Baker's Dozen ~ public school!

[Zoom]

Most PEOPLE have done one of those things at some point in their life.

I am a high school teacher*, I saw some of those behviours this past WEEK doesn't mean I am ready to call the therapists.

*my students come from middle/working class families, are generally motivated students and none of them have behaviour problems that can't be cured by a talking to.

[emmiedahl]

One of the things I remember Nancy Thomas talking a lot about was tomato-staking behavior, although I don't remember if she used that term. The child had to be with the mother constantly, even if it meant not going to school or therapies. The child was not allowed to do anything, even going to the bathroom or getting a drink of water, without the mother's permission. They were forced to make eye contact and show affection even if they were uncomfortable with it.

It sucks, and I don't think this would help anyone.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

The quackwatch page Burris linked really points out the creepiness. It's worth a read but the essence is pretty well distilled in this little snippet about how the "attachment therapists" describe the supposed "attachment disorder":

Phrases such as, "superficially charming and engaging" are used to nullify any positive relations the child has with others as being unreal and manipulative. "Lack the ability to give and receive genuine affection or love" allows another (in most cases parent or therapist) to determine what genuine affection and love are, completely undermining the child's ability to recognize and/or exhibit such emotions. Notice, too, that the child's acting out is said to provoke "anger in others." The theory claims that on one hand the child is out-of-control and unable to be responsible for him or herself and on the other hand the child is responsible for the feelings and actions of the caretakers. Thus instead of investigating the caretakers' role in family discord, ATs blame the adults' feelings on the child placed in their care.

It goes on to point out that some of the diagnostic criteria are based on the PARENTS' behavior, including the parents feeling frustrated that mainstream psychology professionals don't seem to take them and their complaints about the kid seriously - surely the kid is evilly manipulating that situation to put the parents in that uncomfortable position, because they're just THAT damn crafty.

Actual "reactive attachment disorder" is a thing, it's in the DSM, but the "attachment disorder" latched on to by this "attachment therapy" industry is something else, and in particular the "treatments" for it are not accepted by actual professionals.

Just reading around in the google binge this morning it seems too that this "attachment disorder" is another one of those things that get self-diagnosed all over the place by parents who are upset that their adopted kids aren't grateful, don't understand that kids need to grieve, and/or have "mouthy" kids for whatever reason, and then the parents rush to these quacky "therapies" that are leading to actual child abuse - but just like the Pearls and Dobson and the rest, the boiled down essence of it all seems to be this idea that the kids are in a battle of wills with the parents, you should pick battles with your kid ON PURPOSE to set those battles up, and then make sure your kid loses every time, to break his will. They're big on "make the kid sit silently for long periods for no particular reason just to show him that you are in charge" too.

And yeah Nancy Thomas is all about restricting all human interaction with kids in the beginning, restrict the interaction ONLY to the new parents (or the mom), never letting the kid out of your sight, specifically recommending homeschooling as a way to achieve that. Only when the kid submits fully to Mom, then he's allowed to interact with other people.

[chaotic life]

I'm not going to argue this point. I have a child fully healed from RAD in my home. Some of the behaviors are normal behaviors, many are not. I never used Thomas' techiques in my home except her recipe for sweet milk. Using sucking reflex and the bonding promoting hormones of sweets is something I have used with preschoolers (not those who were older than that).

I don't use her techniques and I don't recommend them. While I have seen her information used in vile manners, it has always been my impression that her interactions with hurting children was different than others applying others applying her techniques. However, my only personal interactions with her have been via email convesations and not face to face meeting, and what information she did give me I found completely useless and inapplicable to my situation. I've seen state CPS departments recommend Thomas' work to foster and adoptive parents. Not everyone agrees she is vile necessarily.

As for RAD, I won't discuss the subject online. I will only state that I have lived it in the trenches. I have recognized it as the cry of hurt and distrust from a scared and hurting child and I have held my child until he felt safe and believed in my life. I have done that through behaviors that were NOT "normal" behaviors, and I have done it without taking it personally that he displayed those bheaivors (though it is VERY hard to not take it personally sometimes when it is meant personally but for reasons that actually have nothing to do with you).

