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"There are no strangers here; only friends you haven't met yet."
William Butler Yeats
My kiddos must have been reading Yeats behind my back, because this is certainly how they view the world. My biological daughter's genetic disorder makes her overly and overtly friendly. Her school actually contacted me once, concerned, after a strange man walked onto the playground and she ran up to him and hugged him (he was a parent, but still... She didn't know that!). When we lived in Hawaii and rode the bus, she routinely tried to climb on the laps of strangers and told anyone who sat next to her that she loved them.
For my step-kids, I think the last part of Yeats's quote would be altered a little bit... "There are no strangers here, because no one is a stranger." I feel like they go through life thinking, "My friends and family are more significant to me than that man in front of us in the checkout line, but not by much and if he decided to take me home I'd get used to him and his house pretty quickly."
When I told the kids' biological mother about this being a sign of RAD, she scoffed at me and said, "They've always been like that. A trip to Wal-Mart was always interesting because they would just talk to anyone who looked at them."
Husband and I assumed the behavior we were seeing when they first came to live with us was normal. After all, some kids are just comfortable anywhere, right? And we were both chatty little things when we were small right? And didn't Oldest try to give an entire group of tourists kisses back in Hawaii... several times?"
Yes. All of those things are true. But my step-kids' behavior exceeds the bounds of "extra-friendly," "quick to warm up," "extroverted," "precocious," etc. (all words others have used to describe them). I really can't explain this to you well with descriptors and synonyms... The DSM-V describes this behavior like so: "The child consistently approaches unfamiliar adults (as if they've known them for a long period of time) and acts overly familiar with the stranger, does not check back in with caregiver at a rate that is appropriate for the child's age, and goes off with strangers with minimal or no hesitation." But I don't think that really captures the essence of this behavior, so I'll give you three examples to help you better understand why this is considered abnormal behavior.
1) The first time I met Middle and Little, I fully anticipated them disliking me, or ignoring me in favor of their father, and I was prepared and okay with that. At the very least I expected them to be a little wary of me and clingy with their dad, and Husband and I talked about how he should take them with him if he had to to go somewhere and Oldest didn't feel like leaving the house. I worried they would be scared if he left them alone with me since they were only three and four, and were away from their supposedly secure base (their biological mom); even though Husband was familiar to them, he'd been deployed or stationed far away most of their lives and they really only got to know him during their visits on Skype. They hadn't seen him in six months and surely, I thought, they'd be nervous and a little confused.
But they weren't. And they weren't wary. Or confused. At all. In fact, they weren't even really curious about me at all. They didn't look at me in silence. They didn't ask who I was. They didn't ask who Oldest was. Or why we were there.
And they didn't cling to their dad, either. Within ten minutes of our arrival, Little was up in my lap hugging and kissing me. I made a little stuffed Pooh doll tell a story, and Little eagerly asked me to do it again. "Don't you want to go cuddle with your dad?" I asked. "No, do it again!" he said, sitting harder in my lap. I told three stories with Pooh and Little still didn't want to leave my side. "Go sit with Daddy, he missed you!" I said. "No!" Eventually, Husband grabbed Little off my lap, and Little started crying.
At the time, I wasn't concerned. "Little likes me! Hooray!" I thought. I thought it was a little "odd" that he didn't cling to his dad after being separated for so long, but didn't really think about it because with my experience raising Oldest, I'd forgotten that it is not typical of kids under five to be so comfortable in the presence of strangers and so dismissive of their familiar caretaker. Because an agreeable toddler is not something to complain about, right?!
2) The weirdness of Little's behavior didn't really hit me until we went to visit one of Husband's best friends who recently got married to K. When we arrived after a two-hour drive with three special needs kids, I was in desperate need of a cigarette (I know, I know... I'm actually in the process of quitting!). I hung back for about eight minutes to feed my habit while Husband took the kids inside. When I walked in, Little was snuggled up on K's lap while she showed him pictures on her phone. He didn't even acknowledge me when I walked in, and he did not respond to me when I said he needed to get off her lap and use the potty. She's a cheer-leading coach and the pictures were of the girls she teaches, so everyone giggled at how Little was totally enraptured with the photographs of cheerleaders. I was annoyed at how Little was cuddling with this woman he did not know at all and completely ignoring me when I spoke to him. But I didn't say anything, because that seemed like an absolutely ridiculous thing to be irritated over.
But it got really weird when we slept at their house the next night, although I wouldn't find out until morning. When we stayed over at their house, the kids, Husband and I all piled into the guest room. Husband and I gave the kids the bed and we slept on the floor. Since Little has a tendency to wake up before the sun rises, we strategically placed ourselves between the children and the door so that they couldn't leave the room.
