[lucyjoy]

I took my state classes many years ago and I'm curious to know if their teaching has improved any. I'm really interested in what they are teaching about RAD and other attachment issues and what they're telling parents about handling these issues. some of the groups I'm involved in are wanting to make changes to improve older child adoptions.

[JoanneFromNYC]

You mean the MAPP classes?

Ours was a 10 week, (once a week for 3 hours) course. We learned a lot of things, not only attachment issues.

I'm looking over my notes (I havea big spiral notebook of notes from the course) and here's the breakdown, week by week:

Week 1: Basically an introduction, why we want to adopt, what kind of child we think would fit into our family, what we should expect from the rest of the classes, etc.
Week 2: The foster care and adoption experience: steps to TPR, difference between foster care & adoption, independent living
Week 3: Losses & Gains: maturational and situational losses, impact of loss on behavior, turning loss into gains, signs of abuse and neglect,
Week 4: Helping children with attachments: What attachment is, why it's important and how it develops. The impact physical & sexual abuse and neglect have on children, development of positive interactions & attachments.
Week 5: Helping children learn to manage their behaviors: the important role of adoptive families in helping children express feelings and manage their behaviors, the importance of special parenting skills, the difference between disapline and punsihment.
Week 6: Foster family/Birth family connections: Defining self concept & connections, using a life book, fantasy and complications, non-physical way to connect, self esteem in a hurt child.
Week 7: Gains & Losses: When children can't go home, adoption, preventing disruption and why it occurs, interventions, meeting our own needs
Week 8: Understanding the impact of adoption: defining the family system, defining your families strengths and needs, what a child brings, the first 24 hours, effects of foster care.
Week 9: Perspectives in adoptive parenting: parents groups, 12 skills to succesful adoptive parenting.
Week 10: pot luck dinner

I can go into more detail about any of the lessons if you'd like.

[lucyjoy]

Week 4 is what I'd really like to know about. Did they explain the behaviors of unattached kids? Are they still telling people to use behavior modification techniques?(These are useless with RAD kids). Do they acknowledge the fact that these children(RAD) make false allegations of abuse for fun and attention? Do they teach you how to deal with that? Kids with RAD are have one of the highest rates of adoption disruption mostly, in my opinion, because parents are prepared to care for them and by the time they learn how, are too burnt out and traumatized to do that.
I'm trying to see if any progress is being made since RAD has become more out in the open.

[JoanneFromNYC]

We touched on a lot of things but I got the impression that it was up to us to further educate ourselves on the issues and disorders these children bring with them. I can't speak for the rest of my class but my husband & I are doing that. I read all I can find online about attachment disorders & post traumatic stress in children, attention deficient, hyperactivity, learning disorders etc just in case one of my children shows signs. I figure at least I won't be totally unprepared for it.

I'm going back into my notebook again.....

In week 4 we talked about how children, that are neglected by their biological parents, aren't given the chance to form their first healthy & needed bond and attachment and that bonding/attachment occurs through a stress/stress-reduction type of cycle. This is the attachment cycle that is absolutely neccessary for children to learn and to be emotionally and behaviorally intact.
We went on to talk about somethings that they may display in foster care and adoption as a result of the cycle of attachment being broken (due to biological parents neglect) such as......
Short and long-term memory deficents.
'Crazy' lying
Abuse to animals
Abusing others
Self-mutilation
Masterbation in public places
Drug abuse
Stealing
Bed wetting
Manipulation
Affectionate to strangers
Quick to anger
Tests parental authority
Poor peer relationships
Depression
Disobeys deliberately
Dosen't want to be touched
Lack of self confidence
Sexual acting out
...among others

I'll go back into my notes and post what they suggested in handling these situations.

[Linny]

Lucyjoy:
In my state (and maybe in others too?), a licensed person must complete so many hours of further educational hours in order to continue to have their license.
They (the state) has 'sponsored' classes about RAD. (I know this because our attachment therapist is one of the teachers.) However, I STILL do not think the system is acurate or thorough in presenting what living with a child of RAD is like! Our therapist's presentation is very good; but I believe it still gives 'too rosey a picture' about RAD and attachment disorders.
As far as I'm concerned, a person who is willing to adopt a RAD child, should be as prepared as adopting a child with autism (for this is on the same continum as RAD). They should be prepared to never 'get to this child', while hoping that they have 'caught the child before it is too late' and maybe help that child attach.
The classes don't stress this. There also isn't enough emphasis on 'the false allegations these kids often make'. I think this area and much of the 'living with RAD stuff' is glossed over; because in order to admit there is so much RAD and attachment disorders, the system would have to admit that tossing children from one home to the next (whether foster or bio), is a great contributor to making RAD.....or at the least, making it worse.

