Fractured Families

I am an early riser. Always have been. Even when on vacation I get up long before everybody else, and this past vacation was no different. It was maybe 7:30am when I was standing in the lake up to my waist, with a cup of coffee in my hand, enjoying the beauty and quiet when I realized it really wasn’t all that quiet. Jet skis were zipping around like flies and the ski boats were starting up. That’s when it hit me – society has come a long way from the “simple days”. Don’t get me wrong – I like boating and riding a jet ski as much as the next person, and this isn’t an anti-fun posting, just an observation that was triggered by these.



View of the moon rising over our campsite

“It takes a village to raise a child” – people often regurgitate that quote without really realizing just how true it is (although I personally prefer Christine Moers' quote "It takes a village to keep a special needs parent from jumping off the roof"). People have always been nomadic, but they used to travel in groups and everybody would help raising the children. The trend these days is for families to split apart with people moving in all different directions. Which is great, until you have the over-stressed parent who has to work because the family needs the income and he/she can’t adequately care for her child. Since the family is nowhere nearby, they can’t help out and the child potentially misses out on critical bonding / care which is needed during the early years. Don’t get me wrong, there are some wonderful caretakers out there, and many people ARE capable of raising a happy/healthy/well adjusted child even with both parents working and no family around. But there will always be those children that, for whatever reason, simply don’t get the attention they need to develop those brain connections. This doesn’t even have to be work related – it could be the stay at home mother with post-natal depression, or a single father with severe emotional or mental issues, or any other of a number of reasons the baby doesn’t get enough bonding time.

Please don’t take this as bashing women who work, or stay-at-home dads, or anything else of the kind. Every family situation is different and people do what works for them – unfortunately, there are those who have to do what they have to do, and even with the best intentions, their children can suffer for it.

So what is the answer? I don’t know. I don’t have the answers (sometimes I feel like I don’t have any answers at all!). However, it does strike me as coincidental(?) that as The Family becomes more fractured and mobile in our society, the incidences of child mental health issues is on the rise. I just sometimes wonder if our “progress” is really that or just the opposite….

First day of school jitters...

Ahhh the first day of school. I don't care if you're 5, 10, or 15 - the first day of school as I remember it, was always full of excitement and apprehension. It is certainly no less so today. Both RAD and ODD head back to school today and I think RAD is more excited about it than ODD. RAD wasn't looking forward to school because her and her boyfriend had broken up and she didn't want to "face (boyfriend) and (case worker)". Not sure why she had a problem facing her case worker at her school, but she seemed more apprehensive about that than facing the boyfriend she just broke up with. Regardless, it appears she has made up with the boyfriend.

ODD on the other hand doesn't seem to be taking the return to school well at all. At the end of last year most (if not all) of her friends turned on her and she spent much of the summer alone. I did double check and neither of the girls she dislikes the most will be in her homeroom so she's happy about that. But after her grades plummeted last year from A's to a C average, we're looking at getting her into some better after school tutoring. Usually it's RAD who has trouble with transitions and that may come up over the next week or two (especially since she just returned from grandmas yesterday), but I guess if our kids were totally predictable we wouldn't be having so much fun, right?

Vacation over.....

Somehow we survived. RAD returns today (yay!) and ODD is still sleeping. Sunburned and sore we had a great time, and while I missed RAD the entire time, it was nice to have a break from the diabetes management. Hopefully she won't return without ODDs birthday present from grandma. Nothing could be worse. ODD is convinced grandma likes RAD better - even though grandma tries to talk to ODD and ODD won't come to the phone, refuses to do anything with grandma, etc - making it really difficult for grandma to establish a relationship with ODD. I don't know how to get it through to ODD that you can't really ignore/blow off/be mean to somebody and then complain that you don't think they like you. You'd think at her age she would get that but she seems to feel she can treat people as nasty as she wants and it's their duty to go out of their way to show her how much they like her?

Thankfully she isn't like this (much) at school. Oh wait.. actually she is - she has trouble keeping friends because... well... I don't know why - all I know is that she takes every little slight personally, even when it has nothing at all to do with her.

And school starts tomorrow. This should be fun!

Vacation Time!

Hooray! Today my youngest returns from a week-long trip visiting her auntie. I must say, it has been very quiet at home with her away and no RAD vs ODD competition for.. well.. whatever they compete over (which seems to be just about everything at times!). But as quiet as it has been, I’m excited to have her return. Next week is RADs turn to be gone so we should enjoy another week of relative quiet before school starts. Of course, this being the final week of summer before school starts up again, I am off to spend it in the mountains (RAD doesn’t like camping which is why she’s going to grandmas) where I can recharge. All parents need to recharge from time to time – that IS why we have grandparents isn’t it? RAD parents are no different as you can see from the photos below:


A typical RAD parent at the beginning of the day




Typical RAD parent by the end of the day


So anyway, this will be my time to disconnect from technology and reconnect with nature so I this is going to be my last post until I return. Enjoy your summer wherever you are.

And enjoy your kids – this is the last time they will be this young.

A RAD Adventure #1

Ah yes, the wonders of RAD never cease to amaze me. My RAD is a master at manipulation and triangulation, and when she combines it with other symptoms it can get quite fun at times. Ok, perhaps “fun” isn’t the right word, but it’ll work for now. Let’s take stealing for example. One of the biggies for RADs is they will steal something even if they can have it just for the asking. Ok, so maybe I can get it if I take a moment to pause and reflect on how their brain works. After all, they got used to fending for themselves and learned that asking for things didn’t get them the results they needed. So they look out for #1.

