RAD Thinking: Reactive Attachment Disorder
When RAD thinking is active, bad grades, disappointed parents and frustrated friends are small potatoes.
What in the Name of All That’s Holy, was she Thinking?
Why can’t she pay attention in class? Why doesn’t she listen to what I’m saying? What did she think was going to happen? Doesn’t she even care? Wait. Stop there. That’s probably the question I used to ask myself the most. I could never figure out why my children who suffered from Reactive Attachment Disorder wouldn’t pay attention in class, to me, to my wife, to well, anyone. It must have been because I was expecting them to think like I think; like most people think; not like people who come from trauma think. Instead, three of my children cling to RAD thinking.
RAD thinking causes some of my children to process things significantly differently than I did.
In my childhood, I was rarely, if ever, in real danger. By the time I was school aged, some of my most unpleasant experiences would occur if my parents came home from Parent Teacher Conferences with bad news, or if my report card had unacceptable grades. I quickly learned that I could avoid some of the things that stressed my relationship with my parents the most, simply by putting in effort sufficient to get grades that my parents would at least tolerate. RAD thinking causes some of my children to process things significantly differently than I did. So, when I thought about my children who came from trauma and their settings in school, I wasn’t considering everything when I asked myself if they even cared. Did they care about the seemingly trivial thing that the teacher was writing on the chalk board? Ummm… probably not.
When RAD thinking is active, bad grades, disappointed parents and frustrated friends are small potatoes.
Did they care? Oh, you had better believe that they cared about something. Just as I cared about the things that stressed me the most (one of them being my parents’ reaction with unacceptable grades) my children from trauma care about what stresses them out the most, too. Are bad grades and derogatory reports from a teacher the things that have stressed those children the most? Not hardly. When RAD thinking is active, bad grades, disappointed parents and frustrated friends are small potatoes.
RAD thinking is constantly watching for scenarios just as dangerous as terrorism at any given moment.
RAD thinking is hypervigilant. No one is more aware of their surroundings than are my children who come from trauma. But their focus is where their brains believe it needs to be, not where a teacher or a parent tells them it should be. Would you be paying attention to A2 + B2 = C2 if your instinct thought there might be an immediate reason to focus on survival? I mean, π r2 loses some of its appeal (if it ever had any) when someone walks into the classroom brandishing a boot knife. Really… RAD thinking is constantly watching for scenarios just as dangerous as terrorism, at any given moment. When children, especially young children have been in danger of losing their lives even briefly, it can change the way that their brains process information. When it happens repeatedly, the results are even more severe. But many of these children have lived on the edge of life-threatening danger. It makes the word that most people live in seem pretty boring.
RAD thinking won’t much concern itself with consequences that aren’t incredibly dangerous, perhaps even life-threatening.
So, when I try to up the ante, and make my child understand that I will make her life miserable if she doesn’t conform to things like getting good grades and paying attention when adults are talking to her, my threats have little impact. Even if I enforce them, (and with Reactive Attachment Disorder, there are few things more damaging to progress than not following through) I simply can’t compete when compared to the history that some of my children experienced. RAD thinking will take my threat in stride, without flinching. It will even take the punishment (with anger and resentment). But RAD thinking won’t much concern itself with consequences that aren’t incredibly dangerous, perhaps even life-threatening.
So do we give up? Do we stop making demands of our children who come from trauma? Of course not. This is a long, uphill battle where we help our children to learn that there is cause and effect. We need to communicate that there will be consequences for actions, and we need to make sure that the consequences occur consistently. But we do need to realize that even if we are completely consistent and do all the right things (Lol), change will not come quickly. We are not training a child who comes with a blank slate. We are trying to undo a setting in a brain, telling it that its history of trauma doesn’t apply anymore. We are telling a brain that it should focus on E=MC2 instead of potential danger.
To us, as parents, reality is that the likelihood of our child being in real danger at school is unlikely enough that they shouldn’t be concerned unless surroundings indicate a change, or cause for concern. Unless conditions indicate that danger is arising, they should give utmost attention to the teacher when she says that “I” comes before “E” except after “C.” Simply put, to our children with RAD thinking, there are more important things to worry about.
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