I have also parented another child with attachment disorder, not full blown RAD, who only attached to me months before his own death. Through him I learned how hard it is to love a child who long-term never, ever reciprocates that love because they are too scared to love or trust him. Loving a child who does not love you is one of the hardest challenges of parenting I have ever faced. Unless you have experienced it personally from your own child, you cannot even imagine what it is like to endure.

I've spent a decade providing peer support to adoptive parents who struggle with attachment issues and the subsequent behaviors that creates. There's a reason I prefer Dr. Post's information. I highly recommend Deborah Grey's work to parents, as it focuses on creating bonding experiences to help a child heal and not focusing on the behaviors themselves.

I will share ONE story that summed up my years helping my son heal. Once upon a time, he was folding the laundry and was carefully placing one article of clothing on each inch of the living room instead of putting them in like ordered piles. You could not find the living room floor and it was rather maddening. DH came home from work and asked me why the child was doing it that way. I informed him said child was doing it because it pissed me off. Dh informed me that I sounded paranoid and why did I think that was his reasoning. I told him because that is what said child told me when I ASKED him why he was folding like that.

The basic issue with attachment disorders is that a child does not trust the adults in their life to love them and to protect them, and thus they push the adult away so that they don't get hurt by trusting someone yet again. It is the job and FULL responsibility of the parent not to create bonding via Stockholm Syndrome but by wooing and protecting and giving their heart to that child until the child eventually learns to trust the love and protection of that parent. Some children AND some parents never get to that conclusion point. I think most of the time when parents fail, they fail to understand exactly how deeply you MUST WOO your child with love and safety and that there is absolutely NO easy path to that healing. Furthermore, you must do that when they are NOT loving towards you and thus you don't really feel like you *want* to woo them.

It is easy to pick up a sweet, cuddly toddler who snuggles into your shoulder and tells you they love you. It's entirely another thing to hold a stiff, angry older child who tells you they hate you and doesn't want you to be their mother. You cannot FORCE that holding, which is where attachment parents often does take a wrong turn (including Thomas). Instead, you have to get as close they will tolerate and continue to TRY and touch and hold them and shower praise upon them. And, you have to keep coming back when they rejected you over and over and over again.

When I've been met with the greatest hate, I prefer to use M&Ms and ice cream. Even the most angry child is usually willing to endure small measures of touch and the shower of praise that comes if they get sweets but they have to let mom give those sweets and they hear the praise even if they are trying to avoid it. Even if you cannot accomplish big lap cuddles in that manner, you can get small measures of touch, of eye contact and of praise towards healing without pushing, without freaking the child out and without placing the burden of their healing upon the child themselves.

[chaotic life]

The recommendation of not allowing the chid to have lots of interaction outside of the adoptive parents intially is NOT exclusive to Thomas, nor is that a horrible concept.

An adoptee comes into the home and is a stranger to you, and more importantly you are a stranger to THEM. Just like you don't pass your newborn infant to every stranger who wants to interact, you don't pass your new adoptee around for everyone to play with. The poor child doesn't know who mom and dad ARE and if you don't limit their interaction, they aren't going to know. Lots of adults having lots of interactions don't provide security and certainly don't help the child settle in and feel safe. While you are doing the dance to go from stranger to mom, absolutely, positively you need to make sure the primary interaction the child has MOM.

This is not about Thomas, this is about good adoption practices. Every expert on adoption stresses this need. It's not about neglecting the child. The parents should be having LOTS of interaction and bonding with the children. They just shouldn't be having everyone and their brother so that the child doesn't know who is just visiting and who is actually here to stay and parent.

The concept of keeping a child near you with poor behavior is the same, which doesn't apply to just adoptees. A child struggling with behaviors should remain near a parent, both to intervene when poor behaviors occur before they escalate and to provide lots of positive interactions with the child to help whatever struggles they are having which are causing the poor behaviors.

