I wish I had a perky post ready for today, but that just is not the way my life is currently going. My four year old has been pushing me near the brink today and right now I feel very, very alone.

A few months back we finally, after almost two years of struggling, took her to a therapist and Reactive Attachment Disorder was brought up. I had always felt that children who suffered from this were mainly those who had lived deprived of early attention in an overseas orphanage, or even severely abused children in our own foster care system. Never did it occur to me that a baby who I was in the delivery room to greet into this world would suffer from something like RAD. I was there from her first breath and I strongly encouraged her birthmother to bond with her and to remain closely involved in her life, neither of which actually happened. Some would tell me , well that is where I went wrong, I took a baby from her mother. If not for me becoming her mother however, her prospects for a stable future were slim to none. Her birthmother was not going to be involved and “mother” her no matter if I was waiting in the wings or no one was. That is just a cold, hard fact that I had no influence over.

I have always tried to let my daughter know how very much she is wanted and loved, even to some degree by her first mother who indeed made some poor choices. The thing is many of those poor choices were unfortunately made while my beautiful daughter was in utero. I now am beginning to understand how sensory development is effected when a growing fetus is exposed to some unhealthy things like drugs, alcohol, stress, a detached mother to mention a few. Now I attempted to fill some of those voids as best I could and with as little information about how parenting an effected, adopted child could challenge you. I tried many things. I breast-fed my daughter with the help of a lactation aid, I stayed home with her as long as I possibly could, I did anything I could to form a strong attachment. The thing I did not understand is that things might have been altered in her brain development already that prevented her from responding as a “normal” child might, by this I mean a child who was not exposed to anything harmful before birth that stunted their brain development.

Well now I am also learning that my own expectations of my daughter being a normal, healthy child (she certainly, outwardly appears to be) set me up do further damage. I did not mean to do anything to harm my child, but I am beginning to believe by expecting her to function as a healthy, developmentally sound child might, I have increased her stress, aggravated her response and by doing so perpetuated the behavior that I was so hopeful to change. In other words I treated her like she could understand and process things as my two other children can, this frustrates her because developmentally she can’t. When you develop in a womb being fed stress and other unhealthy things, that is what your brain must learn to accept as normal, anything else will seem frightening and overwhelming. Science tells us that the brain can re-learn some behaviors, recover and heal from some damage, the thing is does not tell you is who will and how much. Every individual does differently.

One of my major frustrations right now is feeling completely alone with this heavy burden. I basically am not responded too anywhere I speak out for help, online, among family and friends, even my daughter’s extended birthfamily. I have left the therapy (which was not the best) for the time being because the herculanian efforts I had to make to get us there for a short time with little noticeable response was draining me far more than the session was replenishing. I am exhausted. I feel out of resources and completely adrift without hope for relief. If you look at the completely distraught expression in the picture with this post you will have a good grasp of how both I and my daughter are crying out for relief right now.