I knew, however, that the day would not be a happy one for the other two kids.  While sibling rivalry and jealousy abound in “normal” families, one child having anything good can create WWIII in any home with wounded children.  Mom, of course, still tends to be the target of their rage, even though the “evil perpetrator” of their distress is a sibling.  This sibling, of course, will also be a target; however, the jealous child just wants anyone to pay for the fact that they don’t have what the other child has.

Knowing this would be a hard day, I let my third son know that I knew he’d really want tomake everyone pay for his poor “misfortune.”  I tried to ask him some challenging questions, hoping to get him to think about how his own choices contributed to the situation.  We went through all of the choices his brother had made to get to the place where he could make such a large purchase.  The choices included doing his chores, saving the money, and saving up his birthday money for the purchase.  I began to ask him at each point if he, too, had been able to make those same choices along the way.  I asked, given his own choices, why it should be his brother’s problem that he hasn’t worked for an Ipod Touch.  Or why it should be mine.  Of course, he was able to say the right things, but I knew that in his heart the fact that he didn’t have an Ipod was completely the fault of everyone else.  Maybe someday that idea of personal responsibility will kick in.  

I find that children with Reactive Attachment Disorder have a difficult time taking personal responsibility for anything they do.  Regardless of their actions, any consequences basically become the fault of anyone and everyone around them.  This particular child pretty much refuses to do chores in the time given to do them (he still must do them later, but he does not get paid to do them at the later time).  He knows he won’t get paid for the chore by doing it this way, but his desire to be in control outweighs his desire for having money to spend.  This complete desire for control keeps him away from what he really wants; however, his choices still, somehow, become the problem of everyone else instead of him.  He becomes irate when the other two kids receive their allowance and he is left with nothing.

At one point, our therapist had the kids on a point system.  Now, normal star charts don’t really work with wounded children, but this point system was designed to show the kids how their choices added up to either earn privileges or not.  The therapist also used it to point out areas that the kids really struggled with or ways that they sabotaged their own fun.  Two of my kiddos did great with this system, and, no matter what items were placed on the point system, they worked hard to earn positive things.  This particular child, however, worked extra hard to make sure he did NOT earn the points needed to be on the higher level.  

After several weeks of this, I noticed his anger when he was unable to participate in what the other kids could, simply because he hadn’t earned that privilege.  So I asked him about his anger.  He looked at me, and as seriously as he could, explained that despite what he had done, I could still choose to allow him to participate.  In his mind, his behavior should have no connection with him receiving any kind of negative consequence.

This same child purposefully made life very difficult for his teacher and classmates in his regular education classes.  After some time of this, he was unable to participate any longer and had to be pulled out.  His anger went through the roof!!  He did not understand why he should have to do one on one tutoring, despite the fact that he had chosen, time after time, to refuse to participate in the classroom activities and actually worked hard to create chaos in his classroom.  Before this, he’d become angry when he was unable to participate in special events, simply because he had proven that he could not handle them.  In his mind, he should have been able to do anything he wanted and still participate in everything that the other kids did. 

My personal opinion as to why wounded kids fail to take personal responsibility for their actions has to do with attachment.  Children who have not developed an attachment to another human being lack a conscience, because it develops in the context of bonding with another human being – in the middle of relationship.  Because they lack a conscience, they have no sense of personal responsibility and a concept that their behavior creates either positive or negative consequences.  (Many times, in children who have been neglected or abandoned, they did not get a consistent response to their cries for help as infants.  Sometimes when they cried, someone slapped them. Other times, someone gave them a bottle with curdled milk.  Other times, their cries of hunger were completely ignored.  It makes sense, then, that they have no concept of their behavior having any affect on the outcomes.)

So, how do we help them develop this?  Natural consequences, delivered with lots of empathy, help them to become more angry at themselves, rather than you, for their choices.  In those situations where natural consequences are not appropriate, we give other consequences, still delivered with empathy.  And, especially for those extreme kids, we sometimes suspend those consequences, so that they aren’t able to sabotage things.  It takes time, but eventually they get the idea that they failed to learn as young children…that their behaviors have an effect on the outcomes.  Our hope is that they learn to take personal responsibility….eventually.

