When Love Is Not Enough - Purchase From Amazon.com

Well, I can’t deny it any longer, I have a child with reactive attachment disorder, or RAD.  It’s a roll of the dice when you adopt, even as infants which mine all were. The reality of the situation is that they all present attachment issues to some degree. This one seems to be the most severely affected (at this point!). He has hit puberty and his attachment issues have come screaming out. Conscience is sorely missing and lying and sneaking abound.

I figured this out because, by the recommendation of my friend and our family therapist, I started watching some videos on attachment disorder. I think for the first 2 videos, I couldn’t shut my gaping mouth. It was describing him to a T. Here I was thinking “why don’t consequences change this kiddo’s behavior?” and “nothing seems important enough to him that can move him from what he wants to do”. Right on both counts, I discovered. In fact, there was a chart that showed just where his level of conscience was.

Ages 1 – 3: Takes what he sees and wants.

Ages 3 -5: Doesn’t take what he sees and wants for fear of being killed by mom/dad.

Ages 5 – 9: Doesn’t take what he sees and wants thinking mom/dad may be upset.

Ages 9 – 11: Doesn’t take what he sees and wants because he wouldn’t like the way that would make him feel about himself.

Oh wow – we are in stage 1-3!

I can’t watch these videos fast enough! Many of the parenting skills I’ve learned up to now are just not working. So I am taking it one piece at a time. Today I learned that until this kid feels safer and is sure he can trust us, we are in for one mighty power and control struggle.

I am starting off with 2 things I learned: Never tell him “I NEED you to do something”. He’ll just think “Oh you mean I have power over your needs? Cool!!” What you have to say is “I WANT you to do something”.

Secondly, when he has his meltdown because he can’t do something (like master something which for him is usually fear of failure so he doesn’t try), I am going to say “Yes you can – I have faith in you”. This also is when he says he can’t handle his consequences, too.

So far that’s all I’ve got! So, keeping the humor up, I will keep plugging away. He’s worth it!

By the way, the videos are part of a DVD series called When Love Is Not Enough by Nancy Thomas. Take a look at the video series or the book if you’ve got adopted kiddos like me. We’ve also had much success with Total Transformation by James Lehman. Though it’s not written specifically for RAD kids, the techniques we’ve learned in it have worked very well for ours.

One of the biggest struggles I have is how to motivate kids – my kids in general, two of them in particular. One of them is just plain lazy, at least that’s how it appears. There is probably more to it than that, but it sure comes across that way. The other one is a struggling teen – she has school problems, is frequently depressed, and can be extremely belligerent to us. Teen motivation isn’t one of the easiest things to do; you really have to have a strategy.

I was recently looking for answers and found a couple of good articles by James Lehman on the Empowering Parents website. One of them really applied to both of my problem kiddos. It’s called Motivating Underachievers – When Your Child Says “I Don’t Care”. It gave me several great ideas – I’ll share a few that have worked for us.

One of the things he says we have to understand is that it’s impossible for teens and pre-teens not to be motivated – it just depends on what they’re motivated to do. Quite often, they’re motivated to resist us, withdraw, or under-perform. Instead of acting out, they’re acting in!

So how can you motivate teens? Mr. Lehman gives 9 “motivate tips” to get through to your unmotivated children or teenagers. Here are 4 of them that really resonated with us.

1. Look at what your child likes. The idea here is to observe what your child likes to do. Don’t take his word for it, he’ll say “nothing matters”. But look at his actions – does he watch a lot of TV, play video games, play on the computer? Observe, and write them down – later on you can use these things as incentives.
2. Make sure everything is earned each day. This is one I didn’t realize, but it makes sense. You have to hold unmotivated children accountable. Make sure everything is earned. Life for these kids has to be one day at a time. They should have to earn their TV or video games. How? By doing their homework and chores. They earn their cell phone today, and then start over tomorrow.
3. Have conversations about what your child wants. This has been very successful with my daughter. It’s not small stuff, like the phone or iPod, but bigger things like a car, driver’s license, apartment, and so forth. She has to have good enough grades to take driver’s ed, to get insurance, and to be able to get a job so she can move out on her own. This is motivating her well, and in a more long-term way.
4. Don’t shout, argue, beg or plead. If you do any of these things, it lets your child know he’s in control. With underperforming kids, you have to be very cool. Keep the shouting to a minimum!

One thing you have to realize is that being an underachiever gives your child a sense of control and power, because she doesn’t have to worry about the anxiety of failure or meeting responsibilities. She doesn’t have to deal with people’s expectations. Once people start expecting more of these kids, they fall apart.

That’s a few tips about dealing with underachiever children. To read the whole article, click here.

If you like what you read, and want to learn more, consider trying out The Total Transformation program. It’s a CD, DVD and workbook set with hundreds of ideas for managing challenging behaviors in kids. It’s done wonders for our family – believe me, if you’re willing to work at it, you will get results.

