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?”