I’ve mentioned before that I have one RAD daughter out of my 39 children. She is involved with the Department of Juvenile Justice system as she’s stolen several big ticket items from schoolmates on several occasions. Next theft will result in a Youth Detention Center confinement as she will then have gone through a series of sanctions, chances, and events.

I’ve had her in private therapy for years, nearly 8 years, and now in court ordered Intensive Family Intervention Therapy with one of the most professional mental health workers I’ve ever been fortunate to meet. Miss Pat gets it, she understands RAD, and the insidious nature of one’s inability to change, how entrenched these behaviors are in this teenager.

Seemingly without a soul, or a conscience, this teen thinks if she sees something and she wants it, then she ought to be able to have it; no concern at all for the owner of that thing, no empathy and no remorse. This is a very intelligent teen, she makes great grades in school, but will steal the nice ink pen out of your hand if she wants it, but usually she will go after Ipods, MP3 players and purses.

IFI, DJJ and I have been discussing an outdoor therapeutic program and have come to the conclusion that a person like her may not benefit from this program at all; rather they are suggesting a 24-7 therapeutic placement.

Now this is the amazing part to me, as I have battled for years to get services for my children, and to maintain a balance amongst the needs still at home.

Miss Pat has concluded that I’d be “punished” as well in one program that treats all the parents of the participants as dysfunctional, plus the four hour drive each way which would include several round trips a month, and bottom line is that a RAD child would probably not respond as hoped, so it would quite likely all be in vain.

I stared at her in astonishment as my own needs as a parent of other children is NEVER taken into consideration except by the psychologist that comes to our house on Fridays. Usually I am treated as an idiot for even attempting to parent more than one child with emotional problems.

Well, if I didn’t, then who would? I was usually the only home study sent in on any of my sibling groups.

But I’m now seeing the times they are a changing as more and more professionals are seeing the depths of disturbances in children, like her, who were born to inhalant abusers. Besides the lying, stealing and sexual inappropriateness, the very blank affect is indicating a budding sociopath.

So within the month, in yet another attempt to keep her from committing another crime, she will be remanded into a therapeutic placement that I am in total agreement with. Her birth brother, my adopted felonious son, is now behind bars, but believe it or not, he has a heart and a soul. Her other two birth brothers (pictured here), one afflicted with CP and the other as normal as any other pre-teen, are glad that she’s going to get help, but they also understand that she doesn’t care about them, nor about me, or anyone else in our family. She simply doesn’t have that capacity.

Her birth mom lives with a registered sexual offender and this targeted child suffered greatly, only to be later left in an empty apartment filled with trash and rotting food. There are profound reasons why she is the way that she is now.

I will do my best to continue to get her the treatment that she needs.