It's only if you assume negativity and punishment to these actions that you see them as negative actions.

Limiting a child to mostly interacting with the new parents is not about not letting them have a LIFE but not confusing them. Keeping a child in line of sight supervision isn't about being close enough to clobber them if they mess up but being able to redirect behaviors when they start and well before the parent is frustrated as wel as providing opportunities for positive attention and praise.

I'm confused how those are somehow NOT good for children.

When my bio-toddler starts tantruming and hitting people, my immediate reaction is to ALWAYS call him to me. I scoop him and cuddle him and kiss him. I find that if he is tantruming and being physically aggressive he is frustrated and likely feeling distress from that frustration. I've rarely encountered a situation where giving him that attention to calm down hasn't worked with him.

[Burris]

I'm not going to argue this point. I have a child fully healed from RAD in my home. Some of the behaviors are normal behaviors, many are not. I never used Thomas' techiques in my home except her recipe for sweet milk. Using sucking reflex and the bonding promoting hormones of sweets is something I have used with preschoolers (not those who were older than that).

I don't use her techniques and I don't recommend them. While I have seen her information used in vile manners, it has always been my impression that her interactions with hurting children was different than others applying others applying her techniques. However, my only personal interactions with her have been via email convesations and not face to face meeting, and what information she did give me I found completely useless and inapplicable to my situation. I've seen state CPS departments recommend Thomas' work to foster and adoptive parents. Not everyone agrees she is vile necessarily.

It seems, first of all, that you did not read my first link – nor, perhaps, the second link. From the Quackwatch article:

Watkins is referred to by her maiden name (Cooil) in an autobiography written by Nancy Thomas, whom she mentored. (Mercer, personal communication, 2003)

To recap, Watkins was one of the two “trained†individuals in charge of Candace Newmaker when she died. So now that we have that, “They were doin' it wrong because they were not mentored by Nancy Thomas†shit out of the way, let's move...actually, no; let's not move on yet. First, let us turn our attention to the correct way to hold down a child for hours at a time and scream obscenities at him or her, while inflicting pain or some other form of distress in an effort to, er, provoke rage:

[A] Utah group lead by Larry Van Bloem, sought to achieve a separate licensure status in the state of Utah for ATs. On hand to speak against the proposal were, the Utah Medical Association, Utah Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, Utah Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, Utah Psychology Association, National Association for Consumer Protection in Mental Health Practices, American Association for the Humane Treatment of Children in Therapy (now called Advocates for Children in Therapy), and a psychiatrist who read the APA policy against holding therapy.

Appears there isn't one.

As for RAD, I won't discuss the subject online. I will only state that I have lived it in the trenches.

Actually, you will discuss the subject online; you're doing it right now. You just won't discuss it long enough to either make or defend a real point.

I have recognized it as the cry of hurt and distrust from a scared and hurting child and I have held my child until he felt safe and believed in my life.

What the does this mean?

I have also parented another child with attachment disorder, not full blown RAD, who only attached to me months before his own death.

Sorry to hear about your loss. I'm wondering, though - did you know these kids had "attachment issues" before you fostered or adopted them?

Loving a child who does not love you is one of the hardest challenges of parenting I have ever faced.

A challenge you chose to face.

Choice. There's a thing Candace Newmaker never got. It's something the kids you adopted never really got, either. Their parents chose to abuse/neglect them. The system chose how to house and help them. You chose to undertake that task by whatever method some of these "experts" came up with for dealing with abused kids. Those kids themselves - no choices whatsoever.

I will share ONE story that summed up my years helping my son heal. Once upon a time, he was folding the laundry and was carefully placing one article of clothing on each inch of the living room instead of putting them in like ordered piles. You could not find the living room floor and it was rather maddening. DH came home from work and asked me why the child was doing it that way. I informed him said child was doing it because it pissed me off.

