Blocked Care
On Loving Children Who May Never Love You Back
“When Berto comes here, please don’t speak to me that way, “ I say to my son, Raffi, after a particularly rough conversation where he told me to “shut the fuck up” repeatedly.
“He will think you have been raised in a barn.”
This is the conversation I am having with my eleven-year-old who came to us from foster care at age four, with his sister Desi, who was then 7 months. Raffi's biological father, Berto, is coming for a visit this weekend. Berto is a recent addition to Raffi’s life. He was not even aware that he had this son until we discovered Raffi’s bio-sister on Ancestry.com.
For those of you new to my writing, Raffi has an attachment disorder, usually called Reactive Attachment Disorder (sometimes called: Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder).
Essentially, there is a schism in how he attaches to people.
I talk about this phenomenon in my book in more detail, but what is important here is that his trauma has rewired his brain. Raffi was raised in a home with severe addiction to opioids when he was a baby. There was a lot of hunger and food scarcity and transience, moving from home to home. Then, when he was removed and put into foster care, he was bounced through five foster homes and did two stints in institutional care (Child Haven for those of you in Vegas) before coming to us. Then, his bio-mom died of a morphine overdose and he had to work through and grieve the death of his biological mother.
It was a lot for anyone. Much less a little kid.
His brain has been rewired enough by all these traumas that simply loving him will not be enough.
It’s complicated but I explain it this way: Picture a child with a gaping hole of need - for love, for food, for stuff, for attention, for validation. His brain is wired to seek out these forms of acceptance in whatever ways he can. But the reality is that he can’t handle the intensely positive feelings. Good feelings of safety conjure up distrust. His brain does everything it can to make sure no-one around him wants to give him these things.
It’s a schism. His brain is damaged.
“Make me food,” Raffi says to me deadpan.
“There’s avocados in the drawer, make some avocado toast,” I suggest cheerily, ignoring his mood.
“You make it. It’s your job.”
This is where 98% of moms blow their tops.
“Well, not really, dude.” We go through this nearly every morning, so I’m calm.
I always make dinner. And usually David or I will whip them up some oatmeal, sandwiches, pancakes, french toast or goat cheese-scrambled eggs, whatever they feel like during the day. But we’ve also taught Raffi how to make several dishes on his own and he is quite capable. His egg-making skills are on point.
“Get your butt over there and cook, before I hurt you,” he threatens.
This is the point where parents of typical kids start punishing, screaming, taking things away and just generally bearing down on the problem in an effort to change it. How many times have I heard that kids like Raffi need more punishment, more consequences. Take their electronics away. Take everything away except a mattress. Remove the love.
Raffi sounds like a misogynistic jerk demanding I get in the kitchen and serve him. And every time I picture what he will say to his girlfriends or wife when he is an adult. If you think we haven’t tried to indoctrinate this out of him, we have. We have also tried to love him out of it. Model for him. We have taught kindness. Encouraged emotional healing. Service to people less fortunate. When he makes mistakes, we lean in. We guide. We lecture.
Nothing works.
This is hard-wired into his brain.
He tells me how to drive. How to cook. How to write books. It’s not his raising. Which makes me wonder how much man-splaining might be trauma-related?
Loving a child with severe attachment issues is not loving a typical child. It’s also not simply loving a neurodivergent child. While autism and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder get the lion's share of attention, money and support, RAD is hidden and not even considered a disability in the school world of 504s and IEPS.
A lot of kids with RAD are charming and sweet and empathic when you meet them. But deeper relationships trigger all kinds of pain and overwhelm.
Studies from the Emotional Brain Institute at New York University tell us that neglect, hunger and abuse, all things that deride attachment, in the early developmental years, can alter the brain so dramatically that kids view the world as a dangerous place, permanently. The child with this brain has all kinds of anxiety around getting care and concern and love.
This explains so much about my son.
His demands for food, to be cooked for, and cared for comes right out of the playbook of early development food insecurity, neglect, and outright hunger. He is demanding it for fear he won’t be able to have it. Feeling hungry is an almost intolerable feeling. He is so anxious that his needs won’t get met - because they haven’t been met at the most formative times in his development - that he demands it and will threaten aggression if it isn’t happening.