Further, you make an excellent point about parents being 'too burned out when they finally realize........ In our case, the state was not honest about their disclosure. We have the actual paperwork they were to have given us in the first place. Had we seen this info, we would never have brought this young boy into our lives; as we would have known he was way over our heads in our abilities and wants to focus on only one child in a family. (We already had two children in our family.) You are correct. We WERE too burned out after four years, and our attachment therapist says our son is the worst case she has ever dealt with.

But one last thing. Our therapist was in touch with another therapist who went to a convention where there were many, many attachment experts, writers, and renown therapists. This therapist knew about our son's situation and had the priviledge to 'staff his case' along with some others with these renown people. Their recommendation was, "Why isn't this child in RTC?" She told them that some of the kids (incl. our son) WERE in RTC. Now.........if SPECIALISTS of RAD say these kinds of things....what's this mean concerning RAD and its treatments? They admitted there were children that could not be 'saved'. ANY person wanting to adopt an older child needs very thorough training on attachment issues and RAD. This is especially true for much older kids, as I'm sure you already know.

Linny

[Linny]

Lucyjoy:
You made the comment on the special needs board, that parents who adopt older kids, (should, or be prepared for..) to have alarms on the doors of the younger or 'healthier' kids. Also, that parents need to use different techniques for parenting, etc.
I know that having special needs kids takes different techniques (we still have two special needs boys), but we could never live with alarms on doors.
I admire that you are willing to go this route, and live in your home in this way. My point though, is, your statements concerning alarms and different parenting (and we're talking about WAY different parenting in some ways).....is exactly what prospective adoptive parents NEED to hear!!!!
Yes, the 'alarms on doors' is a more severe scenario than many will have; but, I'm afraid that this scenario may become more common.
Hooray for you in that you are pressing for more education to pre-adoptive parents! For us, living with our RAD and his dangers was like operating our home as a residential site---24/7. We couldn't do it.........but I know some folks do!

Sincerely,

Linny

[lucyjoy]

Foster parents in our state are required to take continuing classses, but adoptive parents are not. I've talked on a few panels at the end of the training classes in our state and I didn't feel the parents were really being told enough. Two of my kids like to fill them in on how bad they really were and what they did to us and former foster parents. They want to help other foster kids get better quicker.

We couldn't live without our alarms. I had a kid sneak up on me in the middle of the night and steal my wedding ring off my finger. His therapist said I was lucky it wasn't a knife.

One of my kids that was in the RTC's therapist also consulted some other expets in attachment. They recommended I change my name, move, and never look back.

The parenting is hard, but when it works, its worth it.

[JoanneFromNYC]

These are the notes we have on how to deal with these issues:

One of the things they stressed was that we can't do it alone. They told us to keep lines of communication open with the foster parents, the agency and therapists.
Provide alternatives for destructive acting out behaviors.
Help children connect the way they are feeling to the way they are acting.
Ensure that restitution occurs.
Ignore certain behavior if it's being done as an attention getter.
Provide natural and logical consequences.
Take away privedges.
Provide positive reinforcement.

We discussed each item and gave descriptions of how it would work. We also talked about what we could and couldn't handle and why. We also did a lot of role playing.

I think they took the middle of the road stance. They taught the class with the assumption that most of their behaviors would be managable and that if the child has severe attachment issues, you would have a basic eduaction about it and seek professional help. Personally, I feel the class was an eye opener and got me on the road to educating myself. No, I would not just rely on MAPP to teach me everything on attachment disorders and I feel they could have given it more class time but then again, they didn't teach us everything on every other disorder either.

[JoanneFromNYC]

I forgot to add that on week 10 they gave each person two books; "Adopting the hurt child" and "Adopting the older child".