A kid folded laundry and piled it all over just to piss you off...

Dh informed me that I sounded paranoid and why did I think that was his reasoning. I told him because that is what said child told me when I ASKED him why he was folding like that.

...and then he sassed you - you, who were quite possibly the latest in a string of would-be parents.

To believe Nancy Thomas would require that I see that behavior as just one turn removed from serial killing.

It is the job and FULL responsibility of the parent not to create bonding via Stockholm Syndrome but by wooing and protecting and giving their heart to that child until the child eventually learns to trust the love and protection of that parent.

Then perhaps you should speak out against the 'Thomas Method' rather than taking an 'each to her own' approach to the subject.

Some children AND some parents never get to that conclusion point.

It is not a child's job to meet the emotional needs of her parents. Parents who knowingly adopt kids with so-called attachment issues - more accurately described as being children with good survival instincts - should be told that fact over and over until it sinks in.

Thomas doesn't do that. In fact the diagnostic language talks about how children make their parents feel.

I think most of the time when parents fail, they fail to understand exactly how deeply you MUST WOO your child with love and safety and that there is absolutely NO easy path to that healing.

No easy path. That's right. But you refuse to condemn those who pretend that such a path does exist; those who, while holding themselves out as experts, charge extravagant sums of money for the time they spend forming pain-and-fear based trauma-bonds with the children that should be able to trust them.

Furthermore, you must do that when they are NOT loving towards you and thus you don't really feel like you *want* to woo them.

Thomas takes shortcuts. Her students take them as well.

It's entirely another thing to hold a stiff, angry older child who tells you they hate you and doesn't want you to be their mother. You cannot FORCE that holding, which is where attachment parents often does take a wrong turn (including Thomas). Instead, you have to get as close they will tolerate and continue to TRY and touch and hold them and shower praise upon them. And, you have to keep coming back when they rejected you over and over and over again.

Why would or should any abused child snuggle up to and thank a new caregiver? Why would any caregiver who passed muster with a legit agency expect that ever - let alone according to some adult-directed schedule, fast or slow?

People who adopt – and especially people who adopt older or/and foreign-born children - are choosing kids with pasts of their own.

Newmaker's mother gave Candace a new name and spent a ton of money on trying to make the girl love her under the mistaken impression that the evil done to a kid can simply be erased – if not by love, then at least by a level of force that requires yet more abuse.

[lovefromgirl]

Last I checked, the Hive Vagina actually had many and varied opinions on many and varied subjects. If I'm reading this correctly, chaotic life is at fault for... what, focusing on her kids and their successes over decrying someone else?

It's one thing to educate those who would use Thomas's methods, but CL appears not to want to do that. She's figured it out. Why preach to the choir? If anything, child safety services (CPS/OCFS/what have you) ought to be the ones hearing all this.

[guidedbybobafett]

Excellent points, Burris. :clap:

[lilah]

I work at a school where there are many kids who are in foster care, or are in situations that might warrant them being removed from their families. I defiantly see some of the RAD behaviors in them. They often had difficult time with authority figures like teachers, they didn't understand how to have appropriate relationships with adults. One of them I really worry about because she is so emotionally needy and I worry she's going to be taken advantage of by predators.

[Burris]

Last I checked, the Hive Vagina actually had many and varied opinions on many and varied subjects. If I'm reading this correctly, chaotic life is at fault for... what, focusing on her kids and their successes over decrying someone else?

For failing to decry obvious evil rather than tip-toing around it so as not to offend those parents who decided to use this horseshit over less abusive methods?

Thank you for showing me the error of my ways. I am much bitch.

If anything, child safety services (CPS/OCFS/what have you) ought to be the ones hearing all this.

They should know this already. See all those professional organizations I listed who condemn Thomas' brand of "therapy" and have been doing so for over a decade at the least?

This is not fucking rocket science: Whether the line between therapy and abuse is thick or thin, it has obviously been crossed here.

