Are you wondering how to discipline a child with RAD? Maybe you are a parent of a child with attachment disorder and you are at your wits’ end. You could be wondering how to manage your child’s behavior or you may be asking yourself what not to do with a child with RAD.
Perhaps you are a teacher who has a child with RAD in your classroom. If so, it’s likely you quickly realized that your typical classroom strategies are not working.
Let’s explore 5 strategies to discipline a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD)
How to Help a Child with RAD to Manage Behavior
Managing behavior for a child with RAD is complex and hard. Typical methods will not work with a child with RAD. You must throw out most of the things you think you know and develop new strategies.
Disciplining a child with RAD is difficult. Kids with attachment issues will test you in more ways than one. Expect that it will be hard but know we are here to offer you support and guidance.
How Do You Use Consequences for a Child with RAD?
When I adopted two children with RAD I not only underestimated how hard it would be, but I also overestimated my parenting skills. After many parent fails I had to let go of everything I thought I knew. Here are some strategies I have learned to help my child with RAD.
1. Focus on Safety
Parenting a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder can feel like one crisis after another.
Children with RAD engage in extreme behaviors such as fire starting, self harm and other unsafe acts.
When responding to this child, start by asking yourself, if everyone safe? If the answer is yes, then you have time to plan. For example, if your child is screaming at the top of their lungs but nobody is injured, it can wait.
Give yourself time and show your child that you will not join them in their crisis. If everyone is safe, take a deep breath and look at #2.
2. Be Patient
If you have a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder, then you probably already have a great deal of patience. This is good news because it will be needed in every part of discipline.
Children with trauma history must be told the same instructions many times. They will often act out of impulsiveness and impatience. While this is frustrating, it is how their brain operates.
Your superpower is your patience. Grow that power and use it not only with your child but with yourself.
For example, if you decide to use a 10 minutes time-out every time your child throws something, plan on that taking an hour to implement. Plan that once that shoe gets launched across the living room, you will be working on getting compliance for the next hour. Children with RAD will try to force the parent, grandparent or teacher to fold, so be patient and stay the coarse.
The consequence you pick is less important than your determination to keep at it. You are being the calm in their storm and your patience is needed.
3. Decide Consequences Before Misbehavior
Children with attachment issues will repeat the same behaviors over and over. This is both a source of frustration and creates predictability.
If every time you ask your child to put their backpack away, they refuse, then you have an opportunity to strategize. Let’s say that non-compliance in your home means loss of electronics. Then you and your child understand that refusing to put the backpack away means no TV.
This strategy will help you be prepared to act on the consequence instead of having to think of one in the moment. It will also help your child to have a predictable consequence to misbehavior.
4. Look for Patterns
Children with RAD may have an exaggerated reactions, but they also have similar fear responses. Kids from tough places are often responding to the world around them with fear and uncertainty.
The behavior you most often see is based off distrust and it is the child’s attempt to gain control. Once you think about what typically upsets your child, you can start to understand the pattern.
For example, your RAD child may runaway and hide. This behavior is both extreme and unsafe. It is also stressful to chase your child across a street or search for your child in the store.
When you are not in the crisis of locating your missing child, think about what happened before they ran.
- Where were you?
- Who was with the child?
- Was the public place crowded?
- Was it noisy?
- Was it a new place for the child?
Running away is a common fear response. The child may not be able to tell you with their words that they are scared, but they are telling you with their behavior.
We runaway from things we are typically afraid of. You may not understand what is scary about the grocery store or a parking lot but if you start to think about what happened before the behavior, you may be able to determine a pattern.
5. Self-care is Key
Understand that you are going to blow it sometimes. Parenting a child with RAD is a challenge and you will not always get it right. Give yourself space to think about what happened, consider if you selected the best discipline strategy, then try again.
Do things for you. Maybe that means developing a healthy routine or taking time to go for a walk. Whatever it is, you have to commit.
Give yourself grace. Know that you are not alone.
With these 5 strategies in place, while modifying the behavior of a child with attachment issues will not be easy, it will be possible. By paying attention to safety, having patience, deciding consequences in advance, looking for patterns, and taking care of yourself, you will remain in control which will make your child feel safe. Then his or her behaviors will slowly start to improve.
Have you found effective methods for discipling a child with RAD? Share about them in the comments below.
Our daughter lies about everything. Help please not sure what to do about it? She is 15, we find it so upsetting we can’t believe or trust her. Any suggestions?
Tina
I know the lies are incredibly frustrating with RAD! Here are a couple helpful articles: https://theholymess.com/attachment-issues-help-for-parenting-kids-who-lie/ and https://theholymess.com/what-to-do-when-your-kids-lie-to-you/
I have 2 children with RAD; my daughter is constantly stealing and lying, when she gets upset or mad she screams at me, throws objects, gaslights, and holds no accountability. My son has trouble registering his emotions and acts on impulse without thought. Many times his behaviors are endangering to himself and/or others, and doesn’t register the seriousness of safety. I am not sure as the best course of action to help my 11 & 12 year olds.