Sometimes boys are so out-of-control that parents feel there is no solution other than to send them to a military school for boys, boot camp, or wilderness program. This isn’t usually out of choice, but because they’re at their wit’s ends, they’ve tried everything else, and they don’t see any other alternative. Residential treatment programs like military schools for boys, reform schools, and boot/wilderness camps can provide short term help. They can teach your teenager how to behave in a restrictive, artificial environment, but they rarely bring about permanent behavior changes once they return home and are faced with the challenges of the real world.

The problem is that many teens don’t know how to problem solve, and that’s why they act out and are disobedient and abusive. It’s a coping mechanism. They just use it to get what they want, instead of working through the problem.

If you’ve been considering a military school, please do yourself (and your teen) a favor and take a look at the Total Transformation Program by James Lehman. This program is designed to teach parents how to help their kids learn to problem solve, thereby eliminating the abusive behavior that comes from poor problem-solving skills. Mr. Lehman give you lots of tips and tools to help your child to be successful in life.

One of our favorite techniques is to stop the show. What this means, is don’t enter in with the teenager when he attempts to push your buttons. If he’s abusive, walk away from him until he is able to talk to you in a calm, logical voice. Basically, you’re creating a vacuum where he doesn’t have any “air” to fight in – if there is no one to fight with, he’ll stop.

This is just one of the techniques we’ve learned that has worked for us. Mr. Lehman has hundreds more – and they all make sense and are easy to implement. Maybe a military school for boys is not the right answer. Take a look at The Total Transformation today. You’ve got nothing to lose, because for a limited time, they are offering the program for free. All you have to do is order it and complete and return the enclosed Feedback survey. Do it today before it’s too late!

An interesting thing happened on the way to opera last night (just kidding about the opera) - my daughter decided to be defiant. Straight up, in our face “I am going to break your rules”. And when we confronted her, all h-e-double toothpicks broke loose! It was straight out of James Lehman’s Total Transformation chapter on the Turn Around.

She first, sadly in her anger about being called out, put her arm through a wall. Then she did everything in her power to put this on us. “You don’t trust me” seemed to be the most common refrain. When we reiterated that the issue wasn’t trust, it was breaking a rule, she did a bait and switch.

“I hate living here” came flying out next quickly followed up with “I am leaving”. And off she went to her friend’s house, swearing and huffing down the street. We made it clear that if she did not return by 11pm she would be breaking curfew and restated the consequences for that.

After an evening of back and forth from said friend’s house, insisting we write the rules down “right down to what shoes and earrings I can wear”, demanding an apology from us, threatening to not return if we did not immediately change the rule, and a long phone call by us to the friends mom to reassure her we did not kick our daughter out, she finally got it that we weren’t going to budge.

With constant reassurance (she called us at 11pm to give it one more shot) that everyone makes mistakes and glad she is making them at home where we can work through them, that we love her the same as we did always, and home was the best place for her, she broke and had her daddy come get her.

How’d we do it you ask? It took a lot of remembering what we learned, she is a teen who is self-centered in trying to become independent; not to react out of anger at her rude behavior; stay focused on the issue at hand – breaking the rule. The last one helped us mostly stay calm and not head down the defensive rabbit trails she was laying at our feet.

And today business as usual and trust me she tried to see if we are going to be sad and sorry by pushing us a bit. But once she saw that all was status quo, our normally sweet girl returned. Oh yeah, she gets to learn a new skill too, drywalling!

Looking for help with your defiant teenager? Take a look at The Total Transformation by James Lehman today. It works for us!

One thing I find very interesting as a parent is how kids deal with things that they feel are unfair. I found that when they don’t believe the situation is fair, all rules go out the window. The fairness becomes the focus not the unacceptable behavior.

Let me give you an example. I have firm rules about the time and the length of time the kids can play video games.  Sometimes the length of time gets bumped due to the time they must be finished. My 11-year old cannot abide this hierarchy.  “But Mom, Sean got to play for an hour.  Why do I have to get off at 5? I only started at 4:30.” This conversation is, of course, happening  about 5:15 too! So now the focus is redirected from playing past the stop time to getting his full hour. And if I let him, away we would go down this rabbit trail with me trying to defend why the stop time has first preference over the length of time, again!

And guess what isn’t getting addressed? That’s right…the stop time infraction. It takes concerted effort on my part to recognize “the unfair” distraction and stay focused. Don’t misunderstand me here, I explained the hierarchy when I established these rules so this is not a surprise to him.

Ok so what do I do? I listen for the fair word to come up so I am not sideswiped and find myself down the road. I continue to stay focused on the infraction at hand.  Just as a great side note, I have noticed that when I do this right, my child feels safe. My guess it is because I am in control and as I’ve said before, every kid wants to know who is in charge here and am I loved.

James Lehman talks about this “fairness” issue in the Total Transformation Program, saying that “Injustice” is one of the characteristics and practice of children with disrespectful, obnoxious, abusive behavior. Some of the others that he talks about are One-Way Boundaries, Casing, False Apologies, and Pride in Negativity. In all, he describes 16 characteristics that parents of this type of child should be aware of.

You need to find out more about Total Transformation today if you’ve got these kind of problems with your child.