When my daughter laid RAD charm of overwhelming but equal amounts on everyone, I simply wanted to expose her deception.

Charming? She’s Not the Angel You Think She Is!

That’s what I always wanted to say. Sometimes I said it. Most times I was able to hold my tongue. I never said it in my daughter’s presence. I didn’t want to hurt the fragile relationship that we were trying to build in the midst of the storm called Reactive Attachment Disorder. I didn’t want my daughter to feel like I viewed the challenges and struggles that came with her as any more significant, detrimental or “bad” than the struggles and challenges that came with any of my other children, whether they joined our family biologically or by adoption. Because our difficulties were dealing with the very foundation of relationships, i.e. attaching, they were more emotionally charged than some of our other family challenges. Even so, one of the paradoxes of parenting allows us to love our children completely even at the height of frustration; even in spite of RAD charm.

I didn’t know that I was lining up to become a statistic in a long and distinguished list of people who became the victims of RAD charm.

I should have been more understanding to those adults that were dragged in by my daughter’s RAD charm. After all, I fell for it first. That sweet little five-year-old girl in the orphanage hugged me, kissed me on the cheek and called me papashka (daddy). I wanted to take all of the bad things that had happened to her away. I wanted love to make her history null and void. How naïve stupid of me. Just like every person on the planet, my future daughter was a combination of her genetics and her environment. Especially in the beginning, anything I brought that might influence her was such a miniscule portion of what had built—and was building—her that it would have been unreasonable to expect it to have any influence what-so-ever. I didn’t realize that an overplayed demonstration of affection that was shallow, at best, was a survival skill that she had developed to get the things she needed. I didn’t know that such acts were common in children who suffered from Reactive Attachment Disorder. I didn’t know that I was lining up to become a statistic in a long and distinguished list of people who became the victims of RAD charm.

When my daughter laid RAD charm of overwhelming but equal amounts on everyone, I simply wanted to expose her deception.

Of course, in a day-to-day family existence, where attachment is expected, it didn’t take me long to realize that something was wrong. I felt betrayed when I saw my daughter use the same RAD charm on others that she had used on me. My justification was two-fold. First, I felt like the affection she showed to me should have been real rather than a tool used to get something. Second, I thought that she should have shown more affection to me than she did to teachers, people in the community, people at church, etc. When my daughter laid RAD charm of overwhelming but equal amounts on everyone, I simply wanted to expose her deception. Wow. How mature is that?

When others couldn’t see past my daughter’s RAD charm to her lies, and then questioned my own character and morals, I took it personally.

Then it got worse. My daughter, whose experience had taught her that all relationships fail, started planning for ours to follow suit. As she used her RAD charm on others, and they were taken in as I had been, she believed that she had successfully lined up her next parent figure and provider. With that, she needed to sabotage our relationship so she could move on. Of course my daughter turned to RAD lying. Teachers were told that she didn’t get to eat. An easily manipulated therapist (who simply didn’t understand Reactive Attachment Disorder) was told that she was being kicked and bruised. When the therapist told us he would turn us in if it didn’t stop, we took her straight to the doctor. When the female doctor examined my daughter “in the buff” and asked her where the bruises were, my daughter admitted to lying because I had made her angry. When others couldn’t see past my daughter’s RAD charm to her lies, and then questioned my own character and morals, I took it personally. Yup. Yet one more example of me trying to outdo my daughter in acting like a traumatized child.

I found it difficult to see my daughter’s RAD charm as a survival skill that she had developed to protect herself rather than a manipulation tactic that she used to make herself look good and me look bad.

As the difficulties common to Reactive Attachment Disorder escalated, I felt threatened. Never before had anyone questioned my abilities as a parent. Now, there was a considerable—and growing—group of people who though I was a bad one. My wife and I didn’t adopt to “do a good deed,” but because we had always wanted daughters. Even so, I felt like we had done a good deed in taking an older child who had little chance of getting another family. I didn’t want to be recognized or rewarded for that act, but I certainly didn’t think I should have been punished for it. I found it difficult to see my daughter’s RAD charm as a survival skill that she had developed to protect herself rather than a manipulation tactic that she used to make herself look good and me look bad. I think that was because I was looking at why I would do things like my daughter was doing rather than why she did them. Because of that I found myself spending far more time doing battle against my daughter rather than battling against the effects of Reactive Attachment Disorder.

RAD charm makes it difficult for parents to keep priorities in order. We feel like we need to keep the record straight, first; and that becomes a distraction.

I’m not saying that parents and caregivers of children who suffer from Reactive Attachment Disorder should never battle against people in the community or even against their own children. Sometimes, and particularly when safety is concerned, we have no choice. But I can say that in my own situation, I didn’t always need to lash out or fight back. If I was truly more concerned about my daughter than I was myself, I shouldn’t have been as worried about having my reputation knocked down a couple of pegs. I might have put more effort into helping my child than defending myself. RAD charm makes it difficult for parents to keep priorities in order. We feel like we need to keep the record straight, first; and that becomes a distraction. If we truly want what is best for our children, we need to focus on helping our children to overcome the effects of Reactive Attachment Disorder. Secondly, we need to try to educate those who work with them on the things that help and hurt with this unusual and complicated disorder.

To those in the community who have fallen head-over-heels in love with our charming children, and who sympathize with the vast amounts of trauma that they have experienced… Thank you. We love that you love them too. Please understand that their traumatic pasts have damaged them and that many of their behaviors are not what would be expected. Please be a little bit patient with us, as parents, because conventional parenting tactics do not work the same with these children as they do with those children who are not affected by Reactive Attachment Disorder. We ask you to be understanding as we are forced to use methods that may seem overly strict or unkind. We are simply trying to teach children who do not understand cause and effect, that rules must be taken seriously and that a little bit (or even a lot) of RAD charm won’t get them out of consequences. This re-training of brains is slow-going and we are in a countdown against time as we try to help our children learn in our families, before the judicial system and jails decide to teach them in other ways.

Often, readers receive as much help from other readers in the comments section as they do from the blog article, itself. Please be generous with your thoughts and experiences in the comments section. There are lots of people who need what you have to share. This is your chance to help them.

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