Something our therapist told me really stuck out.  She said, point blank, “You are getting way too predictable.”  Bottom line – I NEED to mix it up more!  I know this relates to my post yesterday, but it is such an important point that I want to look at this in a slightly different angle.

Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder will sabotage and try to ruin any good thing when they know it’s coming.  They will also work hard to get into trouble if that happens every time they mess up.  Again….parenting these kids does not follow the normal, or typical, parenting techniques.  Sometimes when our child acts up, we need to send them to their room.  Sometimes they need a “time-in,” where they sit right by your side the whole time.  Sometimes they need to do chores to pay back for the family energy they’ve taken.  And sometimes, we just need to pull them into our arms and say, “Wow!  You are having a rough day.  You must really need my love today!”  

This becomes tiring, because we must stay ahead of the child.  I feel as though I am constantly making decisions as to the best way to handle a given situation.  Doing the “time out” thing every time becomes easy.  And, in “normal” parenting, it can be very effective to do things consistently.  With our children, we have to be full of surprises, so that they don’t know what’s coming.  According to our therapist, sometimes we have to act more crazy than them!  These kids find it much harder to know how to tick you off when they can’t seem to get the same response from you every time.  Wounded kids don’t know what to do with it.

When I’m on top of my game, I can work hard to come across just as insane as they are.  And, trust me, it really does help!  A senseless question can be met with uproarious laughter or a smirk and a quick hug.  Non-stop chatter can be met with making more noise and being louder than what they are doing.  A temper tantrum can be met with an even bigger one coming from the place they least expect it….mom.  (Try to imagine yourself throwing a big one on the floor…with your child, who has now stopped their temper tantrum, looking at you -completely wide-eyed!  Try it…it might actually feel pretty good to get out all of those feelings you have pent up inside!)  These unexpected responses keep them out of equilibrium and don’t allow them the opportunity to create as much chaos.  The crazier their behavior becomes, the more unexpected your response can be!  They do the behaviors, hoping to push you away.  When that doesn’t happen, they are thrown off.

So, I guess as crazy as I feel sometimes, I am just not being crazy enough.  So, here’s the word for today: Planned insanity!  Try it.  You may like it!

With RAD children, many times their consequences must go the opposite way from how we naturally think.  The norm says, “you made a bad choice; therefore, you need a time out.”  Sometimes with RAD kids, we must give them “time-ins,” where they are right by our side, instead of the usual time-out.  A consequence for a bad choice one time might be a natural, Love-and-Logic sort of consequence one time, and the next it might be cuddle time with mom.  It helps when they don’t know what the consequence will be each and every time.

Why?  We have to keep them on their toes.  We have to keep them wondering.  If they know what the consequence will be, many times they will sabotage anything good for themselves on purpose, because they don’t believe that they deserve anything good.  Then, they never find a way out of their negative cycle of relating and thinking.  Sure, they have to earn privileges.  But, in the middle of negative behavior, sometimes we have to give them what they least expect and least deserve.  It breaks through their walls of defense.

This need to switch things up all the time makes therapeutic parenting very difficult for me personally.  First of all, you always have to be thinking and staying one step ahead of the child.  You can’t just stick with your normal, do-it-all-the-time consequence.  You find yourself always evaluating what way each situation should be handled.  Also, therapeutic parenting requires staying in a place of giving mercy and forgiveness.  Sure, it’s easy when a kid makes poor choices to automatically give a negative consequence.  It makes sense.  Depending on what the child does, sometimes it make us feel better knowing they had to pay for their choice.  It doesn’t make as much sense to sometimes give what looks like a positive consequence for negative behavior.  Plus, much of the time their behavior makes us mad personally.  So, sometimes I find myself wanting to go for the automatic negative consequence, simply because I want to see them pay back for what they’ve done.  Sometimes we want to scream out, “But she didn’t deserve that!!”  It throws off our sense of justice to parent therapeutically.

