**Posted with Martin #6’s Permission to share her story**
There are many barriers that get placed between the heart of a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder and the adults charged with caring for them. Really any child from a hard place, but especially one with RAD. And each one of those obstacles and stumbling blocks is a post all its own. Hopefully by the time we reach the end of our journey we will have something positive to say about how we (with lots and lots of help from God and others), overcame them.
5th grade for Martin #6 was an eye opening experience for Ray and I. Up to that point we’d had kids on the gifted end of the IEP program who performed well, many times with minimal effort. Martin #6 was not meant to fit into that mold and we were clearly out of our element from the moment we tucked her in on her first night here. She requested to read a page from her daily devotional – one for princesses and written to be aimed at a kindergarten level student. We were excited that she made the request, but oh man we weren’t prepared for what we’d hear. She could barely read. This 10 year old that had just moved into my house hadn’t even been armed with the power to READ. My initial emotion was complete shock quickly followed by absolute rage. Who in the world allowed this to happen!?!? Is she disabled? Did I miss that in her paperwork somewhere? HOW CAN SHE NOT READ!?!?!?
A few short weeks later, Ray and I sat in our first IEP meeting for her. I was assured everything was going to be just great! They were so excited to meet her and they just knew it was going to be a good year. I’m sure they felt sorry for us – the behavioral issues at home had already begun and we probably looked like deer in the headlights at this point. We put our trust in the professionals because surely they knew what to do right? They had all this paperwork, none of which I was legally allowed to sign at the time because you know we weren’t real parents yet. I could legally take my child and get her put on meds that qualify as a legally controlled substance but I couldn’t sign her IEP. And so, off we went hoping for the best.
Every evening from Monday through Friday became a battleground. The homework battle is tough for many parents and children – that battleground with a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder is like manning the front lines armed with a dull pencil while the enemy has machine guns. She wasn’t diagnosed yet, and some days thinking about that makes me angry too – we were ill-equipped and uninformed. We were just as much failed by the system as she was on this front. In the 5th grade, kids are expected to write in and use a planner to communicate expected homework at home. My child couldn’t read and our only way of communicating what homework she had was a planner SHE was supposed to write in. She didn’t know what day of the week it was, nor could she read what day of the week it was, and she saw opportunity. Some days she just “forgot” and other days she sat down to do it but just plain couldn’t. Not just because of the trauma and all that other stuff – she could not actually do it. The school’s version of modified work was to make her do 5th grade spelling words, but she’d only have to do 5 of them. In math she was being asked to multiply 2 and 3 digit numbers together when she was still doing addition on her fingers. She spent most of her days creating drama in the SPED classroom (I still hope that lady has recovered from her year with Martin #6) and most every evening having a 3 hour tantrum (think furniture being thrown) using homework as her diving board. We oscillated between our agreement that she was being asked to do things we didn’t think she could but not wanting to continue to reinforce the idea that she didn’t have to do what was asked of her. We also were noticing that she was enjoying seeing us and her teachers not on the same page. Ray and I, even in our green foster parent space, were sure that something just wasn’t right. After we discovered we were pregnant with Martin #8 and I was sick most every evening this scene became completely unhinged. It was a nightmare. Martins #3, 4 and 5 would never know if they were about to walk into a horror story on the evenings they came over during the week. I began dreading any and all emails from teachers.
The straw that broke the camel’s back happened just before Martin #8 was born. I received a notice from a teacher that Martin #6 had a complete meltdown in the middle of the classroom and had refused to leave. I don’t remember the details of the actual incident, but I do remember asking what had led up to it. They were doing partner math activities – you know where you compete to answer questions the fastest. That’s right – my child who was still struggling to add and subtract with her fingers, was doing math drills with her 5th grade peers. I went straight into engineer mode laced with a heavy duty dose of mama bear. This child was making our lives miserable, but I was not going to let this meltdown get pinned on her. Our last IEP meeting looked a lot different than the first one. I had to fight the school district to get her re-evaluated to establish an accurate baseline. I refused to let them spend 60 minutes discussing her “behaviors” with me. I was well aware of her behaviors – I wanted to know where she was at educationally. She still could barely read after 9 months of school and I was terrified that this child who basically hated me was going to be strapped with ME for a teacher. They told me she had a learning disability. I asked them which one. They told me it was a “broad term”. I don’t need to go into details about what I had to say about that, but I can tell you Martin #6 was definitely re-evaluated.
Ray and I decided we were going to have to take matters into our own hands. The school district refused to qualify her for summer school because she had “made progress” and I refused to let 3 months go by just to start over again in August. Martin #6 and I spent my maternity leave with #8 learning the basics of reading, the basics of money, the basics of the calendar, and learning how to not hate each other. I also got certified as the Educational Advocate so I didn’t have anymore red lines to cross in advocating for her needs. It wasn’t the best situation in the world, but it wasn’t worse than the emails and phone calls from the school. I struggled with resentment at not having a few weeks to bond with the only baby I’d ever had, but I knew in my heart it was necessary. It removed the triangulation opportunity and also helped me figure out where she really was. She was diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder that summer. A few months later into her 6th grade year at a different school (we transferred her to a private Catholic school where Ray worked so he could be close by), we were handed her previously completed psych evaluation by her caseworker. I will save my words regarding being given this information 18 months after she moved into my home for another post. What is important to note now is what the report said about her – she had a normally functioning IQ and she was not, in fact, learning disabled. She was just grossly behind due to negligence and trauma.
