RAD time devouring is one of the most straining effects of Reactive Attachment Disorder on otherwise healthy families.

My Daughter was a Well That Couldn’t be Filled.

My wife and I were in the process of adopting three children that would bring our total to one more child than we had ever considered when we learned that our two new daughters had older siblings. It took another year-and-a-half to locate and adopt two of the sisters who were in their mid-teens. That took us to nine kids. I think. Sometimes I forget the total (don’t get me started on ages and birthdays). We already knew that kids in general were devourers of time. And even though we had begun to understand Reactive Attachment Disorder from two of our other children, we had no idea how consuming RAD time devouring could be until our oldest daughter (who was almost sixteen) came home.

RAD time devouring was soon at famine creating levels in our home.

I could understand the demands of excess for money and “things” that my newest daughter made. I mean, everyone knows the images that are conjured up when the less-educated think of “coming to Amérika.” I wasn’t surprised when we had to educate her that not every girl in Amérika had their own yellow convertible, unlimited credit card and cell phone (true story). What did surprise me was that this child had no concept of anyone else’s time nor would she accept any explanations that limited her draw on that most important resource. RAD time devouring was soon at famine-creating levels in our home.

At first, therapy providers refused us as clients because they were afraid of being liable for misdiagnosis and maltreatment when they felt that my daughter’s grasp of English wouldn’t let them understand her well enough. Finally, when situations in the home reached critical levels and my daughter had to be hospitalized, the state provided a translator trained in therapy to assist a therapist that was readily available. (I know, you’re screaming, “That’s a bad sign! Don’t do it!” Thanks for that. You’re a little late.) Within a month, I felt like a starving man who had been saved by people who placed him on a rock-pile and told him to eat all the gravel he wanted.

I had eight other children and one of them was not going to steal me from the others regardless of RAD time devouring demands.

We hadn’t been meeting with the “easily available” therapist for a month when he told us that our daughter felt like she needed more individual personal time with Dad and Mom. They had talked and decided that she needed an hour each, daily, from Mom and Dad, individually. I looked like a deer caught in headlights when I explained that it simply wasn’t possible. We had nine kids. That would mean nine hours a day for each parent, spent individually, with each of our children. The therapist said that we should compromise down to a half-hour a day, individually from Dad and from Mom. I blew a gasket. I had eight other children and one of them was not going to steal me from the others regardless of RAD time devouring demands. Several days later, my oldest daughter told us that she didn’t like having brothers and sisters because she didn’t get enough of her parent’s time. She demanded that we send the others away. One day I’ll need to write about RAD compromising. Even if we had sent the others away, within weeks she’d have demanded the dropping of employment and anything else that didn’t allow her full control of us.

Our oldest daughter’s obsession with RAD time devouring was so acute that she would create a crisis that would cause us to spend the time on her rather than on the other child.

No matter how much time we gave our oldest daughter, any time that was given to our other children, even assisting with homework, was sabotaged. Our oldest daughter’s obsession with RAD time devouring was so acute that she would create a crisis that would cause us to spend the time on her rather than on the other child.

I won’t pretend to have the answers to RAD time devouring. I consider it the area where we failed the greatest. I would like to share some ideas that helped us; though you might as well read a book by the United States on how to do battle in Viet Nam.

The overwhelming demands of RAD time devouring make us feel like we can’t do what it takes to succeed so we might as well give up.

We tried way too hard to try to make things fair rather than concentrating on what each child needed. We would have been much more successful had mom and dad taken turns with our oldest daughter, out of the home, for extended times in the evenings. This would have given her much of the time that her RAD time devouring demanded while the other parent spent quality time with our other children. My oldest daughter would have still gotten more of our time than was fair, but at least the others would have received more than they did and they would not have been exposed to as much trauma. This is one of my biggest regrets. We can’t make the world or even our families fair, especially if there are members who have experienced severe trauma. I guess it’s like I tell my kids; “Things don’t have to get better to be fair. If life was fair, everyone might be raised in orphanages.”

Now that I have shared our biggest failure, please allow me to share something that we did right. The overwhelming demands of RAD time devouring make us feel like we can’t do what it takes to succeed so we might as well give up. That type of thinking simply isn’t true. When we give up, every bit of effort we have put into trying to help that child who has Reactive Attachment Disorder is lost. In fact, they are worse off than when we got them. Reactive Attachment Disorder is there because of failed relationships and attachments. When we give up; when we fail, we are only confirming the child’s erroneous understanding that all relationships fail, so attachment is an investment they can’t afford. Write this on a sticky note and put it on your bathroom mirror; “When all I can do isn’t enough, I still have to do all I can do.”

RAD time devouring is one of the most straining effects of Reactive Attachment Disorder on otherwise healthy families.

As parents and caregivers of children who suffer from Reactive Attachment Disorder, we need to take time to think, consider and plan. The consequences for good and bad could not be greater. Too many marriages have been lost due to struggles that come along with Reactive Attachment Disorder. Too many families have broken. RAD time devouring is one of the most straining effects of Reactive Attachment Disorder on otherwise healthy families. We need to give other parts of our family the attention that they need for our family to survive. We will never be able to give our children who suffer from Reactive Attachment Disorder enough of our time to undo what trauma has done to them. We can help. That is true. They may well advance to the point where they can be successful. That is our hope.

We must be wise. RAD time devouring is a Black Hole. What goes into it never comes out. We can never get it back. That isn’t to say that we never give time to RAD time devouring. We must budget our time. We must be smart when developing time strategies as to how we can help everyone, like my wife and I should have done in getting one parent out of the house with an individual while leaving the other behind to spend time with other children. Make sure that you find and develop resources that will allow parents to get away from children, occasionally, to focus on their own relationship. The family needs that relationship to succeed more than anything else.

To those whose families have been damaged beyond repair due to the effects of Reactive Attachment Disorder, I don’t know what to say. I can only cry. It’s nothing you did or didn’t do. It’s not your fault. It’s not the child’s fault that trauma mercilessly affected them the way it did. What happened to you could have happened to any of us. You gave everything while trying to save a child. I can only hope that your reward will eventually dwarf your sacrifice. Please! GOD! Help me to believe it will be worth it.

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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