So many times, I know what I need to do in order to help my child heal.  I struggle to give them those things, because of my own anger and sense of justice.  I want them to pay for what they did or how they purposefully try to hurt those around them.  That makes sense.  The level of extreme mercy we must give our children goes against what my brain says is right.

I fully believe that, as therapeutic parents, we will have more opportunity to understand God’s unconditional and overwhelming love much more than our “normal” parental counterparts.  God reaches down and pulls us out of our muck, despite how terribly we treat Him.  We push Him away.  He continually pursues us.  We spit in His face.  He continues giving us good things, despite the fact that we don’t make good choices.  His love doesn’t wait until we “get our act together.”  He loves us just as we are, and He loves us too much to let us stay there.  Isn’t that how we have to look at things with our wounded child?

Romans 2:4 “Or do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’ kindness leads you toward repentance?”

Usually, the source of our false allegations (at least the ones we know about) have been our third son.  When he first moved in with us, our son would purposefully refuse to eat dinner and then go to school the next day declaring, “My parents don’t feed me!!”  He would also neglect to wear the nice, new clothes we had just purchased him and opt for the most ratted looking outfit he could find, sneaking out with it on before we realized it.  Then, he’d work hard to look like a poor little foster boy and attempt to get others to feel sorry for this poor little boy whose foster parents didn’t care.  Refusing to wear a coat that morning, he’d look up into the teacher’s eyes and somehow make it sound like we wouldn’t allow him to have a coat that day.  Yes….good times, good times.

Luckily, as far as we know, most of the people he would tell these tales to were those who knew him well and knew about his wonderful, budding acting career.  One teacher, however, began to believe his lies and started to create quite a mess for us.  I began to get completely exhausted from the nasty phone calls from this woman and began to insist for changes in his schooling program.  It didn’t take long for us to work with those who knew us well to get him pulled out of that teacher’s program and he began to do much better in the program where the teachers knew and ignored the games he tried to pull on them.

I have heard of families whose stories did not end so happily, and my heart breaks for them.  I can’t even imagine the heartache they must have endured to be falsely accused and to have ignorant adults automatically believe a very wounded child.  Devastating!

Our son, this same boy, just a few weeks ago, began limping one day to ensure that the bus drivers thought that his dad had run over his leg that morning.  By the time I picked him up from school, it had blossomed into a full-leg drag that made Igore look like an Olympic athlete.  Of course, as soon as I told him to “knock it off and walk normally,” his leg miraculously healed and he was able to walk normally again.  Sigh.

But this time our false allegation came from an unusual source.  My daughter.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I know that the “evil witch” stories abound when she is talking with her friends.  And, to her credit, she knew better than to talk to an intelligent adult, who would have seen through her story right away.  But her story definitely showed where she was at.

We had our Forever Homes cookout last night.  Had a blast, by the way!  This group of parents have to be the most amazing group of people I know.  Loving, amazing people, who have a heart for kids.  My peeps!

Anyway, we get a call from one of the parents afterward.  Evidently, my dear, sweet daughter had told one of the other kids in the group that I slap her across the face every time I’m mad with her.  Mind you…I’ve never touched a hair on the girl’s head.  But, according to her, I slap her face when I’m mad.

How did we handle it?  Well, after getting over the initial shock of hearing this declaration, my husband decided that it was way too dangerous for her to be near her angry, out of control mother, who might just fly off the handle and slap the poor, innocent child at any moment.  So, he did what any good, loving father would do.  He protected her by sending her to her room, declaring with a chuckle that he loved her too much to risk her getting slapped that evening.  Of course, she wasn’t too happy about that, but really….we do care about her safety!

Later that evening, we told her that we knew she had lied to her friend (she denied saying anything, of course) because she was angry with me.  (I, of course, have not been giving her “any” attention and have been so rude as to go on a few outings with friends this week….the nerve!)  Admittedly, her entire goal was to pay me back for not giving her what she felt she needed (aka: non-stop attention).  I had also been a bit crabby that weekend, which hadn’t helped her anger at all.  I hope, however, in the future she learns a better way to deal with her anger.

