Confessions of a RAD Mom

I read a ton about Reactive Attachment Disorder.  Most nights, after dinner, I'm on my laptop while "watching" a TV show with my husband, reading some article, blog, social media page, or book about RAD.  Many nights I chat with others living this same nightmare.  I live with RAD daily and I have yet to find some therapy, some parenting technique, some help in any way shape or form, so I'm constantly searching for something, anything to help.

From some of my latest reading, I tried something kind of new this school year week.  In the past, when separated from my daughter in a new place to her, I've let her wear something of mine.  It's always been something cheap like a bracelet or something that I can wrap around her skinny wrists.  Giving her something of mine "keeps me alive" in her brain while she's separated from me.  If she gets anxious or scared, she can remember me with the help of the thing of mine that she's wearing.  I've done it at Edward Jones meetings during our Summer Regional conferences when she goes off to childcare during our meetings or awards ceremony.

This school year week I tried giving Miss Quiet Tiger a necklace to wear at school.  My mom had given me this cute silver mother/daughter charm on a black leather cord.  I've had it so long, I have no idea when she gave it to me.  It's nothing expensive at all and I knew the big risk I was taking in letting my RAD daughter wear it for 8 hours a day when she's away from me at school.

Oh, was she EXCITED to wear it!  She loved it and it seemed to make her so happy!  The second day of school she asked for it (we take it off at night).  The third day of school she asked for it.  She showed it off to all her friends and the kids she met at the bus stop.  But that's all it lasted -- three days.

Today on day 3 of school, she came home wearing it but very quickly broke it forcefully while having her after school snack while I was wrapping up 5 minutes of homeschool reading for Super E.  She came to me when I was done reading and showed it to me.  Of course, she said it just "fell off her neck."  I could easily see where the break was and that the metal on the clasp was forcefully pulled.  Furthermore, she tied knots in the black leather cord in 2 locations.

This means one thing...

As excited as she was about having something to wear that was mom's, she fought the attachment it created.  She broke it because she doesn't want to attach to me.

Friends, I am so more than done.  This wasn't an expensive heirloom that she broke.  It was a cute, super casual necklace and I knew the risk of it breaking, getting lost or being destroyed.  I'm not lamenting the broken necklace (I think I can even fix it).  But knowing that she doesn't want to attach, she cannot attach, that she wants to destroy attachment and push me away has broken me.

This is a battle I will not win.  I'm convinced.  This mama is so done trying.