These kids don’t trust themselves in relationships. The more you pour your love into them, the more they throw bombs, blow everything up. Kids with RAD do things like manipulate, steal, lie, get aggressive, rage. They hit and fight and break things. They are prone to violence. They are oppositional and say no to everything.
Raffi, and kids like him, are fixated on survival. His brain is always trying to figure out the next threat, the next deprivation. Sometimes to the point that he creates the story in his head. I’m thinking of the time David was negotiating with him to give him extra time on his computer, something positive that he loves, and his response was, “Are you threatening me?”
He sees the threat even when it isn’t even remotely there.
Raffi and I refer to this part of him as “Baby Raffi.” Baby Raffi is the part of his brain that had to care for himself as a kid. Baby Raffi kicked ass! Baby Raffi did all the things he had to do to survive.
“But Baby Raffi doesn’t need to keep you safe anymore,” I say.
“You are safe.”
But it doesn’t matter what I say. His brain always tells him otherwise.
He is in near constant fight or flight.
This creates a vicious cycle for many families with kids who have developmental trauma: The kids say “No!” for the 100th time, swear at their parents, or in Raffi’s case, use his favorite insult: “No one likes your food” when he would rather have chips than dinner. And the caregiver gets angry and hurt. We know from research, from the National Council for Adoption, that what happens for the caregiver is a specific function of the brain, “...when a parent approaches a child anticipating a positive response and instead gets a negative reaction, it activates the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which in turn activates the social rejection system.”
So, the brain keeps getting rejected. This feels like actual pain. The parents respond as if they are constantly being burned, literally. They move away. They withdraw their love. They give up.
They let their dreams of parenting these children go.
They let their children go.
Blocked care, in homes with adopted and foster kids, is one of the great, unseen tragedies of the parenting world.
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Blocked care is a term for what happens when someone cares for a child that is violent, aggressive, adversarial or oppositional, and it takes its toll on the parent’s brain and their ability to give care.
The parent is constantly rejected, rebuffed, attacked and maligned. Parents feel bereft and do not know how to stop behaviors like lying, stealing, destroying things. The parent starts to dislike the child. They remove their love. They may go through the motions, making dinner and picking them up from school, but the feelings are gone. Or they might still have love for their kid, but it’s abstract and far away.
They are in self-protect mode. Guarded. They don’t trust the child.
They have given up.
Here are some posts and comments (anonymous) from various online RAD support groups. Notice the parents often refer to their child as the disorder itself, as in “my RAD.” The idea here is that these kids are their disorder. An object. A non-human. Caregivers come to believe the disorder swallows them whole. The kids are walking diagnoses.
Parents can’t wait for their kids to age out of their home: “Guess what today is?? My RAD daughter’s 18th birthday! She hasn’t lived with us for a long time but has been causing chaos since Sept—well, that’s her most recent round of chaos lol. We’ve been looking forward to this day! Happy dance!!!”
They cannot see that the child’s need to binge eat is a by-product of early starvation and neglect and increased levels of cortisol. One person asks: “Anyone have any ideas on how to keep them out of food without locks? My RAD (13) has been eating everything.”
*The responses are jarring:
“Serve it to her for all her meals for a while until she's sick of it and wants real food.”
“Nothing worked. We finally converted the coat closet into a pantry and put a coded key pad on it and cameras.”
“I hide food in my bedroom, that door is mostly locked when I'm not in it.”
“Ours steals food. It won’t change. Get used to the locks. It’s a way of RAD life parenting..”
“We took all food out of our pantry and lock it at night. We also search their rooms in case they got something during the day.”
“We haven’t figured out how to lock up a three door fridge yet”.
“If I want candy or chips, I have a walk-in closet with a cabinet that has a lock with my stuff in it.”
Note: We do not lock up food in our ho*use. Ever. Nor should anyone else. More on that in another newsletter.Sometimes the posts are downright sad: “I’ve only been part of this life with a RAD for 2 years. She’s only 4 and my life has been turned upside down and is consumed by her 24/7. I’m always stressed and never in a good mood anymore. I’m just beginning this journey and can’t imagine it getting worse although I know it’s going to. God help me through I’m not sure I have what it takes to do this.”
There are so many posts and comments like this:
“I woke up to messages from my oldest RAD. I have since blocked him again.”
“Has anyone else had their child LIE about being abused by you? My son has taken this lie into adulthood. I am so traumatized.”