Luckily in this scenario, too, we had a wise adult hearing the accusations and dealing with the situation appropriately.  She let us know what our child was saying and told her daughter what the truth about the situation was.  Dealing with false allegations doesn’t always go so smoothly, though, and can be incredibly difficult.  We know of a family who ended up having to hire a lawyer to deal with a counselor believing a child’s fantasy/lies.  Unfortunately, this issue comes with the territory of working with wounded kids.

Before even dealing with false allegations, I would highly recommend developing a good relationship with your child’s school and any other adults working with your child.  Without the school knowing us, our parenting style, etc., we would have been in big trouble once he started crying wolf.  Luckily, we had already spoken with the teacher, the school psychologist, and principal.  They knew our discipline methods, how we handled food issues, and also what our son’s primary triangulation techniques were.  We also had a good working relationship with his social worker.  She knew exactly what happened in our home, so that when he tried telling lies she knew what the truth was.  While I know that not everyone has a trusted social worker who can help them navigate these murky waters, this can be a huge help.

If you have a child prone to tall tales about your meanness and cruelty to him or her, I would highly recommend making friends with those adults in the child’s life.  I have heard of some moms who introduce themselves at the police stations and explained their child’s issues (especially if the child has Reactive Attachment Disorder, like our kids), just in case there was ever any question about something happening at their home.  Taking a few precautions can help your child in the long run, because it will prevent a well-meaning adult from making them more sick by believing their lies.  After all, our whole goal is to help our children heal.  Being able to turn others against mom or dad doesn’t help them heal.

Since this was their first time, Shelly took them on the tour of the ranch and introduced them to the animals (including the chicken who thinks she’s a puppy and will let you pet and hold her).  Then, she taught them how to lead the horse, and they were able to groom two of them as well.  They had a blast!  By the time we returned, though I was exhausted.  So, after getting everyone settled in back home, my husband took over and I took a nap.  

Shortly after the beginning of my nap, one of my kids’ old habits began. My kids have tended to freak out when I’m in my room and not out with them (at all moments, mind you).  In the past, it was much more obvious.  While today the behaviors were not quite as obvious, they were still reminiscent of the old habit.  It used to be that, as soon as I was back in my room for a nap or just to have some time to myself (with my husband out there with them, of course), they’d be perfectly quiet out in the living room, going down the hallway, and then again when they were in their room.  Where they weren’t quiet?  You guessed it.  Right in front of my room!  They’d walk from the living room and down the hallway, completely quiet as a mouse, and then right in front of my room they’d suddenly remember some completley random question that they “needed” to shout out to one of their siblings at that exact moment.  So, they would yell out that silly question, making sure they made enough noise to wake me up, and then proceed quietly to their room.  This scenario would repeat itself more and more the longer I was in my room.  When asked about their behavior, they’d make it clear that they felt that I should be out with them, and they wanted to try to make me wake up and come out (again, the “how DARE you do something for yourself or that isn’t directly for ME!” attitude so common with RAD kids).  While my kids still have that attitude, they have learned to curb their behavior quite a bit in the last two years (dad having them make it up to mom every time they performed those little tricks has helped this greatly!).  

It sometimes still annoys me to think that my kids honestly feel that I should be at their beck and call at every blessed moment of the day.  Dad can be gone…that’s ok.  But mom – if MOM isn’t there, then she has completely abandoned them!!  At times, I struggle with being angry at my children for this completely unrealistic expectation.  Other times I understand where it comes from and I’m better able to shrug it off.  I go between the two attitudes.  I wish I could say that it doesn’t bother me still after two years, but sometimes the fact that it has been that long causes me to wonder just how much longer it will take for this to go away.  I think, though, that this self-centered way of viewing the world will probably be there for a long time to come.  I just need to figure out a way to handle it better without them changing!  Maybe I just need to reread the book Boundaries, by Cloud and Townsend, so that I remember what to do with people who step over my boundaries!  Even if it is a little kid!  :)

I knew that something was amuck when the hallway of our new house began to smell like urine.  Hmmm…..

