because of my experiences with children affected from RAD. They are great kids and can be pretty confused about life at times. Why are they confused? They started out with some traumatic experience in the first three years of their lives and it broke down some of the neurons in their brains. Trauma can happen if children witness war crimes, are born on drugs and/or alcohol, have a hard birthing experience, lived their baby years in orphanages, or have some major surgeries, etc... I belong to a few Facebook groups of parents raising children from trauma and it is a really hard job for all of the parents. I serve on the Parent Advocacy Council here in Utah and am the leader for the group of parents dealing with Reactive Attachment Disorders. If you are interested in finding out more about RAD feel free to join our Parent Advocacy Council-RAD site on Facebook. We share articles to help our world understand our children better. Hopefully it will help us to gain the services and insurance coverage our children so desperately need. I think this has been enough information for now but stay tuned because I have so much more to tell you!

#dewcrewbooks #reactiveattachmentdisorder #developmentaltraumadisorder #complextraumadisorder #childrensbooks 

Why do people say bad words?

      I’ve been in this world long enough to watch some changes happen. I saw one of the first televisions when they were made. Did you know there were no microwaves when I was a child? My mom made homemade bread and oatmeal cookies at least twice a week. She also made her own egg noodles and they were really good. You can’t find them in stores. Most moms stayed home every day while the dads went to work. I liked having my mom home. People talked nice words back then. I can’t remember hearing bad words very often. My dad would say a bad word if he hit his thumb with a hammer but he didn’t hit his thumb every single day.

     I remember when the first mom in our neighborhood went to work. It was kind of sad to me. I felt bad for her kids. I still had my mom home but I watched as the other moms in the neighborhood started going to work too. It grew slowly and people started to have more things; instead of one car for each family, they needed two cars because mom was driving one way to her job and dad was driving another way to his job. As people started to have more things, for some reason, they started saying more bad words. They seemed too tired to play with their kids or have family parties anymore. The world started to change and television was showing the changes. At first there were no bad words on television until one movie showed a man say a bad word. Some people thought the bad word made him sound strong, smart and kind of cool. I didn’t. I didn’t like it at all.

     When I went to school we got into so much trouble for saying bad words. It was not allowed. The high schools today have lots of bad words as the kids go from class to class. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. Good words are better!

     I really do love kids of all ages. I like to see them do their best. I like to see them talk their best. I like to see them try their best. It is not cool, smart or strong to say bad words. It is smug, rude, weak and makes it look like people never went to school to learn better words.

     I hope you will think about how your mouth should stay clean. We brush our teeth to stay clean. Why put bad words into your mouth after you clean it out… it’s like stuffing your mouth with garbage! I don’t like bad breath and you don’t like bad breath but that’s what will come out of your mouth if you use your words in the bad way. Every breath you take should be clean and pure. I want my air to be clean and pure. Don’t you want your air to be clean and pure too? It makes life so much easier if we can all breathe pure clean air. Nice words are so much better!

#dewcrewbooks #reactiveattachmentdisorder #developmentaltraumadisorder #complextraumadisorder #childrensbooks 

Wait...These are Amazing Parents!

     Have you ever looked across a playground and wondered why a certain child is misbehaving in horrible ways while the mother is sitting on the bench looking totally exhausted? I’ll bet your first thought would be to advise the mother of better parenting techniques. Right? I understand because I use to believe the same thoughts and now I know better!

     I attended church every Sunday and was taught to lose myself in service to others. I was taught to love others the way I was supposed to love myself, so of course I reached out to take two of the most adorable children in the world into my home as my own. I did not understand they had trauma related disturbances to work through. I did not understand how much work it would take to teach them security. I did not know the extent of the emotional injuries they had endured, or how it had affected their brains, or how it would affect the way they would react to my way of doing life. My life became a whirlwind of doctor and therapy appointments for my two youngest children and left very little time for anything else. I lost precious moments with my husband, other children, close relatives, extended relatives and friends. It was the most isolated time of my life. It is pretty common for ladies in these situations to lose their husband to another woman but I was one of the lucky ones and mine stayed.

