When children are not cared for and their needs are not met, it causes them not to trust people. You have to trust people to bond with them. Every child can have different degrees of bonding or attachment issues. When a child has major attachment issues she can be labeled Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). Some children struggle with this their entire life. This disorder affects the entire family.

We had fostered a toddler that spent her life in a crib to the point of having a flat head. When she was fed, the bottles were propped up in the crib. Having her diaper changed was not important to her biological mother. So when she was placed with us at 13 months old, she had spent a year learning that her needs would not get met.

She did not like any physical contact. She had lived her first year without the experience of being held and loved, so she would not allow it. This broke my heart. Her and her brother were the ones we agreed to adopt; I wanted more than anything to cuddle and love her.

She would become completely rigid and would scream when you would hold her. As she got older she became more aggressive with hitting, head butting, throwing herself back, and biting when you would hold her. She was diagnosed with RAD, and we started therapy with her. We were told time would tell if she could bond with us.

It has been over three years since she came into our lives. Two years ago, I decided to become a stay at home mom in the hopes that I could help my daughter form healthy attachments. It was a long hard road, but this year we have seen great improvement. Will she always have some issues concerning attachment? Probably, I do not think it will completely go away.

She goes everywhere with me, the doctor,the grocery store, the bathroom,it does not matter. Within the last few months she has started wanting to stay with Daddy when I go somewhere. After I leave, she does have panic attacks wanting to go with me, but they are getting better. People think she is too attached to me and we need to place her in daycare to learn to be away from me.

People do not understand that is what we have been working towards. All they can see and say is that it is not “healthy” for her not to want to be separated from me. They do not understand that she did not have that experience the first two years of her life.

All people can think about is that this will cause major problems and damage to her when she starts school. She will start school fall of 2008, so she has time. She can be away from me for short periods of time and I believe she will adjust to school when the time comes.

I find it sad that people do not see the progress she has made or what she needs. Their only thought is that she is not normal or "healthy" for her age. Then again what is “normal”??


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