Imagine my surprise when I found out upon waking the next morning that Little did, in fact, wake up before the sun came up. Turns out, he woke around 4:00 in the morning, and very stealthily left our guest accommodations. He tiptoed into the room of our host and hostess and stood beside their bed, staring at K. She woke up, surprised to see a little blonde kid staring at her. "Ummm... I hafta' go potty," he said. She took him to the bathroom then back to our guest room and went back to bed. Before too long, though, he was back in her room. "I'm hungry."
Kind K made him some breakfast and let Husband and I sleep. When I got up and heard the story, I asked him if he'd tried to wake us up before he went to K. "No," he said.
"It's fine," K kept saying. But my mind flashed back on the signs of RAD I'd been learning about, and I just knew this was a sign of "indiscriminate affection with strangers."
"But it's K," Husband said. "He met her before."
"Yeah, for about half an hour. You don't think it's odd that he went to her instead of you or me? Think back to when you were a kid. If you'd been in a strange house you'd never slept in before, with people you'd never met before, wouldn't you have asked your parents to help you in the middle of the night? Especially if they were sleeping right beside you?"
"Okay... It is a little weird."
3) Husband took Middle and Little to the swimming pool in our apartment complex the day he had to take the kids for their first visitation period with their mom. When they got to the pool, there was a lady swimming. As soon as they got into the water, Middle and Little swarmed her, before Husband had even had a chance to scope the lady out to see if she was okay to talk to and if she was open to the kids talking to her. Middle started going on and on about her upcoming visit with their mom. She hugged this lady around her neck as she spoke. Luckily the lady was a kindergarten teacher and did not mind. But it happened so suddenly and without warning that had she been someone less receptive to children, the situation could have quickly turned awkward or even unpleasant (I remember one homeless lady in Hawaii snapping at me that Oldest was "rude" and that I needed to "do something about her before she gets hurt."). Turns out, this is a common thing for them to do at the pool. The level of intimacy they express with relative strangers is really unnerving at times, and is almost always awkward for Husband and me (luckily it's not always awkward from the POV of the other adults in the moment).
4) This one's a little hard to explain, but Middle and Little will miss and/or worry about people and things that they shouldn't, and totally forget about people they shouldn't. For example, Middle misses her first therapist, whom she only saw a handful of times and with whom she didn't really interact much. She also TERRIBLY misses her great grandmother who passed away... Sometimes even to the point of tears (just last week she was tearing up in the back over Sarah Bareilles's song "Brave," because she said the repetition of "I just wanna' see you, I just wanna' see youuuuu" reminded her of her great grandma and how much she wants to see her. But she only met her a few times as well. Little has told his therapist that he misses J, the boyfriend his mom had over last summer... And he told the therapist that about two weeks ago when he'd only spent two weeks with J (and only intermittently during those two weeks)... And the time they spent together was TEN MONTHS AGO!
Another example: about a month ago, I was driving Little home from his intensive therapy program. When we stopped at a major intersection, a lady pulled up next to me and asked me how to get somewhere. I told her I didn't know and wished her luck. For two days in a row after this, every time we hit that intersection and regardless of which direction we were traveling, he asked, "Where's that lady who didn't know where she was going? Did she find her friends? I hope she did. Did she?" When I asked him why he was asking, he said, "I'm just worried she won't find it." When I told him that it was nice he was concerned, but that she was a stranger and we really shouldn't spend time worrying about her when we don't know her, he said, "But her was my friend and I want to know if she found her friends." He hasn't mentioned that lady in a while, but I won't be the least bit surprised if he asks about her again in the future.
But the strange thing is, they don't ever talk about people you'd assume they missed and worried about. Like their own mother, for instance. When she was arrested for assaulting Husband, Middle and Little were three and two. Husband says that they didn't ask about her for nine days (he even emailed their mom to note his concern that they weren't asking for her or about her at all). And when we got custody of them, they didn't talk about her very much at all, and Middle (who loves to draw) did not draw any pictures of her biological mother... When she finally drew a picture of her and told me it was her mom, she later changed the identity of the drawing to her maternal grandmother.
As many problems as she has, she is still their mom, and most children will talk about their mom, draw pictures of her and for her, etc. That's the "normal" thing you expect. But they don't very often. In fact, we can go days without hearing a mention of their biological mother.
Once again, we noticed this was atypical behavior, but we didn't realize they were displaying signs of serious disruptions in their brain development. The kids were not acting, and still do not usually act, like typical children with healthy attachments at all.
Turns out, children do react differently to strangers and new situations and their reactions are largely dependent upon their attachment style (which is generally dependent upon the life circumstances the child has experienced). One method that has been used repeatedly to test attachment in young children is the "Strange Situation" experiment developed by Mary Ainsworth.