[emmiedahl]

Chaotic life, Nancy Thomas does not recommend having the child spend most of their time with the adoptive parents. She recommends that they spend ALL of their time, not going to school or therapy or playgroups or even playing with their siblings. All time must be spent with the parent until the child begins making eye contact and snuggling on demand. They cannot even go to the restroom of their own accord. The new parent tells them when they may, and waits outside the door for them.

At the conference, she recommended holding an older child down and literally smothering them with affection, pouring sweet milk or pushing caramels into their mouth. Continue for hours, every day, until they learn to be as affectionate and grateful as the new parents expect.

Lots of CPS agencies give out her materials because foster parents have been told that she is the shizz and thus demand them. The event that I ran was through a foster parent education agency funded by CPS. We paid her as keynote speaker because the parents asked for it and were shocked by what she told them. She is offering a "sure fix" and a seemingly simple formula for curing RAD, defining RAD as any behavior not expressly approved by the new parents. Or, just the parents having a bad feeling--note how Thomas considers being too sweet a symptom of RAD. We got rid of her books after that and distributed information on why she was wrong. I had just been hired and handed an event that I knew nothing about, so I was not in the planning stages so much as the aftermath. This was more than a decade ago, also. What she was teaching was dangerous and a child died at the hands of one of her trained "therapists" just days before the conference happened. It was easy to see how that child died and that others would die if people took Thomas's advice. She did not feel that her methods were responsible, but the methods she described were identical to those that killed the child. Identical down to the punctuation.

Nancy Thomas is dangerous. She must be denounced wherever she comes up because what she advocates is abusing an already abused child and doing it in a way that finally breaks them where none of their other abuse can. I am glad you did not use her methods, but I don't understand why you are defending such a reprehensible treatment.

[Witsec7]

Nancy Thomas is dangerous. She must be denounced wherever she comes up because what she advocates is abusing an already abused child and doing it in a way that finally breaks them where none of their other abuse can. I am glad you did not use her methods, but I don't understand why you are defending such a reprehensible treatment.

This^

[wendy-sparkles]

Her typepad site is now password protected. Hi Renee!

[Lemonbalm]

Her typepad site is now password protected. Hi Renee!

I don't think she uses typepad anymore she moved to here: bakersdozenandapolloxiv.com/

[breaker]

I've never heard of Nancy Thomas but I have read quite a bit on attachment disorders and adoption. Is that list of behaviors really just an invention of Thomas and followed by her fundie followers? I feel like I've seen it everywhere, in books by psychiatrists and therapists as well. Isn't it a sort of layman's interpretation of the DSM-IV's criterion for attachment disorder? (for example "not cuddly" sounds like "persistent failure to initiate or respond in a developmentally appropriate fashion to most social interactions", given that most toddlers will give and receive hugs from a caregiver. Before anyone says it, yes I realize it's developmentally appropriate for an adopted toddler to resist hugs from a new caregiver, but in a child who has been raised from birth with the same parents, this should certainly raise a red flag.)

Diagnostic criteria for 313.89 Reactive Attachment Disorder of Infancy or Early Childhood

A. Markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness in most contexts, beginning before age 5 years, as evidenced by either (1) or (2):

(1) persistent failure to initiate or respond in a developmentally appropriate fashion to most social interactions, as manifest by excessively inhibited, hypervigilant, or highly ambivalent and contradictory responses (e.g., the child may respond to caregivers with a mixture of approach, avoidance, and resistance to comforting, or may exhibit frozen watchfulness)

(2) diffuse attachments as manifest by indiscriminate sociability with marked inability to exhibit appropriate selective attachments (e.g., excessive familiarity with relative strangers or lack of selectivity in choice of attachment figures)

B. The disturbance in Criterion A is not accounted for solely by developmental delay (as in Mental Retardation) and does not meet criteria for a Pervasive Developmental Disorder.