I confronted the child closest to that part of the hallway, who had also been known to pee in his garbage can and on the carpet in our previous house (we were living in a rental, so we had to have the carpets cleaned frequently in that house – not fun!).  Denying anything was wrong, he insisted that he was NOT peeing in his bedroom this time.  I told him that I didn’t believe him, but I remained in denial for a while longer.  That smell will go away if I just ignore it, right?!

Yesterday, I told the therapist about the strange odor emanating from his room.  During his therapy session, she confronted him about what was going on there.  He finally admitted to having multiple bottles and containers filled with urine under his bed.  Yuck!  I tried to remain composed, but part of me was a little grossed out, to be honest (not to mention when I actually SAW the 8 container pee shrine under the bed!).

When wounded children aren’t talking about their anger, many times they begin to “pee” their anger out.  It’s a way of getting those icky feelings out of them….not the healthiest way, but a way, nonetheless.  Some of them pee on their carpet; some down the register in their room (a particularly smelly option); some in the family’s laundry basket full of towels.  All for the same reasons….to get their anger out.  (I have also heard of kiddos peeing in different places in the house simply to try to make mom’s job harder, but this is still a method of getting their rage at mom out.)

Our therapist is amazing at dealing with this issue.  She asked my son if he wanted a real pee shrine in his room.  He looked at her like she was crazy.  She continued, “If you really like pee that much and want to keep it around you, let’s forget this under-the-bed kind of thing.  You need to have it on top of your dresser!”  He told her that he wasn’t interested, and she informed him that if he wanted to have a pee shrine on top of his dresser (a container he’d have to pee in every day for a while and keep on top of his dresser), that he’d let us know through his actions.  And when we got home….guess who was cleaning out his room and getting rid of the containers full of pee.  Yah!  No more pee shrine!   The hallway smells WAY better!  :)  I LOVE our therapist!!

Immediately after arriving home (even though it’s a Friday, and that’s supposed to be more of a fun night), I had the kids get snack and then had them march back to their rooms, feelings journal in hand.

For those of you who don’t know what a feelings journal is….basically for us it is this: a regular, spiral notepad where I have them write down their feelings.  Sometimes I give them free reign and let them express whatever they want to.  Other times, I give them direction of how I want them to write.  For example, some times, I may have them write about why they are mad at me.  However, my kids would love to treat everything as if it really was all about things that I did.  So, I try to get them past that to acknowledge ways they are mad at other people, such as daddy, their teachers, the attachment therapist, birth parents, etc.  I also try to get them to look past the whole anger thing, because usually anger is a cover-up emotion for another emotion, such as sadness and hurt.  So, sometimes I have them write about why they are feeling afraid, sad or lonely.  Other times, I have them write about why they find it so hard to truly be happy.

I have found the feelings journal to be quite helpful.  My kids hate it.  But, I have observed that if they’ve gone more than a week without writing in it, I see the difference in their behavior.  Their anger comes out more and more.  They leak it everywhere in unacceptable behavior, unless they have the opportunity to get their feelings out in an acceptable way.  (And, even then we still get unacceptable behavior, but not to the same extent.)

I have even found the THREAT of the feelings journal has been a useful tool.  “Oh, sweetie.  Your behavior is telling me that you have a lot of angry/sad, etc. feelings to get out.  You can let me know that you really need to write in your feelings journal by continuing this behavior.”  Sometimes, that alone stops them in their tracks!  I get the look of sheer horror, along with a very enthusiastic, “NOPE!  I think I’m ok now, mom!”

When you’ve gone through as much abuse as my kids have, you are bound to feel angry.  Given the circumstances, this emotion is quite normal.  In fact, I would be concerned about them if they were NOT angry.  I am angry for them!  When they do not have the opportunity to get those emotions out, however, those emotions can and WILL seep out in unacceptable behaviors, both subtly and blatantly.  I have found that a combination of a good therapist (one who actually recognizes when the child is sharing just enough to stay unhealthy and not really getting to the core issues and being honest), time directly telling me and my husband how they are feeling (even though this is difficult for them, especially at first), and a feelings journal really help them to get these emotions out.

So many emotions, so little time!