6th grade was better but still had some of the same problems. We spent most of our evenings either battling it out or just throwing our hands up and refusing to do the homework at all. We were starting to learn from our trainings and our self-education on RAD that this “battle” was just holding us back from attaching which was very quickly making the problem that much harder to overcome. Not only was she not able to do the work, she was using it as a way to keep us at bay. If we were fighting over homework we certainly weren’t hugging her and talking to her and telling her how much we loved her. She LOVED stirring things up between school and home. She saw any and all gaps in communication as a way to distract us all from loving and caring for her. She was (and still is) a masterful liar and manipulator. I am trained now to see it and I am pretty sure a lot of people think I’m just kind of a mean parent. But I know her, I have to know her, so I can keep her safe and help her heal. The school did what they could, but by the end of the year everyone knew she was in a bad spot. She was a 2nd/3rd grader stuck in a 6th grader’s body…and we were headed for jr. high.
That summer Ray and I decided to look into and pull the trigger on doing an online school. Martin #6 took the diagnostic – she landed solidly in first quarter 3rd grade, with a few areas even as far back as kindergarten (vocab and phonics). She got hooked up with some resources and each night of that summer she WORKED them. We implemented them and she did them with little incident because she COULD do them. We were starting to realize and understand in our trainings that shame is HUGE for a kid with Reactive Attachment Disorder. And every situation where she felt like she “might not know the answer” sent her down a spiral of shame and panic she couldn’t pull out of. And so we made sure she COULD do the work and we worked with the online school teacher to make sure that summer all she did was reinforce the basics.
We entered into the fall terrified. It was working, but how were we going to do it? How could we keep this up with both of us working and 5 other children who really needed us? We approached her school with a proposal and they hit us with a few of their own. We landed on her doing the online classes for her English and her Math so she could work at her level and the rest of her classes while grade appropriate for content were highly modified by her teachers so they were doable.
It took a few weeks, but the evening fighting almost completely stopped. STOPPED. Martin #6 was stable enough to try out a sport (cross country) and still get her work done. She started reading on her own – really reading. She started to understand more advanced words and was comfortable using them in sentences. She went from having a meltdown over having to come up with and write a sentence for one spelling word to writing 10 sentences for 10 words in under 15 minutes. And without all those school battles (we still had/have battles over other things sometimes), she began to bond with us. And we began to bond with her. Because of all of those things falling into place, she was available to try some other things. That fall she completed her religious preparation for the sacraments of Reconciliation and First Communion because her teacher worked with her at her level. She received them supported by her whole school and is going to go into 8th grade on the same level ready for confirmation with her peers. She participated in a play where she had to read a script and MEMORIZE lines. She learned how to use a planner (still working on the discipline of actually USING it), and she is starting to understand time. She tried out for the musical and got a part in the ensemble. She was encouraged to keep a lanyard with her with things to help her cope (scented lotions, a picture of us, a rosary, a strength stone) on the hard days at school, and she started needing it less and less. She just finished an entire grade of school and for the first time in at least 4 years, she learned, improved, and moved forward!
Martin #6’s educational journey to this point has been riddled with giant leaps of faith from one unsteady rock to another. Ray and I have had to advocate for her in this area more than any area we have EVER had to advocate in, even with all the other things that come in the life of child from hard places. I have been public enemy number one for a lot of teachers and I’m sure many people who knew me before think I’m completely nuts. Less than 3 years ago a 10 year old with a broken heart moved into my home. I can’t say we’ve healed those breaks, but I can say with certainty that we have helped salve the wounds and we have armed her with a few important things. The skill of reading, the importance of school, the knowledge that she has a Savior in Jesus Christ, and the trust that her parents would go to bat for her no matter what. Even if sometimes we’re fighting our friends or our family. Even if we’re fighting HER.
She matters that much.
As one of my other posts says, we’re not quite at the top of this hill yet. Martin #6 is only 13 and I’m sure there will be other mountains we have to hurdle that will set this one back. That’s just the way it is. I often question my ability to parent this one, this special Martin #6. I fail a lot. I felt like I was prepared for every issue our trainings talked about, but I was not prepared for illiteracy. Nor was I prepared for how angry I was going to be at the adults who allowed it to happen or continued to enable it. With God’s help I’m learning to let go of that anger and instead just be motivated to help her overcome it with grace. I am thankful He placed such amazing people in her path to help us all make this plan work for her. I am in awe of how far she has come and I am hopeful this is just the beginning. I am never going to be the perfect mom and God knows the relationship between her and I is going to be different than the everyday relationship between a mother and daughter who have known each other their whole lives. But I know I love her, that I have and will continue to fight for what is best for her, and I know God brought her into our family because this was where she needed to be.
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ~ Jeremiah 29:11