You cannot seem to explain to my middle daughter Cierra how to properly treat our pet puppy Bayleigh. I have been over and over this with her till I am blue in the face yet she persists with getting down on all fours and screaming in the dogs face, chasing her at full speed around the house and cornering her and holding her down. Needless to say this is not enjoyed too much by the dog. Today Bayleigh bit and scratched Cierra. . . Again. This is the third time she has been bit (not breaking the skin but definitely leaving marks). No one else in our family has ever been nipped. To me this is just another symptom of my daughter’s issues with attachment and RAD.

From what I have learned it seems like children with RAD often have problems treating animals in an appropriate way. I am however encouraged to some extent because a lot of what I see tells me that kids with RAD actually severely harm or even KILL pets and other animals, and not simply harass them as Cierra does. What she does is still not good, but hey you take hope where you can find it right? I am sort of hoping that her current behavior does not morph into something worse.

When we initially met our daughter’s birthfamily, shortly before her birth we had high hopes for a wonderful addition to our family. When you are in the early process of adoption, especially if it is an Independent adoption (as ours was) you do not always get into the detail you might need to make a fully informed decision. This is something we did wrong that we have learned, but that is not so helpful once you are on this end of the learning curve. We found later, much later, as in after our daughter’s birth, placement in our home and a birthday or two had passed, that well her family had sort of fudged on some of her birthmother’s health history details. This is when we learned drugs had most likely been involved ( now years later they are again denying this), as well a long history of mental health concerns. Although birthmom seems to love animals (as does our daughter) she also had a penchant for pestering the heck out of them when she was younger. Birthmom it seems was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder and was in and out of treatment and on and off meds from a very early age. This would have been better to know before we brought home a child who has issues we might not be prepared to handle, but we simply did not know. Now that we have adopted this child knowing as much as we can about her birthfamily history will help us to treat our daughter as effectivly as possible.

There is always that hope in me that my daughter will eventually learn that her actions have consequences. I am thinking that the dog is really hoping as well.