Day 267. Survivors found: 5
Because it’s so often employed to justify the abuse and murder of children both adopted and biological, I’m taking some time out to clarify once and for all that “Attachment Disorder” (often interchangeable with “Reactive Attachment Disorder” in the minds of AT/P proponents) does NOT exist.
There’s no such thing as “Attachment Disorder,” got that? Poor people, you’ve been had. Swindled! Hoodwinked! Flimflammed! Bamboozled!
Now, “Reactive Attachment Disorder” is a whole other kettle of fish. RAD is real, but it does NOT encompass aggression, manipulation or any of the other horrible, bogus “symptoms” that both attachment therapy AND attachment parenting (yes, I’m looking at you, you self-congratulatory pseudo-progressive William Sears followers) prophesy for children who do not have the privilege of being raised in a conventional, biological household.
To quote Linda Rosa, Executive Director of ACT from here:
“…Attachment Parenting (AP) does not have clean hands when it comes to its relationship to Attachment Therapy/Parenting.
While the AP website carried the APSAC Report on Attachment Therapy for some months, it also promotes the bogus, catch-all diagnosis used by Attachment Therapist — “Attachment Disorder.” Use of this unrecognized diagnosis is condemned by the APSAC report.
So while AP is inclined towards benign parenting methods, they, alas, are not well disciplined about theory, research, and diagnosis.“
If you try looking up Reactive Attachment Disorder in the actual DSM-IV, here’s what you will find:
DSM-IV-TR Criteria 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.
– (American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p. 128).
Those are the real symptoms of RAD. It’s a very rare, relatively harmless disorder that must manifest in the earliest developmental stages of one’s life and not later; I would argue that it says more about the adverse circumstances in which the children who get diagnosed with it are placed, rather than any mental health issues of the children themselves.
Think about it; if, at a very young age YOU were put into the care of people who are relative strangers, i.e. multiple foster parents, wouldn’t you sometimes likely be unable to emotionally differentiate between strangers and caregivers? I would argue that RAD is a natural human response to difficult and unpredictable circumstances, and that provided these circumstances were taken care of, so too then would a child’s “symptoms.”
Now, for the fake RAD, the kind often referred to as “Satanic Possession” and “Ted Bundy disease” in AT/P circles:
* Lack of eye contact
* Indiscriminately affectionate with strangers
* Destructive to self, others and material things (accident prone)
* Cruelty to animals
* Lying about the obvious (crazy lying)
* Stealing
* No impulse controls (frequently acts hyperactive)
* Learning Lags
* Lack of conscience
* Abnormal eating patterns such as hoarding food or gorging on sugary foods
* Poor peer relationships
* Preoccupation with fire
* Persistent nonsense questions & chatter
* Inappropriately demanding & clingy
* Abnormal speech patterns
– (From Attachment Parenting International)
Wow, stealing, pyromania and animal abuse! Bit of a departure from “hypervigilance” and “indiscriminate sociability,” non?
The problem with these bogus RAD symptoms (I mean, aside from the fact that they utterly criminalize little children) is that every source who buys into them lacks the intellectual discipline necessary for reliable research, which in turn leads to even more misinformation.
Check out this bogus RAD symptom list proffered by the execrable Newsweek article I posted a while back:
* Sexual acting out, like masturbating or inappropriate touching of others
* Aggressive, bullying, violent behavior
* Night terrors or sleep problems caused by fear
* Behavioral melt-downs when parents are trying to get the child to do homework, or when there is lots of noise or activity
* Resistance to any expression of affection, like kisses and hugs from family members, but approaches strangers indiscriminately
* Explosive anger when confronted with relatively minor disappointments or delays
* Insists on being in control at all times
* Terrified of being alone, or the other extreme, insists on being left alone
* Hoarding or stealing food
Golly, so RAD now encompasses stealing, pyromania, animal abuse and violent bullying and sexual deviance? Just peachy!
More direct, published quotes from these stupid charlatans regarding “attachment disorder,” courtesy of ACT’s AT Proponents section:
“Unattached kids can’t float. I’ve never found one that could float. It’s really neat the way they sink.”
– Nancy Thomas
“A lot of the therapists I know. What they’re doing — they’re just diagnosing other things, but they’re treating it as an Attachment Disorder. So as they send it to the insurance company, they’re calling it something else. Anxiety Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress — those aren’t red flags to the insurance company. But boy, you say Attachment Disorder and — Booong! The red flag is up. ”
– Katharine Leslie
“These are the kids that grow up to be serial murderers.”
– Neil Feinberg
“[The attachment disordered child] may even identify himself with the forces of evil–praying to the devil, wishing to be Satan’s child, and preoccupied with death, fire, blood, and gore…”
– Foster Cline
“And what you’ll see is, if the mom gets away with putting the baby in her arms and feeding — you know these children almost have insect-like eyes, in the sense that they can rotate those little eyes to make damn sure they don’t have any part of mom in their views.”
