Working with kids with Reactive Attachment Disorder can be very difficult. Parents who have kids with RAD often feel rejected by their children after spending years of doing everything they can to make their children happy.
Some parents will take their children to see a child psychologist or child counselor in hopes that the counselor will be able to help them with their child. Sadly, some children with RAD spend years in therapy and they don’t seem to get any better. This leads parents to feel a sense of hopelessness as they wonder who will be able to help if the people who are suppose to know what to do, haven’t been able to help their child.
As parents feel hopeless and lose faith that their child can be helped by therapists, parents resign themselves to just trying to make it through each day with as little conflict as possible. Sometimes parents will build walls of protection between them and their child in order to lessen the pain and guilt they feel for the way their child is turning out.
Talk Therapy and Play Therapy isn’t helpful for kids with attachment disorders
Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder can get worse with the wrong type of treatment. Traditional talk therapies or play therapy tend not to work well for kids who have attachment disorders. One of the reasons is because talk therapies or play therapy works as kids build relationships with the therapist. However, kids with attachment disorders really have relationship disorders and they don’t know how to be in relationship with others. Thus, talk therapy just becomes a way of learning the right answers to repeat to therapists when they ask questions.
Therapy based on building relationships through meeting needs has a much better outcome for kids with attachment disorders. Much of the relationship building occurs non-verbally because a lot of the trauma that led to the attachment disorder happened non-verbally. Part of the therapy to help create attachment includes helping parents understand how attachment takes place and what they can do to create a safe base within themselves for the child to develop an attachment.
Attachment Therapist in Mesa Arizona
Shiloh Lundahl, LCSW, is a child and family counselor in Mesa, Arizona who works with children who have attachment disorders. He uses a family systems approach to therapy and helps parents learn how they can become therapeutic to their own children. As parents gain awareness and insight into themselves, it helps them learn how to create a healing environment for their children.
Shiloh has specialized training in working with foster and adopted children and their parents. He also teaches Advanced Trainings for Foster Parents and Adoptive Parents in Mesa, AZ. Some of the focused areas he works in include:
- ADD/ADHD
- Addiction
- Adolescent issues
- Adult Anxiety
- Anger Management
- Attachment
- Child (ages Birth – 6)
- Children (ages 7-12)
- Childhood Anxiety
- Parenting
- Parent-Child Relationships
- Parent-Child Psychotherapy
- School Success
- Substance Abuse
- Trauma
For more information about therapy services for you or your family click here or call 602-492-5055.