|
My friend has been through this. She fostered a little girl off and on from the time the girl was 2 until she was 6. The state kept returning her to her birth family.
The state removed her one last time at age 6, and terminated the family's rights. My friend adopted her.
Within a year the child had become violent. Her past had been too unstable for her RAD to show itself - she didn't FEEL she had a primary caregiver until after she'd been adopted and lived with the same family for a solid year. Then all hell broke loose.
By age 8 she was in RTC. Not because of anything she DID, but because of what she PLANNED. She had told a younger sibling in the family an entire, complete, filled out and detailed plan of how she planned to kill the parents. The younger sibling broke down weeks afterward and confessed to the parents. The plan was realistic. It would have probably worked, so the parents moved her out of the home to the RTC.
A few months later, she blew her placement at the RTC. She now lives with a different family who specializes in children like her. She's the youngest, so there are fewer people she can hurt, etc. The family may adopt her, she's still honeymooning so it's not a done deal, everyone knows to wait until they see the worst. But this child's honeymoon is known to last longer than a year, perhaps longer now.
My friend's family did everything right. They knew the child, they'd had her close to half her life. They knew her temperment, they knew her behavior. She started the right kinds of counseling right away. When behaviors escalated, so did the counseling and parenting techniques. It SHOULD have worked. But the child didn't choose to work, and in attachment the child has to cooperate or it won't work. The ball is in the child's court, the child can make it work or make it fail. In this case, the child chose to make it fail.
Attachment and proper behaviors can NOT be forced on a child. The child must cooperate. And that is what makes the difference.
|