– Walter D. Buenning
“Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer were attachment disordered. John Hinckley was overindulged. All had murder on their mind.”
– Deborah Hage
“Attachment-disordered children also typically present themselves as having oral issues – the most common being hoarding and gorging on food. This can spin off into eating disorders, addition to sweets, incessant chattering, speech delays, and incredibly articulate verbal arguing.”
–Conrad Boeding
Contradiction, FTW.
Comments 22
now, if can get the adult adoptees to believe this…
or maybe the state and federal governments…
or maybe all those foster and adoptive parent groups…
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 21:16 ¶well, saw that his web site changed a bit, no locally trained therapist listed anymore or no speakers listed besides himself (he charges $10,000 per day to speak now, guess that is why he has not been at ODU for a while)
he is also not listed under the foster care agency that was giving him kids her in Va Beach, Va… but still lists his address from OK state licensing board as Va Beach and he is still on the Community Services Board as a provider…
so who knows…
Wayward, I am truely sorry you went through that.
Thank you for taking the time to speak out against it. I think it will pay off in the long run.
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 23:56 ¶and I posted this whole thing on the wrong link
sorry
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 23:56 ¶Great points, WR! I really appreciate your insights on this on this whole AD myth.
Posted 19 Nov 2008 at 13:49 ¶Much obliged, ma’am!
Posted 19 Nov 2008 at 13:55 ¶I’ve read that APSAC has a couple of descriptions that would seem to fit with AD/AT. They discuss something called “factitious disorder by proxy” (FDP) and “pediatric condition falsification” (PCF). Factitious disorders are described in the DSM as psychiatric conditions, but my understanding of the APSAC view is that FDP and PCF describe a particular type of child abuse; not a psychiatric disorder per se. The diagnosis and treatment of AD seem to be just plain made up in my book.
Posted 19 Nov 2008 at 16:19 ¶I’m writing a book about Oksana, a 13 year old girl who comes to America after living in Russia–first with her aunt and mother and then in an orphanage. Oksana is stuck on my pages because I can’t seem to find her true personality. I know she’s wounded and doesn’t trust anyone but after reading so much about RAD I’m totally confused. I didn’t think she was an outwardly angry person who steals and hordes food and has a murderous agenda. She’s more withdrawn. I want her to be a believable character who reader’s will understand. Would you be willing to send me your email address and/or phone number to talk to me? I don’t see your name anywhere on this article. I’m stumped. Thanks!
Posted 20 Nov 2008 at 00:14 ¶Has anyone else wondered if holding therapy isn’t tantamount to rape (even gang rape), and that a “diagnosis” of AD just identifies who it is supposedly OK to rape? Being physically restrained against one’s will, being laid upon, threatened, demeaned, licked and tickled, while begging the perpetrators to stop – sounds like a particularly brutal form of rape to me.
Posted 22 Nov 2008 at 21:00 ¶The good news on DSM/ICD RAD is that not only is it thought to be rare, but the majority of children brought up in even the most deprived conditions do not develop it. The inhibited form usually ameliorates once normative care is provided but the disinhibited form can be more long lasting. The recommended treatment is the provision of sensitive, normative care and the creation of positive interactions between child and carers. This is about as far removed from being forcibly held, lain on, poked, licked and jeered and shouted at as it is possible to get.
Posted 22 Nov 2008 at 23:20 ¶Easter Sky, another really sad thing is a whole bunch of people (kids and adults) going through this holding therapy have been sexually abused before landing themself in this kind of fake treatment… and so they are more likely just to participate…
I’ve have even heard many of the people for this treatment say it was very much like living through the rape again and left them with the same feelings and breaking them down all over again…
and I could go way more into that,
and the one thing we all need to keep in mind, this is state and federal supported for the most part, kids have been removed from their foster and pre-adoptive homes when the adults have refused to participate
Posted 23 Nov 2008 at 11:34 ¶Rinda, can you elaborate more about the state and federal government sanctions of AD/AT? I think this is very important information to be out there for people to digest and to use in the fight against AT. Do you know what states specifically sanction and even require AT for foster and adopted kids? Do you know how the federal government and insurance companies are involved? Thanks.
Posted 24 Nov 2008 at 15:57 ¶Many states like Virginia and Ohio are still requiring Attachment therapy as in the story we were in Virginia ….
children have been removed from their adoptive placement in Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, and Oregon that I know of when their parent refused to participate…
Adoption subsidies pick up a good deal of this..