At one point, the stealing got so bad at home that I decided to do what many parents would, and took her to the local police station. This was before I had any grasp of the concept of RAD and how these kids worked so I didn’t realize I was walking into the lions den.

Mistake #1: Taking her to the police station at all. A scary place for most kids, especially when they know they are going to get a “talking to” by an officer for something they did that they know is wrong. But for a RAD? What’s the point? Taking a child who lives with an undercurrent of fear to begin with and purposely putting her into a fear-filled situation is certainly no way to gain the trust needed to make headway in the long run, and in fact actually makes the situation worse as this pushes them further down into their mammalian brain and away from the cortex where logic is processed.

Mistake #2: Allowing the officers to speak with her alone. Here I thought perhaps they could gain some insight into her thinking and pass that along to me if I wasn’t there to stifle her. I figured she would be more open and honest without me in the room since we had already spent 30 minutes or so not getting anywhere. Boy was I wrong! If there is one thing I’ve learned about RADs, never ever leave them alone with an adult in any position of authority. They will triangulate and play the pity card like you’ve never seen.


Cool abalone shell? nah, just my empty coffee cup...

Needless to say, I have no idea what transpired in that room that night. All I know is when they walked out of there 45 minutes later, both officers had given RAD their direct phone numbers with instructions to "call anytime" she wanted to talk. What did I get out of it? Nasty looks and derisive stares as though I was some sort of evil monkey. Not just from those two officers either. By the time we got to the front door, it seemed like every officer in that station was shooting me daggers from their eyes.

Ah yes… I didn’t understand it at first when people ‘in the know’ told me that when it comes to parenting a RAD, you have to take everything you’ve learned about parenting and turn it around, upside down, and inside out if you expect to make a difference.

I just wish somebody had told the cops that.

They Are Out There....

So I’m getting off the elevator at work and I run into a coworker who works from home. He has his son with him, who I never knew had Down Syndrome. This got me to thinking. There are far more children out there with special needs than we, as people, have any idea about. I don’t know the statistics for other special needs children, but while researching attachment issues I did run across these according to the Adverse Childhood Experiences study by Kaiser Permanente & the CDC:

11% emotionally abused
30% physically abused
20% sexually abused
13% witnessed mothers being battered
23.5% exposed to family alcohol abuse
18.8% exposed to family mental illness
4.9% exposed to family drug abuse

While I’m sure there is plenty of overlap between the groups (i.e. children who witness their mothers being battered are likely physically abused themselves), the numbers are still pretty startling to me. Of course, not all children in those situations will grow up with attachment issues – far from it in fact. But children who do NOT grow up with such exposure are much less likely to develop issues.

I was reading some other statistics that claim approximately 50% of adopted children suffer attachment issues to some degree, and they are joined by 28% of the children in foster care. I don’t remember where I saw those statistics but regardless, the point is they are out there. Chances are you’ve met them. If you haven’t met them, you likely know their parents but just don’t know it.

So if your child does have attachment issues, rest assured you aren’t alone. If yours doesn’t have attachment issues, you’ve most likely met one (or his/her parents). If you think you haven’t, think again – most children with attachment issues appear just as normal as other kids to outsiders. Remember, RADs can (and frequently will) appear superficially charming to strangers and are often so manipulative the adult will never know what hit them (we call it ‘RADsnacking’ since they are so adept at chewing you up and spitting you out when done with you).

My point? If you know of a parent whose child(ren) seem out of control, offer your support. Don’t criticize, and don’t judge. You don’t know what they are going through. Perhaps you can offer to babysit for them (All RAD parents need respite!), or just go help with shopping or whatever. All special needs parents who are able to occasionally step back and regroup are in a far better position to effectively parent their children, which benefits us all in the long run.

Hugs n Stuff....

Last Friday my wife came home really upset over some things that had happened at work. And I think anybody would have been upset – if we could afford for her to stop working, I would tell her to quit right now. But we can’t (yet), so she has to try and push through it.

But that isn’t the point here. The point is what happened next. She was sitting at the table when RAD came over and gave her a genuine hug. A truly genuine hug with no ulterior motive. If you don’t have a RAD at home, this may seem like nothing special to you, but for those of you with RADs.. well… you know what I’m talking about! It’s rare moments like these that give us hope and the strength to carry on with what sometimes seems an impossible task.

I’ll admit. There are times when I see other happy families out and about, with happy children who hang on / hug / hold hands with their parents and I have my moments of jealousy. These parents who take such things for granted while us RAD parents struggle for any glimpse of empathy or emotion at times. If they only knew how good they have it! But then I look at my girls and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Every family has its good and bad times. It’s just that with RADs, the bad times have this naughty habit of outnumbering the good. But then my head clears and I can step back and realize just how GOOD we do have it. For non-RAD parents, a hug is just a hug. A hand hold is just a hand hold. But for us, it’s an amazing event. It’s so unexpected and unusual and means soooo much more if it happens only once per week. Much like when you’re on a diet – that slice of chocolate cake that you allow yourself once a week seems to taste just that much better. So it is with our RADs holding our hands (regardless of whether they are covered in chocolate or not!) or giving us a hug.

So the next time your child comes to give you a hug, hold them a little longer, a little tighter, and appreciate the gift you’re being given – I know I cherish them... Every. Single. One.