Parents:
Foster, adoptive, and birth parents may start out by wanting and expecting a sweet, healthy baby or a young child to love and spend time bonding with. They imagine cuddles and cookie baking, baseball games and fun family outings.
When a child with RAD is brought into their home they have a hard time coming to terms with the reality that their child has special needs. They see their dreams of a loving family disappear, and their visions of cuddly children fly out the window.
Parents begin to feel frustrated, angry, depressed, and stressed out. They may begin to resent having brought this child into their home.
Living with an unattached child is exhausting!
Parents who are constantly functioning in crisis mode due to living with an emtionally disturbed, unattached child can develop Secondary PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and/or become clinically depressed.
They live under constant attack from their unattached children. Their authority, decisions, and rules are continually being challenged and undermined. They may be physically abused by their own children in their own homes. They begin to feel that no one and nothing is safe from their child.
The fear these parents live with every single day wears them down until they begin to think they must be doing something wrong and the problems in their home must be because of them.
They fight against feelings of inadequacy and failure, and start to believe that they are going crazy.
A Glimpse at Understanding RAD, Chapter Three, "How RAD Affects Families"