Husband wasn't in the country when they were that young so cannot state with certainty when they started showing signs of attachment issues, and his ex-wife is not a very reliable source of information on things like that. But we do know that they don't have a healthy attachment to anyone.
But we are all certainly working on helping them to develop one.
For my step-kids, I think the last part of Yeats's quote would be altered a little bit... "There are no strangers here, because no one is a stranger." I feel like they go through life thinking, "My friends and family are more significant to me than that man in front of us in the checkout line, but not by much and if he decided to take me home I'd get used to him and his house pretty quickly."
When I told the kids' biological mother about this being a sign of RAD, she scoffed at me and said, "They've always been like that. A trip to Wal-Mart was always interesting because they would just talk to anyone who looked at them."
Middle and Little on a Wal-Mart run with their biological mom (who took the picture)
Yes. All of those things are true. But my step-kids' behavior exceeds the bounds of "extra-friendly," "quick to warm up," "extroverted," "precocious," etc. (all words others have used to describe them). I really can't explain this to you well with descriptors and synonyms... The DSM-V describes this behavior like so: "The child consistently approaches unfamiliar adults (as if they've known them for a long period of time) and acts overly familiar with the stranger, does not check back in with caregiver at a rate that is appropriate for the child's age, and goes off with strangers with minimal or no hesitation." But I don't think that really captures the essence of this behavior, so I'll give you three examples to help you better understand why this is considered abnormal behavior.
1) The first time I met Middle and Little, I fully anticipated them disliking me, or ignoring me in favor of their father, and I was prepared and okay with that. At the very least I expected them to be a little wary of me and clingy with their dad, and Husband and I talked about how he should take them with him if he had to to go somewhere and Oldest didn't feel like leaving the house. I worried they would be scared if he left them alone with me since they were only three and four, and were away from their supposedly secure base (their biological mom); even though Husband was familiar to them, he'd been deployed or stationed far away most of their lives and they really only got to know him during their visits on Skype. They hadn't seen him in six months and surely, I thought, they'd be nervous and a little confused.
But they weren't. And they weren't wary. Or confused. At all. In fact, they weren't even really curious about me at all. They didn't look at me in silence. They didn't ask who I was. They didn't ask who Oldest was. Or why we were there.
And they didn't cling to their dad, either. Within ten minutes of our arrival, Little was up in my lap hugging and kissing me. I made a little stuffed Pooh doll tell a story, and Little eagerly asked me to do it again. "Don't you want to go cuddle with your dad?" I asked. "No, do it again!" he said, sitting harder in my lap. I told three stories with Pooh and Little still didn't want to leave my side. "Go sit with Daddy, he missed you!" I said. "No!" Eventually, Husband grabbed Little off my lap, and Little started crying.
At the time, I wasn't concerned. "Little likes me! Hooray!" I thought. I thought it was a little "odd" that he didn't cling to his dad after being separated for so long, but didn't really think about it because with my experience raising Oldest, I'd forgotten that it is not typical of kids under five to be so comfortable in the presence of strangers and so dismissive of their familiar caretaker. Because an agreeable toddler is not something to complain about, right?!
2) The weirdness of Little's behavior didn't really hit me until we went to visit one of Husband's best friends who recently got married to K. When we arrived after a two-hour drive with three special needs kids, I was in desperate need of a cigarette (I know, I know... I'm actually in the process of quitting!). I hung back for about eight minutes to feed my habit while Husband took the kids inside. When I walked in, Little was snuggled up on K's lap while she showed him pictures on her phone. He didn't even acknowledge me when I walked in, and he did not respond to me when I said he needed to get off her lap and use the potty. She's a cheer-leading coach and the pictures were of the girls she teaches, so everyone giggled at how Little was totally enraptured with the photographs of cheerleaders. I was annoyed at how Little was cuddling with this woman he did not know at all and completely ignoring me when I spoke to him. But I didn't say anything, because that seemed like an absolutely ridiculous thing to be irritated over.
But it got really weird when we slept at their house the next night, although I wouldn't find out until morning. When we stayed over at their house, the kids, Husband and I all piled into the guest room. Husband and I gave the kids the bed and we slept on the floor. Since Little has a tendency to wake up before the sun rises, we strategically placed ourselves between the children and the door so that they couldn't leave the room.
Imagine my surprise when I found out upon waking the next morning that Little did, in fact, wake up before the sun came up. Turns out, he woke around 4:00 in the morning, and very stealthily left our guest accommodations. He tiptoed into the room of our host and hostess and stood beside their bed, staring at K. She woke up, surprised to see a little blonde kid staring at her. "Ummm... I hafta' go potty," he said. She took him to the bathroom then back to our guest room and went back to bed. Before too long, though, he was back in her room. "I'm hungry."
