First Attachment Therapy Appt for Josiah

Andy and I met with a new therapist for Josiah today. This one is a psychologist who is going to help us with some of the problems going on in our home regarding Josiah’s behaviors. I found her on an attachment site for kids who have reactive attachment disorder. She met with us for about 45 minutes and gathered information on Josiah’s life thus far and what has been going on that made us seek her. We told her all that we’ve been through and different stuff that we have tried. She had him in a room where he could play with a video monitor on him the whole time. I told her about my fears with the safety stuff going on in the home, how aggressive he is, how the behavior therapy that we tried doesn’t work (she wasn’t surprised, she said the traditional stuff doesn’t work with these kids and it’s not a problem with the parenting and these kids can be charmers so people don’t necessarily see what we see as they’re not in the home). With his poor cause and effect thinking, he blames us for being mean to him when we have to discipline rather than seeing that his behavior got him there. No sooner did we discuss this as I always fear that he’s going to say the wrong thing to the wrong person and we’re going to be in trouble for something we didn’t even do, than he knocked at the door, the therapist went and got the door and he said he had to go potty (nevermind that Andy had just taken him). He wanted Mommy to take him though as Daddy hurts his arm when he says that he has to go to the bathroom. The therapist saw right through it and said that she thought it was interesting that we just had talked about that. She wanted Andy to take him to the bathroom. She documented that in her notes as she said that if we had any problems in the future, that someone would have it documented somewhere that he does this stuff. She told me to calm down as she could see that I was fearful. She was on our side. We talked about a lot of stuff and then she called Josiah in to talk to her. She looked at his hands and his face for signs of what she thought we were dealing with and confirmed it. He has fetal alcohol effects and that is why he has such a hard time with emotional regulation, making poor choices, and with his cause and effect thinking. She said that she also thinks that he has the reactive attachment disorder, but we can’t work on the attachment until we get him to learn to regulate himself. I am so glad that we finally found a therapist who supports us and doesn’t think we’re crazy and is understanding. She also told us that there’s a difference in someone who studies it and someone who has lived/is living it and she understands as her family fostered 50 kids when she was growing up. We’re going to start seeing her once a month for an hour as she only works out of the Dallas office for one week out of the month. I’m just relieved to know that someone understands. When she talked to Josiah, she let him know that she knew what was going on and that he had some problem areas to work on. She called him out on it in a sing song sort of way. She gave Andy and I each some homework to work on with him each day. His number one rule to understand right now is that his #1 rule of being a man is that you never hurt a girl and Andy has to back me up when Josiah disrespects me to let him know that he is to listen to Mommy and not to hurt me or be disrespectful. Josiah is to understand that Daddy is the top dog and that Josiah is not the one in control. We’re going to make some changes to his room so that the door locks from the hallway and that when we send him to his room, he has a place to throw a fit and scream and do whatever, but we’ll have to make some changes to the door (putting a peephole in) and making sure that he can’t break the window. We go back in one month to tweak some things and for her to find out how things have been going. He had to leave one bad behavior behind in her office when we left…he got to throw a wacky bug up on her ceiling to stay there…he chose to leave behind some of his mad feelings. We have a lot of work to do, but I feel better about things than I have in awhile. Please pray for our family during all of this.