Some of the most common are:  bi-polar, ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), FAE (fetal alcohol effects – a spectrum disorder) and ADHD.  In no way is that a full list.  Many in the RAD community refer to the ‘alphabet soup’ of disorders their children have received.  It can read like a foreign language.  Some of right on and many are not.  RAD can look like a cat, a lion, an emu, a giraffe, a mouse…but it always will come back to bark like a dog.

My children have a lot of overlap.  DD is quite OCD and, from my perspective, totally bi-polar.  However, at her age, no doctor is willing to actually give her these diagnosis.  So, our discussions with her psych often follow the same pattern:  Oh, yes, she has bi-polar…but I won’t put that in her chart until she’s older and her OCD tendencies are strong.   It’s always fun.  Our attachment therapist can not prescribe meds, but he’s seen enough to often know what might work best.  DD is now on a med first used for high blood pressure, now being used for ADHD.  Her other med is for mood disorders (including bi-polar).  The mix of meds is what works for her.  Admittedly, the mood disorder drug did NOT work on it’s own, but (knock on wood) this mixture is really something.

I spent years standing on high ground saying I would never medicate a child.  Children need to be children, even if that comes with issues – that was my line.  However, I’ve realized since then that some children can’t be children without medication.  A wise woman once asked me, “what if it could change their lives for the better?”  I didn’t have an answer.  One part of raising RAD/AD kids is that you learn that you can never learn enough.  The high ground is very slippery.

I often see RAD everywhere.  So, I’m as bad as any doctor that won’t diagnose it…I’m the over-diagnoser.  I see people who say their children are this, that or the other and I think “and they have RAD”.  But, they may not.  These things look so close to each other…it’s impossible to know sometimes.

When my DD can’t stop a track in her mind – for hours, days or months – and that track is telling her to not love us, to not trust us…can I say that is purely RAD or purely OCD?  No…it’s the mixture of the two.  Would it be so hard for her to live a normal life if one of those wasn’t there?  I don’t know and can’t sit and think about it too long.  They are both there.  Other things could come up and she gets older.  We don’t yet have the whole story.

When you see a RAD parent and they have hours of therapy and doctor appointments lined up from a wide variety of specialties, know that they are trying to figure out a puzzle with no answer.  We are trying to re-teach brains that never learned in the first place.  I wish I could take my DD and all her conditions and run away to a place where these things don’t happen to kids.  I don’t think that place exists.

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Our oldest AJ is a very complicated child, one who from infancy probably baffled the Russian physicians. I know that he has confused just about every physician he has seen in the States. Hell, he confuses me and I live with him. In fact, I often don’t know which AJ will be joining me in the morning…will he be complacent, angry, frustrated, giddy, sad or anxious?

Or will he just be?

I write about my son often because there are parents everywhere in the same battles against childhood mental illnesses and families across the country still reeling from the aftereffects of institutional life. Will my son ever be able to grasp that I write about his medical and emotional issues and not just about adoption? I don’t know, but at this point in his life I feel that sharing his journey benefits too many families to not share.

So, what, you ask, is such a big deal?

Since Gus joined our family, AJ has been a mess. Then again, he has always been somewhat of a jumble, right? Sure. But this time I mean really a mess…manic, crazy, sleepless, aggressive  and unpredictably violent. A whirlwind of highs and lows.

We don’t take his behaviors lightly and we always, always act quickly.

We initially increased his Risperdal, an anti-psychotic that he started last year, but that did very little, so we returned to the list of current diagnoses and chose one to  treat (well, the psychiatrist did). We tried ADHD medications next.

Wrong choice.

Apparently in children with neurological issues like AJ’s, stimulants tend to work well; however, when the neurological issue is misdiagnosed, the stimulant will  backfire and have negative side effects.

Example: 65 percent of the children in our study had hypomanic, manic and aggressive reactions to stimulant medications.

On two different stimulants, AJ suffered from insomnia, aggression, anxiety, compulsive behaviors, paranoia and racing thoughts.  What is interesting is that studies show the same reactions in children similar to my son.

After seeing these reactions I started doing my own research (well, you know me…I did it before) and came to the early conclusion that we needed something other than a stimulant.  And we needed to find out if AJ was,  in fact, expressing bipolar behaviors.

I purchased two books: The Bipolar Child: The Definitive and Reassuring Guide to Childhood’s Most Misunderstood Disorder — Third Edition and Parenting a Bipolar Child: What to Do & Why.

As I silently flipped through the pages of information in the two books yesterday my heart sank into the depths of every part of me. It was so clear, so obvious. So painful.

So, so, so true.

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