When we were going to Bryan Post’s “events” as he called them, I was just about the only parent “adoptive parent” paying out of my pocket… most all the others were sent their by their state government…
even in the article we were in the reporter was able to track down how Bryan Post, on of the current AT experts, was able to milk $100,000 off of the state of Virginia for RAD therapy (on 3 pretty healthy kids, 2 of whom had birth parents rasing other children, which really questions why they kids had to be removed from their birth parents to begin with) and therapy from him consists of being held on an air mat to cry about what ever insane reason you had to adopt a “damaged” child to begin with… he does a lot of age regression, etc…
Posted 26 Nov 2008 at 11:09 ¶http://hamptonroads.com/2008/07/practitioner-controversial-therapy-moves-his-base-hampton-roads
is the link to our story…
childrenintherapy.org used to have a report on just how federal money goes to AT… I can’t find it
in the Garvelle case in Ohio, it was the therapist getting paid by medicaid in that state, $100 of thousands, that most likely suggested the cages, etc… and was doing AT
a lot of it is picked up by the state, that is one of the reasons it still is going on, these kids have no one to protect them and can get targeted by the cons..
Posted 26 Nov 2008 at 11:17 ¶There’s some information here although it looks a little out of date. http://www.childrenintherapy.org/essays/subsidy.html
Posted 26 Nov 2008 at 22:18 ¶it is old, but it still goes on…. pretty much in the same way
Posted 26 Nov 2008 at 22:38 ¶Did you all see 20/20 on November 28, 2008? It talked about RAD a little and how many problems parents have with adopted kids…
their message board is full of the RAD cult posting, and then parents who think there is no problem, just messed up rich adoptive parents…
ugh on both parts
I do think a good message from the lady from the Ranch for Kids was that many of these kids have brain damage…
but she was suggesting many of the RAD parenting tech… the story went in the direction that 25% of parents disrupt adoption and all adopted kids have RAD, etc…
overall, not the best story and one for the RAD cult..
Posted 29 Nov 2008 at 15:46 ¶Hello! *waves* I found you via livejournal and I’ve been going through this blog reading the various entries, simply horrified by all of this. Before I quit grad school for social work, I was interning at the University of Illinois in their children’s anxiety clinic. This was one of the best psychiatric clinics I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot both as a patient and as a student.
At the anxiety clinic, we did have to use the DSM-IV to diagnose each patient that we did intakes with. I worked exclusively with children on medicaid, many of whom were foster children or adopted. And having worked with the DSM-IV very closely, I will say that I never came across a single instance when I would’ve saddled a child with a diagnosis like RAD, which to me sounds a lot more Conduct Disorder than anything else.
I had one patient, a 7-year-old who had tried to drown his younger brother in the bathtub. This according to the mother, though, who wanted to spend most of her son’s sessions with me complaining about her ex-husband. Even after hearing her stories about her son’s aggression, though, my supervisor and I decided that we would diagnose him with ADD, since we HAD to give him a diagnosis. My supervisor explained to me that only under extreme circumstances would we ever diagnose a child with something as serious as Conduct Disorder, that carries a huge stigma and will absolve the parents of all responsibility toward working with their child to help his behavior issues.
We did a lot of family therapy and a lot of group therapy, and for phobia disorders (social phobia, selective mutism, and specific phobias), we used a very slow method of exposure therapy. We never even used immersion therapy because that was viewed as cruel and could cause a lot more problems than it fixed.
Anyway, I’m really just saying all this because I’m shocked that there are places that actually encourage and believe in this AT therapy. I’ve never heard of Attachment Disorder or even RAD before today. To me it sounds like a mixture of PTSS and Conduct Disorder.
Ted Bundy was a sociopath and honestly, no amount of wacked out holding therapy could’ve helped him. It seems to me like the sorts of “therapy” described in this blog would’ve caused a psychotic break in a real sociopath.
Posted 27 Jan 2009 at 04:34 ¶“Being physically restrained against one’s will, being laid upon, threatened, demeaned, licked and tickled, while begging the perpetrators to stop.” Sounds a little like living with my older brothers. Although, it’s different when the abuse comes from a sibling; Mom was always there to put a stop to it. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be bullied like this by “adults” who are supposed to be helping you!
Posted 27 Jan 2009 at 18:22 ¶What is the evidence that RAD exists? I’m trying to find it.
Posted 23 Feb 2009 at 18:45 ¶They suspect my cousin might have attachmnt disorder. I think it’s a load of crap. Any advice?
Posted 13 Feb 2010 at 08:14 ¶BMW Princes, a first port of call would be the 2006 APSAC report. There is a link to it on this site. It covers the whole controversy about RAD, alleged attachment disorder and attachment therapy. Reading through this will help you spot the difference between recognised and unrecognised RAD. The term “attachment disorder” can either be the attachment therapists fake diagnosis, or a rather loose use of the term to mean RAD or sometimes just a more problematical attachment style which is not actually a disorder. Why is your cousin thought to have “attachment disorder” ?
Posted 13 Feb 2010 at 13:10 ¶Thanks. He might have some issues and if he does he needs help not the junk science these attachment therapists are promoting. My cousin is not a RADish. A radish is a vegetable you put on salad.
Posted 15 Feb 2010 at 18:05 ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 5
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