Child with attachment disorder - is this right?

[joblerone1]

(Sorry, long.)

I hope someone can help me. I am trying to find out more about attachment disorder and whether or not my sister is doing the right thing, or potentially damaging a very disturbed little boy even further.

Her 7year old stepson came to live with them 10 months ago. His mother was about to put him into care. He has been diagnosed as having attachment disorder and is very difficult to live with. At worst, he exhibits behaviours such as standing in the bathroom all night, wetting/soiling the bed/himself, ignoring direct questions, avoiding eye contact, screaming in swimming lessons, not putting his clothes into the wash, losing his glasses, lying about it, etc. He gets told off a lot for things which, I feel, as a teacher of 7 year olds, are part and parcel of being a child ? most of my class do some of the things she describes. She insists it?s his way of gaining control, and nothing to do with being a ?normal? child. She gets periodical respite care (twice a month?) and our parents look after him and/or her two other children regularly. I live more than 2 hours away, so cannot help much.

She feels so much at the end of her tether that she is intending to take the rest of the family away on holiday while he goes into respite care for 2 weeks. She wants time to ?regroup? as a family and spend time with ?her girls?. Although I recognise her acute stress levels and the need for regular respite care, I can?t help thinking that 2 weeks in respite while the rest of the family are on holiday (in a caravan, which he loves) can only reinforce this child?s feelings of rejection, separation and worthlessness.
My parents have offered to look after him for the whole two weeks, but my sister says he needs firmer boundaries, and that they are too nice. They regularly look after him at weekends, or if he is home ill from school, and for 45 minutes after school one night a week when the whole family comes for tea.
Have since found out that they've said to him previously that if he didn't behave himself at swimming then he wouldn't be allowed to go on holiday - and now he's not. They are not calling it a punishment, just respite for them, but if they've used it as a parenting tool then I think it is son wrong to withdraw it.
I have read some AD websites that actually warn against the overuse of auxillary services, but feel unqualified to comment. What do people think?

[KristinaM]

Alison - actually the child is not in the care system - if you read the post you will see he is in a shared care arrangement, living with his family at weekend and on a wednesday and the other 4 days with a foster family

and his family are still fighting for treatment for him and for his educational needs to be met. so i hardly think they have given up on him

anyway this thread is over a year old now so i hope things are working out well for this child and his family and they are getting the support and treatment he needs

[Al1son]

Steady on!

I'm sorry but I can't see where I said his family have given up on him!

Foster carers are part of the care system and therefore he is in the care system - or at least was a year ago.

If the foster carer and the childminder were both concerned about the way he was being treated by his stepmother then hopefully he'll be being treated more fairly and consistently by them and will be benefiting from that.

[edam]

Blimey, I remember this thread from two years ago. Very sad indeed. Interesting to see the update from last year when the foster mother and childminder both felt the stepmother was unkind and unjust, at best. That was my feeling originally, and that of lots of MNers, but a poster turned up to say 'I know all about AD and you don't understand, you have to be horrible to these children'.

Do hope things have got better for the poor lad by now. Sounded as if his life was desperately sad.

[KristinaM]

edam - i dont think anyone said you have to be horrible to these children

and I would be extremely surprised if a foster carer " secretly" phoned up one member of a birth family to complain about another. That would be extremely inappropriate & unprofessional and a serious breach of confidentiality

i was the poster who said that IMO the family woudl struggle if the father and step mother didn't get appropriate help and support with this child. sadly this turned out to be the case

children with RAD are extremely challenging and need a complex and specialist support system. Its not just as simple as

" oh the mother was rubbish, lets give him to his dad and step mother"

" oh the SM is heartless / too strict etc , lets give him to the foster carer"

" oh that placement didn't work out, lets move him to another"

I knwo that nothing i write here will help this child or his family at all. But if i can get just one person reading this to stop judging and blaming the families of children with severe behavioural problems / mental heath difficulties it woudl be great

and edam i am most surprised at you! IIRC you are a journalist? you of all people should know that its not as simple as

" troubled/disabled/ill kid - blame the parenst"

or even better the evil step mother

remember its not that long ago that people thought that parenst ( ie mothers) " caused" autism

and that ADHD was a middle class name for " badly behaved children"

[Al1son]

Kristina I think you're the one making sweeping judgements about other people here. If you want to imply that the OP is lying about some aspects of her thread then there seems little point in commenting on any of it really. You can't pick and choose which bits to believe.

I believe her when she says she saw this little boy treated unfairly and harshly by his stepmother. I also believe that although a loving stable relationship isn't enough to cure a child of this disorder it sure as hell is as essential to the child's well-being as it is to any other child.

