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What is RAD?
Reactive Attachment Disorder
Attachment Disorder is a result of early life experiences that results in a faulty belief system in the child. Instead of the healthy, “normal” beliefs that “I trust my parents, the world is safe, and I am special,” a child with attachment issues believes “I trust only myself, the world is a dangerous place so I have to be in control of everyone and everything in order to feel safe and there is something inherently wrong with me so my birth parents did not love and care for me appropriately.” As a result of this faulty belief system, their decision making process is, “I can do whatever I need to do in order to get what I want, regardless of the consequences to myself or others.”
Risk Factors
- Unwanted pregnancy
- In-utero exposure to trauma, drugs, and/or alcohol
- Physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse
- Physical and/or emotional neglect
- Sudden separation from primary caregiver (i.e. illness or death of mother, severe illness or hospitalization of the baby, adoption)
- On-going pain such as colic, chronic ear infections, hernias, etc.
- Constant change of daycares or using providers who don’t use bonding
- Mom with chronic depression (pre or post birth)
- Several moves and/or placements (foster care, failed adoptions)
- Unprepared mothers with poor parenting skills
- Caring for baby on a timed schedule or other parent-centered parenting
Symptoms in Children between 4 and 12 years old
- Superficially engaging or charming
- Lack of eye contact on parents’ terms
- Indiscriminately affectionate with strangers
- Not affectionate on parents’ terms
- 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 cause and effect thinking
- Lack of conscience development
- Abnormal eating patterns
- Poor peer relationships
- Preoccupation with fire
- Preoccupation with blood and gore
- Persistent nonsense questions and incessant chatter
- Inappropriately demanding and clinging
- Abnormal speech patterns
- Triangulation of adults
- False allegations of abuse
- Presumptive entitlement issues
- Parents appear hostile and angry
Symptoms in Infants
- Weak crying response or constant crying
- Tactile defensiveness (flinching or startling after 8 weeks of age)
- Poor clinging or holding on
- Resistance to cuddling, seems “stiff as a board”
- Poor sucking response
- Poor eye contact, lack of tracking (following)
- Developmental delays
- No reciprocal smile response (they don’t return smiles)
- Indifference to others (no “stranger anxiety” after 6 months of age)
- Self-abuse (head banging, etc.)