Dear Reader: At the request of the writer, we have changed all names to protect the family. This is the story of how love cannot conquer all and, how, for traumatized and dysregulated children and their families, love alone rarely conquers anything.
Joy and caution are equally stirring in me as my bright, creative and angelic nine-year-old daughter, who struggles with several conditions associated with complex trauma, is expected to return to us – to her home and her family, after seven hundred thirty days, away.
You might think she’s been in residential care or in a group home all this time, participating in a variety of intense beneficial therapies and family therapy, but that’s not the case. Our then-first grader was taken by a local service agency, based on what we believe are contrived, exploited claims – all in the name of “safety and protection.“
If our family can be taken down this devastating, erroneous path, no family is immune.
At age 13-months, my kinship-adopted daughter was profoundly traumatized prior to arriving to us. As a result, she is emotionally and psychologically fragile. Her behavioral symptoms cycle and present via triggers; she is unpredictable, and can be dangerous. Her needs are complex.
She has been diagnosed with depression, and other acronyms: PTSD, ADHD, ODD. Her most severe and consistent diagnosis is Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).
RAD is complicated – it can range from mild to severe, and is a prevalent condition amongst adopted and fostered children, especially children exposed to trauma and attachment disruption when they are very young.
Despite engaged parenting, years of engaging community-based therapeutic services and implementing clinician-endorsed tools, her symptoms escalated. The more we loved her, the more she responded with behaviors rooted in the ‘fight or flight’ response center of her brain. THIS IS THE STORY OF HOW LOVE CANNOT CONQUER ALL. IN TRAUMATIZED AND DYSREGULATED CHILDREN, LOVE RARELY CONQUERS ANYTHING.
We sought intense services. We learned little was available in our area. We contacted our local social service agency, but were denied access to state assistance to ‘medically necessary’ treatment and family supports. An acute hospital discharge recommended an ‘effective’ care option out of state. Ironically, we were denied state (Medicaid) insurance coverage to engage that treatment because it was ‘out-of-state.’
Then, one night in 2012, and with dinner on the table, physical and emotional pain swept over our whole family with a knock at the door and the uninvited intrusion of case workers accompanied by a police officer. Despite fruitless efforts to contact engaged attorneys to dispute the Order, our child was escorted out. Her previously spoken desire to “get to foster care because anything has to be better than here” was coming to reality and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
Recognizing significant conditions in a child is a critically valuable skill. The earlier medical and behavioral health interventions are identified, the better the potential outcomes. But when parents pursue behavioral health services for a child, it can be interpreted as a questionable effort.
If the child’s conditions are covert in public and include triangulation and manipulation of others; responsive parents are often viewed as ‘a cause’ and not a potential partner in the child’s complex, psychiatric care.
Like autism twenty year ago, Complex Trauma is misunderstood. Its outward behaviors and instabilities are relatively unknown to those not raising struggling and traumatized children. These child behaviors often resemble those of children being neglected or abused. To us, it’s clear. It’s real. It’s complicated and it can be violent and unsafe.
Accessing best practice care isn’t a crime or neglectful; and parents remaining part of the healing process of the child is critical. A parent partnership role isn’t likely though – not if the state is pressing to prove neglect, abuse, or abandonment, or is choosing to pursue full custody through judicial means, simply because it is cost effective for them to do so.
Now, my daughter, after a two year separation, a fight of my life and a horrendous, expounded assault on my character and my family’s stability as a whole, is coming home. For that we are grateful. But, at what price? What will the last two years add to her struggles to trust, feel safe and strong? Will it permit love to be part her life, and open her heart?
In the end, is it all going to be okay?