With all the posts and comments flying around about RAD and attachment, I wanted to share part of my story.


My foster, now adopted, daughter K came to live with us at thirty days old. She already had been through two care givers - her birth mom and also her great-great grandmother. She had some slight medical problems and wouldn't sleep. She cried all the time, and was ‘colicy'.

When we got the foster placement call, we were told we would only have her for three days while birth family was organizing themselves to take the child. After the third day, when it became obvious the family wasn't coming soon, I made a concerted effort to start bonding.

Now, my friends warned me, if you bond and have to give the baby back, you'll be heartbroken, but caseworker and more experienced foster parents told me to do everything I could to bond for two reasons. One, you don't know how long you will have her, and two, this child better learn how to bond, you had better start the process now.

So, I carried this baby everywhere. On my stomach, in my arms. I never put her down. I noticed that she thrashed around and wouldn't give eye contact, but I thought it was because she was ‘sick' and ‘colicy.'

K cried all the time. My husband and I took turns holding her. She slept on my chest all night long and slowly over the days and weeks ahead, we both got a bit of sleep. I started massaging her skin at least twice per day, and her bare feet much more than that. I was falling in love. I was attaching, but was she? And what if we have to give this baby back?

Yesterday, two years later, K was drawing on the furniture. I gave her my ‘look' and K said, Oh Oh, and handed over the pen. She knew it she was in trouble and she cares about it. She cares what I think, she cares how I respond. She wants to please me. "Sorry" she said looking down at the floor. "Sorry Mom."

And this morning, I am the one who is sick and cranky and wanting to cry; and it is my daughter who kisses me, rubs my feet and brings me her Teddy Bear, trying to make me feel better. I'm attached and better yet, she's attached. I smile.