RAD unfairness is worse than regular unfairness and I wanted someone to fix it. I wanted someone to make it fair.

I’m Tired of Being Punished for Trying to Help

It’s not fair. I just wanted a couple of little girls. I didn’t want them to worship me. Well… I didn’t want them to worship me any more than any little girl worships her daddy. I knew that my daughters had lived a life of trauma in their first home, and later, in orphanages. I thought that was all the more reason that they would love being “carried away” to a place where they were always safe; where they always had enough to eat; where they were loved an coddled, the way that little girls were supposed to be. By the time we finished adopting four biological sisters, we learned that my expectations had been unreasonable. When that happened, I felt cheated. I felt like it was unfair, and not just a little unfair. RAD unfairness is worse than regular unfairness and I wanted someone to fix it. I wanted someone to make it fair.

When RAD unfairness came to town, what “came” around wasn’t what “went” around.

Not getting the good that I expected from the deal was hard enough. The worst part, though, was the good that begot bad. I’m a real cause-and-effect kind of guy. Some of that comes from a background of engineering pumps. It goes further than that, though. Some people call it karma; others say that we “reap what we sow.” Guys like me in cowboy hats just say, “What goes around comes around.” But when RAD unfairness came to town, what “came” around wasn’t what “went” around. The more my wife and I tried to help some of my daughters, the more they turned against us. When we promised them that this family was forever, they tried to break it. When we demonstrated love, they made false accusations of abuse.

Reactive Attachment Disorder brought RAD unfairness when it taught my daughters that nothing in their lives could be planned or calculated.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was just getting a taste of what my daughters felt, every moment of their lives. My education had taught me that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Their experiences had taught them that for every action there is a completely unrelated reaction. Reactive Attachment Disorder brought RAD unfairness when it taught my daughters that nothing in their lives could be planned or calculated. As infants, when they cried, they might have been fed, or they could have been beat. The crying may have been followed by a diaper change, or it could have produced no results at all. Even today, after ten years in our home, my fifteen-year-old daughter can’t seem to grasp the almost tangible truth that mathematical properties work the same way every-single-time, no matter what. Thankfully, she has other talents and won’t need to design pumps for a living.

RAD unfairness does not exist in our home because of anything my wife or I have done.

The “practical” ways of my own mind, and my experience in leading a company, insist that I find out whose fault it is and make sure that there is training and education to fix the problem. Or, if that doesn’t work, termination would need to be used. Well, it’s a little too late for that. In fact, the Russian government (in our case) already beat me to it with perhaps too little training and education when termination was a simpler option. Several things are sure. RAD unfairness does not exist in our home because of anything my wife or I have done. None of the reasons for the development of Reactive Attachment Disorder are due to things that my children did.

RAD unfairness didn’t come because of anyone in our family, but my children still suffer from the effects of Reactive Attachment Disorder.

I guess I could try to narrow it down to whether a government was at fault, or if the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of my daughters’ first parents. But what would the point be? The facts would still remain. RAD unfairness didn’t come because of anyone in our family, but my children still suffer from the effects of Reactive Attachment Disorder. They We are only part of the way through a very long journey in trying to help them to learn to have successful relationships and lives. OK. It isn’t fair. But I had a friend who used to tell me that the fair is a place you go to eat cotton candy. Perhaps those are wise words, today. Besides, not everything about adopting older children is bad.

I don’t know why it is, but it seems like we all think that things need to improve to be fair. From a logic standpoint, that simply isn’t true. Life could still be fair if everyone lived in an orphanage. I don’t think that’s the direction we need to go, though. Maybe I need to spend a little bit more time trying to understand and help my children and little less time trying to make things fair.

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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