We wish we would have known how prevalent and all-encompassing attachment disorders actually are in children adopted from foster care. We were told that children would take time to adjust, but knew almost nothing about the possibility that our love and traditional stable parenting wouldn't be enough to help our child heal from an attachment disorder.
There is virtually no respite for families who are parenting children like this. Anywhere. Period. More recognition of this attachment disorder by mainstream child therapists would have saved us a lot of time, and we wouldn't have wasted valuable time getting our child expert help. Safety plans were never mentioned, and now that our child is in crisis, it has been an area of great need. We could use someone to walk us through creating one so that we can ensure our whole family is safe.
There is little to no respite services in our area. We are fortunate in that we have trauma-informed grandparents who can offer us emergency respite and long-term respite when we need it, and we know that is an incredible blessing that other families in our shoes don't have. Even the therapist expert in attachment disorders that we were able to find confirmed there is very little support in this area for adoptive families of kids with RAD.
Our child's therapist was covered by Medicaid, so that financial burden was lightened at this stage in our journey. But knowing how to acquire a medical diagnosis is very confusing. Our child does not have a formal diagnosis yet, and we don't know where to go to get them evaluated. We wonder if having a formal diagnosis will allow our child to qualify for specialist care in the future, if needed.
