Family experience fosters insight

By Tim O'Callaghan

Friday, Aug. 22, 2008 | midnight

A friend of mine sent me a compelling letter concerning her two adopted children and their journey to recovery from a disorder many people have not heard of: attachment disorder.

Even with the insights and empirical knowledge I have acquired from 25 years of working with the homeless mentally ill, I felt unprepared and ill equipped to respond effectively to the steady escalation of dangerous and disturbing “acting out” behaviors manifesting in my 12- and 13-year-old sons.

They came into our lives at 2 and 3 years of age through the Nevada State foster care program.

My personal journey into the suffering of my dear sons has informed my heart yet again in a new way of the urgent and essential life task of learning to love unconditionally. Through the tragic and terrifying turn of events that have shaken our family, I have been awakened to a deeper understanding of why so many that we see on the streets are so broken and seem to be caught in a never-ending cycle of self destruction.

At 12 and 13, my sons were showing signs that something was terribly wrong. We were well into crisis management before we found a therapist who actually understood what was happening. Hence, my husband and I have been living a crash course in the effects of disrupted attachment, sometimes known as attachment disorder.

We have learned that children who suffer abuse or neglect during the first two years of life develop an adaptation for survival. One of many serious consequences of this is that their capacity to trust adults is severely damaged. Psychologically they have learned that in order to survive and not die, they must be in complete control. So they manifest behaviors that are subsequently defiant and oppositional.

We learned that when children with a history of early trauma reach adolescence, they begin to psychologically relive the trauma suffered during those first two years of life.

We pieced all of these factors together to begin to understand why our children were self destructing, why they were not coming home at night, getting into fights at school, not going to school. At 12 and 13, they were taking drugs and alcohol. They had no regard for our parental authority and would be thrown into a violent rage when we set very reasonable limits.

We were getting called by the police in the middle of the night because they would sneak out and get into trouble.

Our research led us to the Institute for Attachment and Child Development, a therapeutic program in Colorado effective in treating children with disrupted attachment issues.

There, with the help of highly skilled treatment parents, one of our sons was put into a developmental box, bringing him to a younger psychological age. This process, along with medications for mood disorder, would prepare him for a long anticipated two-week intensive program aimed at healing the wounds of his original trauma of early neglect.

Our sons are now at home. They both successfully went through the treatment and now have a new understanding of family. They were helped to face the truth of their original traumas. They were prescribed effective medication. They have a desire to be part of family and have tools and insight to continue the work of healing.

Tim O’Callaghan, co-publisher of the News, can be reached at 990-2656 or [email protected].