[lucyjoy]

I would never ignore an attention getting behavior except in really young childen. I say that because unattached kids don't trust adults to care for them. If they do something small and you ignore it, they think your not paying attention or your stupid, and either way, their going to die. So then they do something bigger to get you attention.

Positive reinforcement can also back fire with these kids unless its very specific. If I tell my son he's a really great kid, and he doesn't feel like he is, he decides I'm either stupid or I'm a liar, either way, he's gonna die. I can say things like "that's a really good idea". Some of the parenting I had to learn is very unnatural. I'm also not sure I'd have believed kids could be this broken if I hadn't lived it.

The reason I focus on attachment more than other dx's is because moving a child from his birth mother is a break in attachment and every move within foster care is another break etc. Reparenting in a way that encourages bonding is necessary for any child who's experienced these breaks. I talked to some therapists and social workers in Kansas where they decided Attachment disorder doesn't exist(hence they don't have to pay for treatment). Missouri had been a lot more progressive before their budget cuts. They sent their workers to attachment workshops and training.

Anyway, I really appreciate your looking up all that information for me. It sounds like in your state, the classes are at least mentioning the issue. Both the books they gave you are really great also. I'm also a big Foster Cline and Nancy Thomas fan. I like Martha Welch, too, but you really have to have it together to do her stuff and I found it emotionally draining for me. Can This Child Be Saved is a great book, also.

[JoanneFromNYC]

I have Nancy Thomas' site saved with my bookmarks. Do the other people you mentioned have websites I can check out?

I agree that attachment disorders should be focused on because I can't see a child going through the system and not being affected, even in a small way. In MAPP, they even did a role play with us on how it felt to be removed from their house, their biological parents and lose all their belongs. We learned that the disorder starts with the abuse they suffered at the hands of their biological parents, not having their needs met time and time again, then it continues and deepens when they are removed from their home, will worsen when their parents have their rights terminated for not following the courts case plan for reunification and then will become more severe with any new foster homes or failed placements. They told us that when we find a child and want to read their file, we should question all moves and failed placements and take that into consideration in our descion to move foreward.

I have a few sites saved in my favorites that I'd like to share. You may already know about them:


http://members.tripod.com/~radclass/
http://radkid.org/
http://www.syix.com/adsg/

[JoanneFromNYC]

By the way...I am also interested in hearing what others learned about RAD from their MAPP classes. I know I'm not the only one here.

[Angeleyes]

Our mapp classes were 10 weeks long. Two days a week, 3 hours each class. We covered how to attach to a child. We were never told about RAD and how some children cannot attach. When I mentioned RAD the instructor poo pooed around about it. The only class my dh found beneficial was the one on lost cause it helped him understand more about me and the death of my mother.

We are now in the process of looking for a shrink who deals with children with attachment issues just incase he is needed since we can only image how it will be handled at the agency level.

Angel

If you are not crazy when you start this process you will be by the time you are done.

[lucyjoy]

"We covered how to attach to a child."


How did they tell you to do this? Did they tell you specific things you could do? Did they seem helpful at all?


One of the speakers I went to hear had an interesting analogy. She asked us if we'd been married 18 times would we believe the 19th time would work?

She also had a lady and a man that had never seen each other before stand up. She told them they were now married and they were suppose to go home and live to gether preforming all marital duties. She said she'd send their new kids by later. She said never mind about your old spouses and kids, She's sure they'd be fine where ever they put them. She said she check with them in a few days to see how they were doing.

That sounds ridiculous, but that's what these kids are asked to do, sometimes many times.

Thanks for sharing your class experience. Be sure when your kids are placed, you ask alot of questions about subsidy and post adoption services. states that like to ignore that things exist, don't want to pay for the treatment either. There's been so much work in the field of attachment, that many kids with the proper treatment do get better.

Sorry for the preaching, my passion is to get the states to properly educate parents on adopton issues so families can be successful.

[DianeS]

Classes? You get classes? Lucky!

Yes, we have to log so many hours of "training" (I think it's 32 hours), but only 8 of those hours are mandated by our agency. The rest of the hours are whatever I feel like getting training on.

I know in that one 8-hour class they cover subsidies and medicaid and visitation rules, so that doesn't leave much time even if the whole rest of that session were to cover attachment problems!

Thank you, everybody, for educating me enough so that I know to seek out special classes on these hard subjects like RAD. The training though my state and my agency could definately be improved.