Kind K made him some breakfast and let Husband and I sleep. When I got up and heard the story, I asked him if he'd tried to wake us up before he went to K. "No," he said.
"It's fine," K kept saying. But my mind flashed back on the signs of RAD I'd been learning about, and I just knew this was a sign of "indiscriminate affection with strangers."
"But it's K," Husband said. "He met her before."
"Yeah, for about half an hour. You don't think it's odd that he went to her instead of you or me? Think back to when you were a kid. If you'd been in a strange house you'd never slept in before, with people you'd never met before, wouldn't you have asked your parents to help you in the middle of the night? Especially if they were sleeping right beside you?"
"Okay... It is a little weird."
3) Husband took Middle and Little to the swimming pool in our apartment complex the day he had to take the kids for their first visitation period with their mom. When they got to the pool, there was a lady swimming. As soon as they got into the water, Middle and Little swarmed her, before Husband had even had a chance to scope the lady out to see if she was okay to talk to and if she was open to the kids talking to her. Middle started going on and on about her upcoming visit with their mom. She hugged this lady around her neck as she spoke. Luckily the lady was a kindergarten teacher and did not mind. But it happened so suddenly and without warning that had she been someone less receptive to children, the situation could have quickly turned awkward or even unpleasant (I remember one homeless lady in Hawaii snapping at me that Oldest was "rude" and that I needed to "do something about her before she gets hurt."). Turns out, this is a common thing for them to do at the pool. The level of intimacy they express with relative strangers is really unnerving at times, and is almost always awkward for Husband and me (luckily it's not always awkward from the POV of the other adults in the moment).
4) This one's a little hard to explain, but Middle and Little will miss and/or worry about people and things that they shouldn't, and totally forget about people they shouldn't. For example, Middle misses her first therapist, whom she only saw a handful of times and with whom she didn't really interact much. She also TERRIBLY misses her great grandmother who passed away... Sometimes even to the point of tears (just last week she was tearing up in the back over Sarah Bareilles's song "Brave," because she said the repetition of "I just wanna' see you, I just wanna' see youuuuu" reminded her of her great grandma and how much she wants to see her. But she only met her a few times as well. Little has told his therapist that he misses J, the boyfriend his mom had over last summer... And he told the therapist that about two weeks ago when he'd only spent two weeks with J (and only intermittently during those two weeks)... And the time they spent together was TEN MONTHS AGO!
Another example: about a month ago, I was driving Little home from his intensive therapy program. When we stopped at a major intersection, a lady pulled up next to me and asked me how to get somewhere. I told her I didn't know and wished her luck. For two days in a row after this, every time we hit that intersection and regardless of which direction we were traveling, he asked, "Where's that lady who didn't know where she was going? Did she find her friends? I hope she did. Did she?" When I asked him why he was asking, he said, "I'm just worried she won't find it." When I told him that it was nice he was concerned, but that she was a stranger and we really shouldn't spend time worrying about her when we don't know her, he said, "But her was my friend and I want to know if she found her friends." He hasn't mentioned that lady in a while, but I won't be the least bit surprised if he asks about her again in the future.
But the strange thing is, they don't ever talk about people you'd assume they missed and worried about. Like their own mother, for instance. When she was arrested for assaulting Husband, Middle and Little were three and two. Husband says that they didn't ask about her for nine days (he even emailed their mom to note his concern that they weren't asking for her or about her at all). And when we got custody of them, they didn't talk about her very much at all, and Middle (who loves to draw) did not draw any pictures of her biological mother... When she finally drew a picture of her and told me it was her mom, she later changed the identity of the drawing to her maternal grandmother.
As many problems as she has, she is still their mom, and most children will talk about their mom, draw pictures of her and for her, etc. That's the "normal" thing you expect. But they don't very often. In fact, we can go days without hearing a mention of their biological mother.
Once again, we noticed this was atypical behavior, but we didn't realize they were displaying signs of serious disruptions in their brain development. The kids were not acting, and still do not usually act, like typical children with healthy attachments at all.
Turns out, children do react differently to strangers and new situations and their reactions are largely dependent upon their attachment style (which is generally dependent upon the life circumstances the child has experienced). One method that has been used repeatedly to test attachment in young children is the "Strange Situation" experiment developed by Mary Ainsworth.
Husband wasn't in the country when they were that young so cannot state with certainty when they started showing signs of attachment issues, and his ex-wife is not a very reliable source of information on things like that. But we do know that they don't have a healthy attachment to anyone.
But we are all certainly working on helping them to develop one.
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