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From a message to Dr. Gindis
From: Marolyn Morford PhD
To: gindis@bgcenter.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 7:49 PM
Subject: Your website
...The Family and Attachment Center of Provo Utah group and
many others who claim to understand adopted or foster children
have used the Reactive Attachment Disorder diagnosis improperly,
and, as you see from the list of symptoms, actually include
most of any child's difficult behaviors, adopted or not. This
then often leads to inappropriate treatment by unqualified individuals
and by parents. My concern is that we have many nonlicensed
'therapists' trotting out this term RAD and applying it to children
with behavior problems or to their newly adopted school-age
child, placing a huge burden on the child (it's their problem
of course) and prescribing inappropriate treatments that focus
on forcing the child to 'attach' to the new parents, rather
than waiting the long time it may require for such trust and
attachment to normally develop. It also has many foster parents
and adoptive parents eyeing their child suspiciously and with
fear. It has parents telling other adults (such as family friends
or teachers) to avoid being friendly with their new child (so
as not to interfere with the 'bonding' they are trying to accelerate).
Many children survive institution or foster care, only to be
emotionally assaulted by 'parents' who are focusing on their
own emotional needs, rather than the child's.
There is no empirical or clinical support (and certainly no
medical support) for the wide range of symptoms on this list
(that appears everywhere when people--not clinical psychologists--
talk about RAD) to be applied to any child. It does a great
disservice to the thousands of children who survive and thrive
due to their longer term inheritance of human resilience...
Best regards,
Marolyn Morford, PhD
Center for Mental Health/Child Development Consulting
110 Radnor Road, Suite 101
State College PA 16801 |
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From
a message to Dr. Gindis
From: Marolyn Morford PhD
To: Boris Gindis
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: Your website
.... logic tells
us that the popular discussion of RAD is not correct. It makes
the common error of causality from correlation (a child is
difficult AND the child was in foster care/institutional care,
THEREFORE foster care/institutional care CAUSED the child's
behavior problems. Not to mention the problem that there is
an ASSUMPTION that attachment was disrupted and this disruption
CAUSED the behavior problems. Not to mention the additional
problem: the ASSUMPTION that the particular model of therapy
offered by them will improve the children's behavior.
There are so many other explanations: genetic, temperament-caretaker
mismatch, familial (parent to child) personality characteristics,
among others.....
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From
the reply of Dr. Gindis
From: Boris Gindis
To: Marolyn Morford PhD
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 9:52 PM
Subject: Re: Your website
Dear Dr. Morford,
Thank you for your informative message. I could not agree
more with you regarding RAD issues. In my ongoing communications
with parents (workshops, individual in-office consultations,
and Internet-based consultations) I always stress that the
Family and Attachment Center understanding of RAD (popular
among adoptive parents) is too inclusive, ignores the social
and cultural components (e. g. learned behavior of surviving
in post-institutionalized children), and interferes with the
differential diagnoses and the most appropriate treatment
of behavioral/emotional issues in post-institutionalized children.
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Parents'
Letter
From: Claudia Auer
To: <systemadministrator@bgcenter.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 4:49 PM
Subject: RAD
As an adoptive parent of two children
who arrived from Russia at 10 years of age, I am sometimes
appalled at the number of postings I see on the adoption lists
looking for "cures" for RAD. Some parents are even
reporting placing their children in residential treatment
facilities in order to effect such a cure. How can you bond
with a child if you place your child in an institution? Isn't
institutional life part of the problem to begin with? Not
to make ourselves out as saints - we are not, but - When our
two kids arrived from Russia, about 16 months apart, we had
a very rough go of it in the beginning. Daily tantrums, BIG
drag-the-drapes-to the-floor tantrums, lessons in lying, stealing,
playing fair with other children. But, had we expected only
peace and harmony? What family, however conceived, has permanent
peace and harmony? And for our two kids, having grown up in
an indifferent institution with no one to count on, no real
schooling to keep their brains active, no knowledge of the
world outside the world of Dyetski Dom unless they were bussed
off to wave flags in a parade - how could we expect that they
would be other than the fierce, resilient creatures that they
were? What did they know of love, of softness, of trust and
relaxation? It was up to us, we reasoned, to provide them
with that knowledge. In order to do that, we sometimes had
to be soft when they were fierce, relaxed when they were stormy,
loving when they hated us the most. In the end, they came
to us when they were hurt, or when they had a special joy
to share. They still do. But there was much heartache at the
beginning. I don't think any kind of therapy or medication
could have changed that. My husband and I joked that the most
difficult times were our labor pains; he objected strongly
to having to share them with me. (Joke.) (Sort of.)
From
the reply of Dr. Gindis
From: Boris
Gindis
To: Claudia Auer
Sent: Friday, February 07,
2003 10:16 AM
Subject: RAD
You are saying that RAD is (mostly)
a learned "orphanage-induced" behavior that must
be rehabilitated in family environment. This was my position
for years, and I am so glad to hear from someone "in
trenches, who was there and has done this" that they
think and feel the same way. There are, of course, some extreme
cases (where RAD is only a part of the problem), which must
be treated in a highly specialized milieu like a residential
facility.
But this is an exception that confirms the rule: RAD has to
be treated by living in a family and acquiring family experience.
It does not exclude an outside therapy - but the main support
comes from parents.
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