Therapy is not Attachment Therapy

We spent years trying to find a therapist. It was awful. Each time it was the same. I would sit out there reading magazines while my child was behind a closed door with another adult attempting to triangulate. Sometimes I could hear what they were saying but not usually. I would hear "How was your week?" At the end they'd call me in and say "It sounds like he had a pretty good week." Bwahahahahaha. He didn't tell you he was suspended from school for fighting? That he pulled all the woodwork off the wall in his room? That he twisted his glasses around and around? The therapist would look shocked and then would start to ask me about our reward system. How we disciplined in our home. Does he have chores? After many attempts at therapy we decided to go to an Attachment Therapist even though the closest one was an hour and a half away.

I called him on the phone and he began to describe my child to me exactly. I felt a load lifting from my shoulders. Someone knows! My husband was skeptical that this was going to be any different. We went in together for the first visit. Dan started talking. My husband started smiling. He KNEW about RAD. He understood our kids even better than us and he knew what to do. All our lives were changed on that day! On the way to the first visit my boys were so excited. "I'm going to tell him I'm good at blah blah and blah." I just smiled. I knew this guy was not interested in going in that direction. Immediately the work began. The smiles disappeared from their faces as they realized they were not fooling this guy and that he KNEW. It was an exhausting year but Taz has been changed forever. Sure he has regressions. He has issues but NOTHING like before. Bear gets it in his head. He can tell you exactly what is wrong, what he needs to do but he has some other serious disorders that conflict. We are getting treatment for those, a main one being Sensory Integration Dysfunction and the main part of that being Tactile Defensiveness. Anyway....I'm putting some links for information that describe the differences in Attachment Therapy and regular therapy and list where to find them. I hope to become an Attachment Therapist. I still have over a year of classes. I hesitate to mention it because I do not want to be present myself as a therapist in training. I am still just a student at this point and know little about being a therapist. Very little. I'm working on it though. I feel this is my calling after children. I should finish about the time my twins graduate from high school. Here is the information:

If you go about half way down the page it lists the ways attachment therapy differs:
http://www.attachment.org/pages_therapists.php

Here are some sites that list Attachment Therapists:
http://www.attachment.org/pages_find_therapist.php

Skim to the lower part of the page and it lists sites to help find a therapist plus some therapist centers:
http://www.familyhelper.net/arc/att.html

http://www.attachmentdisorder.net/finding_help.htm

Our family's therapist and another have just opened this center:
http://atcnebraska.com/

I hope this helps someone. If you have tried other therapy and failed don't be afraid to try again. Finding the right help DOES make a difference.