“Our son is 18, lives in our small town and everyone believes his lies. Even people who used to be our friends now won't talk to us.”
“We terminated our parental rights. She is in CPS custody. We were charged with abandonment.”
“I have 3 years and 6 months left with this child/ 14 Year old teen /enemy /devil.”
“What is wrong w/ me? Why can't I feel anything that even approximates love for AD RAD15?“
Sometimes the fallout is life-long: “Due to raising RAD, my personality has changed significantly. I used to be fun and flirty. I used to be daring and mischievous. Not anymore. I’m very structured with everything in my life…I can’t seem to flirt with my husband, doing things spur of the moment is almost impossible for me, I have to plan.”
Yes, I am just getting glimpses of the woman I was 17+ years ago. I've missed her.
I really dislike who I've become.
RAD brings “trauma-informed” to a whole new level.
Raffi has burned through two middle schools this year. One called themselves trauma-informed and he ran over them like a dozer. They were completely in over-their-heads as he ripped apart kids’ cardboard projects and swore at them. He did this because, even though he looks like a typical boy, underneath he is has severe learning disabilities. They overwhelm him. And to cover them, he masks with aggression. Better to be the class jerk, he told me, than the stupid kid.
Raffi homeschools now.
Adoptive parents are often unprepared for this level of family disruption. They got into it to help a child and now this kid is fighting them, raging, and not one bit happy or even aware of what they are being given. Even giving a gift to a child with RAD can mushroom into a litany of complaints that it wasn’t good enough, or they wanted the red one, or why didn’t you get me three of these?
The parents approach the child with great love and are met with hostility.
It takes its toll.
No one tells adoptive parents this when they take their adoption classes. Many don’t have the skills to handle it. Kids end up back in the system without support.
For these parents, the kids seem manipulative (they are - it’s a survival strategy); they lie (they do - they have a need and they will do what they can to get it met); they steal (the need again – it’s a survival strategy); they make up stories about their families abusing them (confabulation - they fill in holes in their memory with inaccurate info, like that they are being abused by their adoptive parents. It’s a residue of abuse).
While writing this draft I had a session with my therapist. This is one of the ways I stay plugged in and connected. We discussed some issues about Raffi. I was feeling frustrated and about to say that nothing had really changed for Raffi in the years we had him. But before I could finish the sentence I realized this wasn’t true at all.
And of course my therapist jumped on it.
Raffi used to lie. It’s true. A lot. About everything big and small, meaningful and meaningless. But Davd and I established a family culture that rewards honesty with love and attention. Even when what our kids are lying about disappoints us, we make it our business to stay calm and empathic.
This is not easy to do. Parents say they want their kids to be honest, but it doesn’t happen when we freak out on them. Kids learn not to tell us things when we, as parents, can’t handle the truth.
David and I have perfected “calm face” whenever any of our kids get honest with us.
No reaction, just nodding. We take a breath. No immediate response. We empathize first. Man, it’s not easy. But it has paid off with Raffi. And our teens.
Even yesterday morning he confessed something that really he could have hidden from me. But he knew that before we tackled the problem, I would say: “Thank you for being honest. I love you. We’ll figure this out together.” Followed by the tough talk.
We also combatted his stealing - which is Baby Raffi wanting something, feeling he must have it to meet the unmet need he feels and then taking it - by giving him avenues to work for and earn his own money through being honest and taking responsibility for his actions. It doesn’t work the first time. It may only work the hundredth time. It is doing the same things over and over until the needle moves just a little. Until they are sure, they will be provided for. Raffi hasn’t stolen anything for months. We can now leave cash out without concern. This is actually HUGE.
We fail here much more than we succeed. But there is movement. Progress. I needed therapy to see that.
A lot of the “talking culture” we have created is working. It’s not going to solve everything but it helps. Instead of consequences and punishments which just ramp up the drama and chaos, we sit and talk. We strategize solutions together. We have lots of physical touch. Lots of cuddling and laughing. We do post-mortems and talk about how to have a better outcome next time. We give him words to use to manage problems in relationships with other kids.
We try to be consistent so that attachment is less scary over time.
We also use something called CPS in our house which has worked beautifully. CPS is short for “Collaborative Problem Solving” which is featured in the book by J. Sutart Ablon, Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, School and Work and also The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children and Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks at School both by Ross Greene.