C. Pathogenic care as evidenced by at least one of the following:

(1) persistent disregard of the child's basic emotional needs for comfort, stimulation, and affection

(2) persistent disregard of the child's basic physical needs

(3) repeated changes of primary caregiver that prevent formation of stable attachments (e.g., frequent changes in foster care)

D. There is a presumption that the care in Criterion C is responsible for the disturbed behavior in Criterion A (e.g., the disturbances in Criterion A began following the pathogenic care in Criterion C).

Psychiatrists accept that trauma during early childhood can affect the brain's development, so I don't know if it's really fair to say that "so-called attachment issues" could really just be "more accurately described as being children with good survival instincts" as opposed to a maladaptive pattern of social interactions based on deeply embedded changes to the brain.

Apologies in advance if I've misunderstood what anyone is saying. Before this thread I had never heard of Nancy Thomas and her methods sound abusive from what people have been saying. I'm talking separately about RAD as a disorder, since it came up.

[wendy-sparkles]

I don't think she uses typepad anymore she moved to here: bakersdozenandapolloxiv.com/

Her typepad site was where I found the Nancy Thomas recommendations yesterday. Today it is password protected.

[emmiedahl]

I've never heard of Nancy Thomas but I have read quite a bit on attachment disorders and adoption. Is that list of behaviors really just an invention of Thomas and followed by her fundie followers? I feel like I've seen it everywhere, in books by psychiatrists and therapists as well. Isn't it a sort of layman's interpretation of the DSM-IV's criterion for attachment disorder? (for example "not cuddly" sounds like "persistent failure to initiate or respond in a developmentally appropriate fashion to most social interactions", given that most toddlers will give and receive hugs from a caregiver. Before anyone says it, yes I realize it's developmentally appropriate for an adopted toddler to resist hugs from a new caregiver, but in a child who has been raised from birth with the same parents, this should certainly raise a red flag.)

Psychiatrists accept that trauma during early childhood can affect the brain's development, so I don't know if it's really fair to say that "so-called attachment issues" could really just be "more accurately described as being children with good survival instincts" as opposed to a maladaptive pattern of social interactions based on deeply embedded changes to the brain.

Apologies in advance if I've misunderstood what anyone is saying. Before this thread I had never heard of Nancy Thomas and her methods sound abusive from what people have been saying. I'm talking separately about RAD as a disorder, since it came up.

I think one of the key differences is that the DSM-IV addresses things the child does that can be qualitatively measured, while Nancy Thomas's criteria focus on how the parents feel and how they perceive the child's behavior.

[Burris]

I've never heard of Nancy Thomas but I have read quite a bit on attachment disorders and adoption. Is that list of behaviors really just an invention of Thomas and followed by her fundie followers? I feel like I've seen it everywhere, in books by psychiatrists and therapists as well. Isn't it a sort of layman's interpretation of the DSM-IV's criterion for attachment disorder?

As both another poster and the Quackwatch article point out, Nancy Thomas' version of attachment disorder and one in the DSM are different enough:

For one, Thomas mixes in a bunch additional symptoms - for example, ones associated with sociopathy such as superficial charm, an inability to empathize with others, and highly manipulative behavior - that make every kid out there a suspect, such that every answer such a child can give is wrong. Her scare tactics promote the inexpert diagnoses of adoptive parents who might themselves be dysfunctional (but who are in no way held accountable by Thomas and her acolytes for their own emotions).

Back-talk, triangulation, a failure to bond, and even lying: Those are all specific survival adaptations abused people develop to avoid further abuse. In some contexts, at certain ages, they're even normal boundary-testing behaviors in children. Fuck: Office politics is filled with that petty bullshit as employed by adults.

Read. The. Quackwatch. Article.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Exactly - part of the danger is that RAD is a real thing, and actual qualified people do have advice on it (which is very different from the self-styled "Attachment Therapy" advice that Nancy Thomas and allies give out), but so much of the quackery uses very similar terms and people get pulled in. Just surfing around the various horror stories you can find that theme. Lots of people saying "oh? But [whatever innocent sounding term] sounds fine, surely I do that already?" and then they read more and realize no, no, no...

