Kathryn

My husband and I were married ten years before we had any children. We both wanted a large family and after several miscarriages, adopted an infant girl who is now almost sixteen. Three years later we adopted an infant boy. Shortly after his adoption, I retired and we left Manhattan for a very rural area on the eastern shore of Maryland. We became very active with foster care and had dozens of children stay with us for anywhere from two days to two years. All of them were eventually reunited with their birth families or moved on in the system. In early 1995, our social worker asked us to take in a sibling group of four as an emergency placement. It turned into a permanent placement and we adopted all four in 1997. . Although I had no name for it, I realized that the two boys (4 and 6 at placement) were seriously damaged, but their psychiatrist and counsellors all believed that time and love were all they needed. Once the adoption was final, I was free to seek real help. I had to accept their doctor's advice or risk his opposition to the adoption. It took over a year before I even heard the words attachment disorder. By that time, both boys had been banned from the school bus, suspended from school a dozen or more times and I had spent countless hours in useless therapy. Apparently, there was a show on attachment disorder on TV that I missed, but at least ten people called the next day to say that they had seen a show about my two boys. I had words now that I could research on the web. Unfortunately, this part of the country is sorely lacking in treatment resources for this disorder. I didn’t find a psychiatrist within a two hour drive who had ever diagnosed the disorder until early 1999 and he did not treat the disorder. The younger boy responded well to the Nancy Thomas parenting techniques at home, but continued to be a problem for the school. His older brother also improved, but to a much lesser extent. Although I spend many hours at the school, attempting to educate the educators, and went through the whole ARD process, the system decided that both boys just needed more time and more understanding – they did not qualify for any special services.

The situation came to a head while I was in the hospital having brain surgery in April of 1999. The older boy went off totally in my absence and my estranged husband slapped him in his effort to pry him off his sister who he was strangling. Social Services stepped in and removed the boy, charged my husband with criminal child abuse and charged me with negligence ( the boy had broken several windows, punched holes in the walls and peed all over his roo, due (I believe) to my absence. They also thought he didn't have enough "things". He was placed in a foster home, moved to another when he attacked one of the other children, moved from the second home when he verbally attacked the mother, moved from the next therapeutic foster home when he attacked another child and finally ended up in a residential treatment facility for evaluation. The psychiatrist there finally diagnosed him with RAD, but he was not treated because they felt they needed to deal with his post tramatic stress, depression and "mood disorder" first. He was first admitted in October of 1999 and was later moved from an evaluation cottage to a more permanent cottage, where he continued to assault staff and other children. After a full year, the facility decided they could not help him and social services moved him to a regular foster home. Although I am being pressured to visit with him, since "he misses you so much and loves you", but I am unwilling to visit him in a non therapeutic setting and his therapists are unwilling to facilitate this kind of arrangement. Also, I have been diagnosed with cervical cancer and have enough on my plate with five other children.
On the home front, I am now home schooling the other RAD and two of the other children … mainly to protect them from the school here and social services. The younger RAD is still receiving no treatment for his disorder, but the techniques I have learned from this board and the books recommended here have helped enormously and he is steadily improving. After twenty months, I finally got my appeal hearing and the judge ruled out neglect ... good for vindication, but way too late for my son.