As long as they are breathing there is hope. This is what our attachment therapist has said. As moms we can never lose hope for our children. I believe what we will hope for with each child will be different. For Bear it was the he would be able to work and take care of himself. It remains the same. With Taz when we went into attachment therapy our hope was to keep him from growing up and going to jail. Now that he has worked hard and made so much progress our hopes are for college and a happy productive life. I looked through old emails and is was during August of '07 he started making the real progress with Aug 29th being his biggest break through. That is the day he crossed the bridge. There is a story many in the attachment world use about a bridge. Mom is on one side waiting. She needs to stay there and wait. Jr is on the other end of the bridge. Jr needs to come across to mom. When mom goes across it scares Jr and he will blow up the bridge and mom will be hurt. Mom is much less likely to be so hurt if she stays on her own side of the bridge. I have friends who have told me to sit down in my lawn chair, read a magazine and drink a lemonade. So I see myself sitting there, legs crossed, slipper hanging from my toe, in my shorts and t shirt reading Ladies Home Journal and sipping a lemonade through a straw. Of course, it has to have one of those little umbrellas in it. There are many times I have felt a need to glue myself to the chair because at the first sign of progress I want to run to my child which indeed does cause them to blow up the bridge. My friend Rick at Organized Doodles drew the above illustration. Take a look at his blog.
Healing from RAD takes faith on the part of the child and the part of mom. Never, never, never quit.
The reason my friends noticed this bridge is first of all because I am always talking about my children with RAD being at the oppoisite end of the bridge from me and slowly coming across. They noticed this bridge has lots of ups and downs. Our progress with RAD is the same way. Right now I would say the older son is up and the younger son is down. I'd kind of like it if they would both give me an up day at the same time once in awhile! I guess many things in life are like this. We'd all love it if we can just coast through life with no problems and enjoy each day. But we have all these ups and downs. Hopefully we allow them to make us stronger and not bitter. What is that old phrase? Be better not bitter. So, anyway, thanks friends for the photo. I agree that it is very symbollic.