      I’ll never forget the day that my little six-year-old wanted to ride a new bike. I dressed my child appropriately for the adventure including a helmet. I checked the empty street and went to get my lemonade so I could sit on the porch and watch over my child, I wasn’t gone for more than a minute and there was a woman standing on my front porch when I came back. If looks could have killed I would be dead. She yelled at me and pointed at the bike in the street in front of her car! She was mad I had not put a helmet on my child… but I had put a helmet on my child! It was soon after the experience I realized the child was suicidal at the young age of six-years-old. (It would be normal for the reader to think, “Why did she leave to get the lemonade?” Right? It’s so typical for the human mind to want to judge situations.) Most kids would not throw the helmet off and purposely ride a bike in front of an oncoming car. Apparently, the experiment was more important to this child than safety. What will happen if the car hits me? There were many more experiments with pain for this poor kid. I barely survived all the attempts this child performed against the fragile little body. I found it literally impossible to keep the child safe and it was the most exhausting way to live. I survived raising my last two children but I watch as other parents go through the same ordeals with their kids and try to advocate for them because nobody was there for me.

      Let me explain how hard parenting is when a child doesn’t feel the need to attach to their world, or new family, I would guess there’s nothing to lose. Special toys don’t seem to bring the same joy other children feel. Roasting marshmallows by the fire can seem pretty boring if the child’s mind is spinning out of control. Most movies are filled with emotionally based lessons and these kids are having a really hard time understanding their own emotions to worry about whether they are hurting other people’s feelings or try to figure out the emotions of others… so movies don’t go over well. There are so many ordeals these marvelous parents go through while raising a marvelous child from traumatic backgrounds. I can’t even mention some of the other adventures we endure but we have our private Facebook support groups for those moments because other people would not believe us, understand us or they would judge us. As parents we find ways to help each other keep the unconditional love going for these kids. It’s really hard teaching children how to love and bond!

     Please be nice to these poor burned out parents. They are amazing and give up so much to help these wonderful kids. Next time you see the exhausted mom sitting on the bench at the park buy her a soft drink and tell her to keep up the great work she is doing to help her child! 

#dewcrewbooks #childrensbooks #reactiveattachmentdisorder #developmentaltraumadisorder #complextraumadisorder

Why Do Hurt People Hurt Themselves?

     Have you ever heard the statement, “Hurt people hurt people”? I’ve heard it in the support groups I belong to but I’d like to change it to, “Hurt people hurt themselves”.

     I’ll never forget the day I was walking through a store with my youngest children and three young men passed us in the isle. They all had extreme piercings, lots of tattoos and some really interesting hair styles. One boy wore twelve-inch purple spikes on top of his head and his sides were buzzed completely bald. They also wore leather in the hot summer with chains drooping down their sides. This experience was about twenty years ago when the styles were a little strange to me for that period of time; in this time period it’s just accepted as individuality, but back then it was a major statement! My little ones were filled with wonder as they watched them looking through the merchandise. They seemed to identify with those young men in some way. As I watched the boys I wondered why they wanted to wear their pain so noticeably. The piercings had to hurt, the tattoos were apparently another sign of bravery, the chains…what did they represent for these boys? Chained to pain? As I watched those boys all I could think of was their pain! I also saw a young man in the newspaper who had killed people and he had tattoos all over his face. He looked pretty scary. It seemed to me as if he had tattooed his face to scare people away. Young people today have even taken the next step to the pain of branding themselves.

     Our world is getting a bit crazier all the time. One night I was watching a talent show on television and there were three people on stage doing extremely painful things to their bodies in front of the judges and the judges were grimacing as they watched. The audience was screaming as they watched. Why would we do this as a civilization? Why would these people come to a talent show to do that? In my opinion I believe it has something to do with Reactive Attachment Disorder and Adverse Childhood Experiences. Some brain injuries can dull the nervous system within the body. 

     Most Reactive Attachment Disordered children are often drawn to gory situations. They like to pick at their scabs and watch the blood run down their legs, they cut themselves with razors, tattoo, burn or brand themselves and take foreign substances into their bodies without thinking about the consequences of how it will affect their lifespan. Why? I’m still trying to figure it out! It seems like they are almost experimenting to see what other people are feeling. There were times I thought they were just trying to gross me out so I would stop trying to attach to them, but I keep coming back to the thought that they are trying to find out why other people can be happy or feel things they do not know how to feel. This life is full of experiences to learn from one another. If you are one of those people trying to understand your pain, I hope you will consider thinking about why you want to feel pain? It could be a step in the right direction to ask yourself why? There are many people who want to help.

#dewcrewbooks #childrensbooks #reactiveattachmentdisorder #developmentaltraumadisorder #complextraumadisorder