Yes it's wrong to automatically blame parents for children's mental health problems but it is also important not to assume that a parent or carer is getting it right either. The OP described events where the stepmother was unkind rather than firm and it is unlikely that they were isolated incidents. Yes they probably needed more help but that doesn't mean they were not causing further harm to this child.

I only hope this little boy is getting love and security from somebody along with appropriate treatment now because if he isn't he's got no chance.

[misspollysdolly]

I'm not entirely sure how or why this thread has been resurrected, but KristinaM - I wouldn't bother doing battle anymore. In my experience, these are the kind of conversations that are very exhausting and pretty unhelpful to all involved.

A link that may be of interest to some of you however is this - the best bdescription o fthe effects of trying to parent a child with RAD that I have ever come across. MPD

[KristinaM]

thanks MPD, that's an excellent link

you are right of course, its just upsetting to me and makes no difference to those those minds are closed

[ByTheSea]

That is a really good link misspollysdolly, and does describe how it feels. My family has certainly been traumatised over the years so as KristinaM posts, it is upsetting to us that we are blamed by people when we have just tried our very best to provide a loving and stable home. We finally have some good news and have secured and excellent residential EBD school placement for our DS2, after years of battling. I'm sure there are many here who would judge us for sending our DS to 'boarding school', but we are only trying to give him (and society) a possible happy future outcome as he so struggles to cope in a family setting.

[thefirstmrsDeVere]

I have cared for a child with terminal cancer. I have cared for a child with LDs and autism whilst caring for a child with terminal cancer. I care for my OH who has MS.

I am not a wimp.

But I would not be able to care for a child with severe RAD.

It is really that bad and is dreadful that its ok to judge parents who cannot cope.

[Al1son]

Well you can all consider yourselves lucky that you haven't been involved with trying to help a child who was being abused by his caregivers who were getting away with it because they were seen as lovely people who were trying their best in difficult circumstances. That particular child ended seriously ill in hospital before the authorities accepted that he was being abused.

That experience taught me that there a two sides to every coin and you should never ignore the signs of abuse just because the child has SN. Those whose minds are closed to the possibility are the ones who allow such abuse to continue. It's not ok to make sweeping judgements either way.

[thefirstmrsDeVere]

You want me to consider myself lucky? Did you read my post?

[Al1son]

I think you might have missed the rest of the sentence it continued ...

...that you haven't been involved in trying to help a child who was being abused...

Unless you have that is. In which case I apologise because I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone. I'm sure we can play a great game of hardship top trumps if we wanted to.

I just think that nobody should be accused of lying on mn when they have come on to ask for help to deal with a situation where they are concerned about how a child is being treated. I saw no reason for the OP to make things up.

Anybody giving these children security and consistency absolutely deserves masses of support and praise for doing it. At the same time children with SN are more vulnerable to abuse and therefore people who see the signs and are concerned enough to speak out also deserve to be supported. I don't think that's being judgemental or closed minded and I find the attitude of those who choose not to believe the OP very patronising.

[ByTheSea]

Actually, I think thefirstmrsDeVere has has some bad luck. And I'm sorry you have been in that position (although you don't state what capacity) to help an abused child with SN. Hopefully you were able to help and well done if you did.

That said, parenting a child who has RAD is trying to help a child who has been abused and/or neglected. And I read nothing in the OP or subsequent posts to indicate the OP's sister was abusing the child in question. All the posters on here who have actually experienced this showed sympathy for the OP's sister because they can understand this situation can how it can look to anyone not living it.

[ByTheSea]

understand how this situation can look

[thefirstmrsDeVere]

Hardship top trumps?

Piss off.

[Al1son]

I'm not going to go into any more details except to say that it was in a professional capacity.

Some of what the OP described would cause me concern and could be considered indicators of emotional abuse regardless of how provoked the adult concerned was.

I wouldn't like that to be dismissed because children with RAD provoke their carers.

[Al1son]

I hope I've made my point so I won't be looking at this thread any more. I doubt that the OP will be updating us now which was what I was hoping for.

[shockers]

That little boy will be trying to control the situations around him because his brain is now wired up to do that. His life will be full of ritualistic behaviour that he will rarely learn from... it takes years to break the habit and then all of a sudden something will trigger it again.

This relentless pattern of behaviour can be the most soul destroying thing for a carer as well as for the child.

A few people have said that his behaviours sounded like normal things for little boys to do... maybe but when that behaviour carries on most days, year after year with the odd breakthrough and then painful regression, it is heartbreaking.

We have at least two short breaks a year without DD... we need it like oxygen.

[ByTheSea]

Baffles me how you can even compare something you've experienced in a professional capacity to what others have lived with day in, day out, year after year and call some lucky not to have dealt with what you have.