CPS is designed to manage oppositional kids but, man, it’s also great for our typical kids and how to manage communication and problem-solving with other humans as well. It’s been a game-changer for us and continues to be, even as we bumble through the learning process.
Yesterday, I dropped a last-minute, unplanned trip to the park on Raffi. And because he is not a flexible thinker, we spent 12 minutes and 42 seconds - I timed it - with him barricading me in the bathroom to keep me and his sister, Desi, from going to the park. He did this while slamming the door against the wall in a fit of aggression. It wasn’t as scary as it was annoying and wasteful of our park time.
But when we were able to talk it through, and he had time to get his mind right, he got excited about going to the park. He even made sure we brought the dogs. We had a great afternoon. Had I punished him and taken away electronics and freaked out, I would’ve ramped up the chaos, given him the control to stop a fun family activity, and ruined the day. Instead we worked through the feelings and had fun.
For David and I, we know that blocked care is an issue. So we fight against it in a multitude of ways:
We make date night a priority. Even if it’s an hour at a local pub.
We make sex a priority. And the small acts of intimacy that makes us a couple. His hand on the small of my back. My hand on his ass as he raids the fridge. Whatever we can do.
Sleep is a big one. I sleep-in mornings (Thank you, David) and we go to bed like respectable old people.
I am in therapy. And I cook. Time in the kitchen is my sanity-making meditation. Cooking is the balm, even if feeding my children is like running a gauntlet.
David mountain bikes. We lean on our community when we need it. This is important. A lot of parents with these kids from hard places are isolated. Other parents judge them. They get the same rotten advice over and over, like “I’d take that kid over my knee” or “I’d take away every single one of his electronics” or “You need to be tougher on him” or “She wouldn’t do that with me.”
Today, in one of the support groups, a woman’s co-worker suggested she have her daughter, who is diagnosed with RAD, checked for a chemical imbalance or a vitamin deficiency. The mom’s response, of which I’m posting a small portion, really shows how misunderstood this disorder is for other parents and how alienating.
I lost it. I literally yelled. I was so frustrated. It’s minimizing. It’s offensive. Like I haven’t thought of or looked into that simple shit years ago? Like you haven’t heard me talk about therapy, research and my experiences for years?
So finding community and people who are either open-hearted and eager to learn, or people who get it through experience, is everything. Make no mistake: every parent who lets their typical kid hang with my not-so-typical kid, well, they are super-heroes in my life.
Another critical piece: Making the invisible visible. Shame happens when we keep things a secret. We have to talk about the kids with the intractable issues because when we abandon kids in the world, they become adults with even more intractable issues.
And then they are everyone’s problem. We will have to deal with them one way or another.
David and I make sure to stay connected to each other first. We put the oxygen masks on ourselves so we can be there for the kids. We try to make sure everyone gets the attention they need in the family, not just the kid who visibly craves it the most.
All of these things matter.
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“I’m afraid I'm going to do something to you that is bad, really bad,” Raffi says although neither of us picks apart what or how bad this could be. “I’m scared all the time.”
“I know,” I say.
I’m not stupid, a kid who has already hit me in the throes of rage and is becoming a big strong teenager presents some danger. But he is also my son. Raffi does love me and I love him.
“Everything in my brain jumps around. I know something is wrong with me.”
This conversation is our “come to Jesus” after another tussle.
“Will you help me?” He asks me in tears.
He knows what to say to get me to come back to him. To re-connect. That is survival. Not manipulation. Or maybe it is. But how wonderful. Maybe he is using his Baby Raffi super powers to seek attachment.
“Of course. We’re with you,” I say and take his hand.
Raffi is a good good good kid. He deserves whatever we can pour into him.
“We are in this together. That’s the link,” I use the word “link” purposely because right before Berto, his bio dad, came to visit, he made sure to tell me that he is linked to him. Not David and I.
He smiles and nods: “There is a link.”
That’s when we came up with the family motto, Raffi and I: We are in this together. (I might make shirts)
It doesn’t mean everything is perfect, or even functional. Or that it won't implode tomorrow or just end in a complete dumpster fire. But for now, right now, it means that whatever happens, we stick together. We get through it together.
This is the best we can do, I think.
