Mac

My husband and I are the proud parents of five children, one bio, four adopted. My oldest son is 22, and my other son is ten. On October 31, 1997 a sibling group of three were placed in our home. At that time, the oldest girl was six, her brother three and their baby sister was ten months old. Our honeymoon period lasted until after Christmas, and by Februrary, I began my search for information to help me understand the behaviors of the two oldest sibs. Olivia would hit anything that moved, she had extreme temper tantrums, she cut holes in her clothes, cut her hair, lied profusely, and hovered around me. She was so bossy. Bob, on the other hand, refused to eat, sleep, or poop. He also had verbal and oral apraxia and couldn't speak, but boy could he whine!!! He directed most of his anger and aggression towards the baby. At first my husband didn't believe the things I was saying about these kids, but he soon discovered for himself, that I wasn't making it up. We found a wonderful therapist who is the adoptive mother of five children, three with RAD. She gave me a copy of a book written by Nancy Thomas, and gave me a list of books to read. Once we began seeing her on a regular basis, things started to make sense. That's when our troubles began. Our oldest girl was telling terrible lies about us, we were child-lined for abuse too many times to count. Investigation after investigation proved unfounded. We ended up hiring a lawyer to fight for our reputations and for the right to keep all of our children. It was a scary time, but in the end we won and the sibs adoption was finalized Oct. 23, 1999. This past year, Bob became extremely aggressive with his siblings. He has tried to kill the baby three times, and has tried to kill his older sister. He has killed our cats, puched holes in the walls in his room, he began peeing on everything in his room, he lied, stole. And I couldn't trust him around his sister because he began molesting her EVERY chance he got. It was very draining having him here, and we fought real hard to get him into an Attatchment orientated RTF program. Oddly enough, he was place there on Oct. 31, 2000. The original anniversay of his placement. For the first six weeks or so, he refused to take any responsibility for his actions. He told me he hate me, and that he didn't like living her. He tried to run away from RTF several times and was even brought back once by the police. Meanwhile, at home,we were all discovered how much time and energy Bob took away from us. It seemed back then, that his main goal in life was to keep everyone in the house angry. I don't ever want to go back to living like that. We have been blessed to have had the opportunities of working with Dan Hughes and Holly Van Gulden and our original therapist, who has done everything possible to help my son heal. I am proud to say, that he has made allot of progress in RTF and will be coming home Feb. 11, 2001. I know his coming home is going to be a big adjustment for us all, and I am hoping that I have the strength to deal with him, I am sure there will be setbacks but we now have a place to start on his healing.
Olivia has regressed so much since Bob was placed in RTF. She is back to the lying, hitting, hovering, she talks back allot, is bossy and manipulative. It is hard living with her, she was doing so well. As for their baby sister, she is doing just fine. She is such a sweet wonderful child, and there were times when she was the only bright spot in my whole day. She is four now, has no sign of RAD, but she can do a real mean imitation! As for my ten year old son, I feel so guilty about having put him thru so much grief for the past three years. I can't say that he has missed out on too much, but some of the activities we do are often sabotaged by Olivia. There have been days when I have wondered why I chose to keep parenting my RADS, and then there are days when I know deep in my heart that I am doing the right thing. It's been so hard, but we are making progress, we really are.