The whole "rebirthing" thing is just very odd. Yeah, when you're an infant, you bond with people in the way an infant does. When you're older and with a history and language and all kinds of possible distrust built up and a need to grieve the loss of an old life (even if it was beyond terrible) or in some cases even an entire culture, you're going to do that in a more developmentally appropriate aged way. So the real advice is all about the constance, being there, loving even when the kid is being terrible, etc, but not so much about the reenacting birth and making old kids drink out of baby bottles and the like. That's even before anything horribly gone wrong like the suffocation of a 9 year old kid while doing it.

It's a strange fetishization (IMHO) of having a kid somehow be "reborn" or "start over" or "do it all from scratch but correctly this time" as if that's going to somehow ERASE their prior history, and that is just not realistic. You can't just wipe a slate clean. If you take in older kids, you weren't there for their baby time. There's nothing you can do about that, you gotta build a relationship from where you start at the ages you are now - which the vast majority of adopting parents realize, surely (plenty of them, even people struggling with difficult kids, have come out against the quackery). The "let's provoke a kid into rage because our theory insists that underlying rage is the problem, then wait for them to completely lose it, and when they're all the way broken and out of it (while we sit here calm and fully clothed and all that) let's treat them like a baby and we'll get magical do-overs!" is just... creepy.

Burris is right though. You gotta read the quackwatch article and surf from there.

[breaker]

Thanks for all your replies - I understand better what you're arguing for now. Yes, I had read the QuackWatch article.

Still, if a child is exhibiting those behaviors (lack of empathy, failure to bond, persistent implausible lying), although they might have developed adaptively in one context they're now maladaptive and disadvantage that child when dealing with peers, teachers, or siblings. In that sense seeking help is beneficial, assuming that help is from a pediatrician or psychiatrist and not Nancy Thomas. It doesn't necessarily have to be her brand of AD to be worthy of help in other words.

Falling down a rabbit hole of revelations here...

[gardenvarietycitizen]

For one, Thomas mixes in a bunch additional symptoms - for example, ones associated with sociopathy such as superficial charm, an inability to empathize with others, and highly manipulative behavior - that make every kid out there a suspect, such that every answer such a child can give is wrong. Her scare tactics promote the inexpert diagnoses of adoptive parents who might themselves be dysfunctional (but who are in no way held accountable by Thomas and her acolytes for their own emotions).

Very creepy. It's a classic lose-lose situation for the kid, there's no way out. If the kid is resistant and combative and fighting, obviously he needs discipline, per this theory. Yet if the kid is nice and pleasing and ostensibly "doing things snappily and right the first time" (as Nancy Thomas wants), but importantly AFTER the condemning diagnosis of "you have attachment disorder" is made, that TOO is said to be proof of problem, now he's "manipulative" and "scheming" and "tricking" because of course the parents KNOW!!! something isn't right, and so the answer is again punishment.

That's dangerous. It sets up all kinds of poison feedback loops.

Plus the entire idea of saying a kid (born into a family OR gathered up from elsewhere under whatever circumstances) somehow OWES it to parents to make a pleasing emotional experience for the parent is just... wrong. The standard argument in non-adoption families is "I didn't ask to be born!!!" but it's true of adoption too ('I didn't ask to be adopted by you in particular"), and I have to say among the creepier blogs I've seen online (particularly when I had a google binge on Chinese adoption blogs a few months ago sparked by someone linking a blog here where some woman referred to her kid as "my little egg rolls", yeah, I kid you not) there's a distinct vibe of "my kid should be thanking me forever for saving her from the horrid horrid circumstances of her birth country and yet she seems ungrateful and resistant" and it's just wut? and some of them go on to "...so the kid is manipulative she's scheming to hurt me because I had all these expectations and she's ruining it" which is just plain disturbing.