[edam]

kristina, you've got the wrong end of the stick. Or you are deliberately misrepresenting my concerns.

My worry was that the treatment meted out to an already very disturbed and challenging child seemed to be at best unkind if not actually cruel especially in the context of a stepfamily where he was, it appeared, being treated as the cuckoo in the nest. I never doubted he must be a very, very difficult child to look after.

Nor did I suggest it was a good idea to move him from place to place - I imagine that's the last thing you would want to do with a child with his severe needs if it were at all avoidable.

[KristinaM]

I'm sorry edam if i misunderstood you. Its very hard to see parents of SN kids blamed for causing their child problems. usually they are not the problem, they are the solution ( or at least part of it). Its important to distinguish between cause and effect

alison - i did NOT accuse anyone of lying. i said that i woudl be surprsised if a certain event happened as described as it would be unethical. if you were a professional working in child protection you would know that this is correct.

any FC concerned about a child should report teh matter to their own or the childs worker - they shoudl NOT call up another member of the birth family "secretly" to complain

you shoudl also knwo that it commomplace for posters to turn up on the adoption threads trying to trump other posters by claiming that they are a " professional" [ so i must be right]. TBH no one cares what qualification anyone claims to have - its the internet - you can say anything you like

you merely make yourself look foolish by claiming things like trying to help an abused child ( for a few hours a week, its my job, i get paid well to do it, i'm not emotionally involved in teh family) is similar to/ harder than caring for your own child who is dying with cancer or living with a child who has been traumatised and abused and is now an abuser.

BTW that's 24/7, on TOP OF your job, with no pay and being consumed by your own and everyone else's emotions

i find it frightening that soemone who claims to work in the field has so littel idea of what its like............

[edam]

Thank you Kristina but again, I have NEVER suggested that parents are responsible for SN and am quite insulted by any suggestion that my views could be thrown into that pot. Quite the reverse. I have spent a lot of time trying to expose poor treatment of people with SN and their families.

[misspollysdolly]

This has all got a bit 'morbid-competetive-Monty-Python-Yorkshiremen' for me, but just for the record - I have worked in children's healthcare for nearly 10 years. I first met my DD when she was admitted to hospital following a severe Non-accidental injury (32% of her body had been scalded by an adult 'caring for her'). 18 months later she became our daughter.

She has a degree of RAD and everyday is filled with challenging (albeit subtle) and controlling behaviour. Parenting her - in spite of loving her enormously and endlessly - has done pemanent and relentless damage to my very soul. Our relationship is hanging in there but it's a conscious effort at the moment and my experience of subsequently having two birth DSs has also been greatly affected by already having adopted DD. I have said and done things (physically manhandling her etc etc) to her that if overheard would have been seriously misconstrued or even deemed cruel, such is the extent to which my buttons have been pressed. I have seen sides to myself that I hate and dispise, and fully 'get' the 'red mist' thing that falls when she can't trust me, or won't let me parent her (or her brothers).

I have not really admitted this publicly but there are regular times when I wished I had stayed the professional...it was vastly easier.

Other cases of child abuse (including two children who died - the anniversaries of which I still mark in my own way) that I have dealt with do haunt me to an extent, but professionally I have learnt and developed through them - they are not a responsibility that I have to deal with until the day I die...there is a very big difference.

Enough now. Please. MPD

[shockers]

MPD I understand your middle paragraph completely . I can walk from one bedroom at bedtime feeling like the worst Mum in the world, to the other, where I feel like the best... it breaks my heart but I still love DD dearly.

Both DCs are sdopted but only DD has RAD. DS came to us at birth as foster carers. I really feel that SS should take note. I have a colleague who wants to adopt the FC she has had since 4 days... her whole family adore him. SS are preferring to seek out a Grandparent who has always known of his existence but hasn't bothered to make contact. If he is moved it will seriously affect him in ways we all know.

It is about time that the powers that be took notice of all the evidence supplied by adoptive and foster parents and started to work in the interests of the child.

[ByTheSea]

I can also totally relate to that post MPD.

Shockers, it would be so much better for that FC to stay with the family he knows and loves.

Another thing though, that really gets me, is that if the child is placed back with someone in the birth family that they are informed about possible attachment issues and provided some training/education in therapeutic parenting. When DS2 was removed from his BM and given to DH (and me), they were just glad that someone would take him, even though BM had denied DH visitation (but he had done the parental responsibility paperwork and had a court case open seeking residency). They just handed him over and closed their books on him. I soooo wish they had alerted us to some of the issues all this trauma, neglect and movement might have given DS2. Granted, this was 13 years ago, so hopefully things have changed since then.