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I got introduced to being a Foster parent about 5 years ago. I was newly married and desperately wanted to have a family but fertility issues prevented that dream from coming true. My mother was a social worker with child protection and approached my husband and myself about becoming Foster parents and possibly adopting through the Foster care system. I, of course, jumped right on the bandwagon and submitted the application packet. After 9 weeks of training we became licensed. Within a week we received a call to take our first child.
She was a beautiful 3and half year old girl who had been in Foster care for about a year and half. I spoke with her Foster mom on the phone prior to meeting her. Her Foster mom said she would email pictures of her to me and we set a date for my husband and I to meet the Foster family. The Foster mom had told me on the phone that day that she had a condition called Reactive Attachment Disorder. I did not pay much attention because I was so excited to finally have a child and I had never heard of RAD before. I waited patiently for the email that did not come that first day. I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning to check my email and there it was. At first my hands were shaking and I was so nervous that I could hardly contain it. I downloaded the pictures and as my (extremely slow) computer began to show the first picture I first saw her eyes. They were incredibly beautiful, dark brown eyes that seemed to shine. As the picture fully came into focus, I began to cry. I woke up my husband and told him that we had found our baby!!
It was 2 days before we could drive the 50 miles to meet her. The whole way my hands shook and I was so nervous I thought I might throw up. My level headed husband kept telling me to slow down, that we didn’t know yet if it would be good fit. I told him that I believed that GOD sent this child to us and that it would be good fit. My husband became very quiet. We only knew her name and that she is Hispanic. I had so many questions on the phone with the Foster mom that she laughed and said that she knew we were the couple she had been waiting for. She said she would answer questions after we had met her. When we first pulled into the drive way of the Foster home it kind of hit us hard that this was not going to be easy. I stumbled walking up the sidewalk and had to grab my husband for support. The moment he smiled at me I knew everything would be okay.
My husband and I were so happy and so scared but if felt right from the first few moments that we spent with her. She immediately climbed into my husband's lap and asked him to read her a story. We were both instantly in love with her.
Then came the reminder that our child was a RAD child. She was already in counseling at 3 and a half. I researched as much as I could about this mysterious condition that came with my baby girl. What I found was somewhat horrifying to me. My daughter suffered abuse and severe neglect in her birth home, she was moved multiple times to different families and primarily because of her behavioral issues she was moved over and over again within the system. These moves not only contributed to her disorder they made it much worse. I was given a book to study up on RAD. I read about the most extreme cases and it literally scared me to death. I didn't really see some of the symptoms that I read about with my daughter and my husband also did not see some of the signs, in retrospect, they were there but it was so frightening for us that we were in a kind of blissful fog. We began to see various behaviors pretty quickly. She was becoming very aggressive with other kids at Daycare, punching and biting and peeing in garbage cans instead of using the bathroom. She also began to be aggressive with me at times. One night I found her literally inside the kitchen cupboard in the middle of the night just tearing through any