Lest anyone think I"m just generically bagging on adoption though there are other blogs out there where people are very sensitive and realizing their kids need to grieve and whatnot, and realizing cultural issues and the fact that their kids might deal with racism too. If you google around "tongginator" you can find one I quite enjoyed.

...seeking help is beneficial, assuming that help is from a pediatrician or psychiatrist and not Nancy Thomas.

Yeah, that's the thing. I don't think anyone denies there's some kids with issues who are going to need help, but the problem is they go searching for legitimate help and because the terms are so similar, sometimes get sucked into the quackery.

[Burris]

Still, if a child is exhibiting those behaviors (lack of empathy, failure to bond, persistent implausible lying), although they might have developed adaptively in one context they're now maladaptive and disadvantage that child when dealing with peers, teachers, or siblings. In that sense seeking help is beneficial, assuming that help is from a pediatrician or psychiatrist and not Nancy Thomas. It doesn't necessarily have to be her brand of AD to be worthy of help in other words.

Total straw man. No one says not to seek help for a kid with maladaptive behavior - whether that be RAD or something else (as diagnosed by a qualified, licensed child psychologist - you know, and not someone with a file full of complaints and a trail of dead bodies in her wake).

[breaker]

Yep, we agree then.

[NjoyingNsanity]

What bothers me about Nancy Thomas is that some of her signs of RAD are also symptoms of ADHD. I have a daughter with ADHD who was a full term pregnancy, I never used drugs or alcohol, breastfed and practiced attachment style parenting, so my kid is proof her criteria for RAD can be misleading and confuse a simple case of ADHD for RAD.

[chaotic life]

My children were formally diagnosed with RAD and Attachment Disorder by qualified mental health professionals. It is NOT a mere self label I have attached to my children.

http://www.attach.org/resources/about/#abouttabs-5-tab

ATTACh.org, the premiere organization that deals with legitimate Attachment Therapy and working with attach disordered children does NOT endorse coercive therapuetic practices. I have NEVER engaged in coercive practices, nor would I tolerate them. There is tremendous benefit and therapy gleaned by holding a child. However, it is ONLY gleaned by holding a child WILLING TO BE HELD.

I DETEST the idea of any child being grateful to an adoptive parent, so assigning that motivation to me is insanity. Nothing I have ever posted here has ever implied that idea, nor did my words previously.

My issue is the insistence that RAD is merely maladoptive behaviors and merely normal and expected for the situation. I've seen maladaptive behaviors. I've seen survival behaviors. Attachment disorders are significantly different. The intense vile and hatred towards anyone who admits they live with it is *exactly* what sends struggling parents to places where they are met with coercive techniques because at least there they are not told they are the probelm and they are making things up. Turning it into a witch hunt for something you have never experienced doesn't help anyone who seeks out help.

It's a snark board, I realize you don't consider that someone might be here looking for help. Perhaps they won't be. However, I'm not going to isolate and further shame something I've lived through and spent a decade providing peer support to others living through. It's a LOT easy to make banket judgements about something you know nothing about except on an academic level, especialy something like this.

FTR, RAD kids *are* superficialy charming, far beyond what you can fathom. We used to refer to it as "Mommy shopping." I never took that behavior personally, I understood why it existed, but sometimes it was CRAZY how the lightswitch would turn on around outsiders and flip off entirely once no one was looking. I have actually deliberately stayed in public situations more than once just so the charming flipped on and the raging stopped. Better to sit at a playground with the one struggling being charming and everyone having fun playing than go home and let raging put everyone's teeth on edge.

I honestly don't remember Thomas saying that children cannot interact with siblings nor that they cannot go to the bathroom alone. Not going to argue it isn't in her work, since I haven't read her stuff in eight years now. However, I have no memories of those two things even being suggested.

I think she may require the gratitude and all attachment on the parents' terms, but again never followed it and don't recall how hardcore her stuff was on it, again it's been eight years since I read it. They weren't practices that I agreed with nor ever considered implementing so I may have tuned it out.