Treatment Philosophy
Dr. Buenning’s attachment therapy is based upon the understanding that the core symptom of RAD is the child’s inability to accept love and affection. Thus, the ultimate goal of the therapy is not simply to change the child’s observed behaviors, which are really just symptoms, but to attach the child to his parents and truly treat the condition. Once a child attaches, the desired changes in emotions, behaviors, attitudes, and thinking will all occur spontaneously.
The RAD child’s whole being is organized around rejecting love or keeping love at a distance. The child’s control issues and symptoms serve to limit any parental affection to a tolerable level. Once the child is in control and exists outside of a dependent relationship, he will effectively keep all affection, validation, and nurturance at a distance and emotionally starve himself. From the child’s perspective, keeping love at a distance is essential to survival and serves to keep him from ever again experiencing painful loss.
Dr. Buenning’s therapeutic process is based upon two simple principles: RAD children need love; RAD children need limits. The parents need to treat the child in a loving, kind, caring, and compassionate way while at the same time setting clear, necessary and appropriate limits. RAD children need their parents to be in control of them so they can have a normal dependent relationship that provides their needs. Parents should not exercise control through threats, punishment, deprivation, or by inducing fear. These methods are counter-productive for any child and actually create more rebellion than obedience. Although control is an essential ingredient in attaching and healing the RAD child, alone it is insufficient to produce change. A deeply, loving, compassionate, and understanding relationship is also essential.
Individual therapy is largely ineffective with RAD children. Therefore, Dr. Buenning prefers to use family and parent therapy exclusively and has found this approach to be the most productive. Parents are always present when he works with the RAD child. Therapists who treat RAD children without the parents input can be manipulated by the RAD child’s deception. Parents give the therapist the most reliable access to what is true about the RAD child. Therapy is reality based, guided by the therapist, and focuses on current, specific problems. The child is not given a choice about the subject of therapy or allowed to avoid issues, as is often the case in traditional therapies like play or talk therapy. As the child becomes attached through the therapeutic process, genuine talk about past trauma occurs more often.
Parent education is another integral part of the therapy. Most people learn how to parent by being parented as a child but this training rarely prepares them to parent the RAD child successfully. People learn to parent children who want parents and to give love to children who want to be loved. Parents need special skills because RAD children do not want parents and reject their parent’s love. In the therapy, parents learn how to give love to a child who does not want love and how to parent children who do not want parents. Parents will also learn the inner logic of the RAD child, why the child thinks, feels, and acts the way he does. Increased understanding leads to increased competence, as well as, helping the parents to regain compassion for their child. Another purpose of the parent education is to teach parents to protect themselves from their child’s pain and help stop them from being hurt by their child’s emotions and behaviors. This skill helps parents continue to have loving feelings toward their child while their child is learning to attach.
The trauma created by the RAD condition affects the heart, soul, body and mind. Consequently, the therapy must address the whole person given that the impact of the trauma affected the child’s whole being. Dr. Buenning’s therapy is experiential, both in the office and in the home. His therapy creates a whole person experience and is both powerful and corrective. The therapy teaches parents to provide a whole person healing experience for the child. The healing experience will correct the hurtful lessons learned from early trauma that are now in the RAD child’s heart, body, soul, and mind. By contrast, talk therapy is simply not powerful enough and does not engage the child’s whole person.
With effective attachment therapy parents will not have to wait years to see significant changes in their child. Generally, it takes several months for even the most effective attachment therapy to be successful. However, therapy with infants and toddlers can produce significant changes within several weeks. Ultimately, parents are the best judge of success or failure of therapy and know in their heart if their child is continuing to have trouble loving them or if their child has experienced a genuine transformation of the heart and soul.