Kara, I’m sorry you are going through this. I know from personal experience that it’s incredibly difficult. Are the children in attachment therapy? Have you looked into the classes for you from Empowered to Connect? If you feel the children need to be in residential treatment, we can direct you to resources.
What do you mean by “showing your child that you will not join them in their crisis”? Does that mean you’re not going to emotionally help the child who is stressed or upset about something?
Hi Nicole and thank you for your question! I am the author of the article and what I mean when I say showing your child you will not join them in the crisis means modeling that you can remain calm. In my personal experience my children being in distress causes me distress. If I follow them into an emotional crisis, I can’t be as effective in problem solving. I identify a crisis as a brainstem level response. Meaning I am responding to their flight/fight/freeze response. I can not respond with a flight/fight/freeze response of my own. I have to model responding to emotional distress with a calm, empathetic, consistent message. It may sound harsh but what I mean to convey is that it is understandable to have an intense emotional response (as a parent) when your child is expressing intense emotions. I want to convey empathy and guidance without conveying the same level of intense emotions. It is a strategy that I use to keep myself in my problem solving brain when my child is in emotional distress. If I join their crisis then I am making it about how I feel, not how they are feeling.
Hope that helps clarify my strategy. Thanks again for the question!
Kay
That is actually the worst thing you can do to a child. They need to be validated, heard, and understood. Not be ignored when they are in crisis. That itself can be neglecting of their needs when they are at the most vulnerable place.
What helps when they are in crisis is:
“I see you are upset/scared/frustrated/etc. Your feelings are valid. The behavior (what ever specific behavior is displayed) is scaring me (as a way of not accepting the unwanted behavior). I am here to help you if and when you are ready. What can I do to help you? (Which then can give them some form of control when they feel so out of control).” In an calm and friendly voice.
Then when they are in the calm state, give them and practice different strategies in the toolbox to help them so it can become automatic for when they in distress. While also modeling the coping strategies you use with yourself by narrating each feeling that comes (in a calmer manner) so they can observe and then try it out themselves.
As for accept is to accept and remind them that you still love them no matter what they do. They will need reminders time and time again. Overall, know that all forms of behavior is a form of communication when they don’t have the words in the moment to express how they feel. Also, with that being said, typically behaviors happen when there is stress and frustration that intrude on the child’s safety and peace within them or around them as well as having some form of an unmet need.
What do you mean by not joining them in their crisis? Does that mean you’re not going to emotionally help the child who is stressed or upset about something?
Hi Nicole, Thanks for your question! This doesn’t mean you won’t help a child in crisis. Rather, your goal is to stay calm yourself and not join them in being unregulated. Your job as a parent (ideally) is to stay emotionally regulated yourself so you can help the child regulate.
I don’t agree with the consequences portion of this. Especially to treat unwanted behaviors. Consequences teach the child into compliance so they don’t get punished because of the pattern that if they make any form of mistakes or behaviors, that they will be punished. Which doesn’t get to the root of the problem. But forces them into compliance and thus teaches them to people please and disregard their own emotional needs for safety or other forms of needs. Thus can put them at further likelihood for being victims to other forms of abuse.
Hi Jasia, all children need to learn that there are consequences to actions, whether good or bad. I think the author here is stating that our job as parents is to maintain patience and calm while teaching our children about actions and consequences. Most importantly, remember to follow through on your consequences in order to establish a better level of trust between you and your child, whether it be a time for discipline or time for a reward.
I’m grateful I didn’t kill my mom growing up, I always wanted to. The neglect and abuse was unbearable, but somehow I endured.
She got on medication and like all things in our life, magically forgot about her contribution to my craziness until she remarried. She told me I would be written out of the will if I told her husband and his family about the life we lived before.
I now have children of my own.
Doing what I can to love them differently, and it’s strange because sometimes I wonder if I deserve the life I have.
It’s been 20+ years of education and growth.
Doing research for our youngest, because I believe that my partner and I both have undiagnosed RAD and ACE. We have a commitment to sharing the healthiest life we’ve ever known, but our dysfunction still shows, even when we did our best.
Homelessness, postpartum depression, quarantine during covid, our son has had to experience a lot in his first three years.
Never giving up!
Our beautiful family is doing better than my parents did!!!!
It sounds like you are doing amazing things. Thank you for sharing a portion of your story.
my child was in foster care due to some of my past issues and the foster carer brutally assaulted her causing brain surgery and TBI, she now has language disorder, RAD and Odd. her and her siblings have been home from foster care nearly 3 years every day she tells me to kill myself, or I’m not her mum or to put a knife in my throat she’s 5. it hurts because she also says she doesn’t love me and I’m not her mum and her siblings don’t act that way. she was hurt at 19 months and had 4 subdural hematoma in brain. this is in Australia.
HI Kay,
I have a child with RAD and just read a couple of your articles. I think your articles are great! You truly have an understanding of how to help a child with RAD. I would like to add a source for parents who are struggling with helping their child and don’t know what to do. Attachment.org is a website by Nancy Thomas. She has lots of information that has helped us with our child. She is an amazing person that has fostered almost 100 children with RAD in her lifetime. I look forward to reading more from you as well Kay.