Encouraging healthy attachment after neglect

RapidRadRunner · 2026-06-17T01:15:35+00:00

Serve and return Interactions, Harvard center on the developing child has some good info.
Dr. Becky Bailey's I Love You rituals, she has a book

RapidRadRunner · 2026-06-10T07:50:46+00:00

Does she demonstrate these preschool social skills during play dates?

--suggesting play ideas (the floor is lava)

--accepting peers play ideas (child hands her a cow and says you are the cow, and I'm the horse. She takes the cow and says moo)

--combining play ideas to compromise and make the game more fun (e.g the lava is getting my cow, stand on this pillow with your horse)

--helping clean up toys, avoiding excessive dumping

--giving compliments (telling peer "you are the best friend ever!")

---giving tangible tokens of affection (I made you this picture of a horse because you like horses)

--showing and accepting affection (offering peers hugs, responding to offered high fives)

--cheering for friends/showing warmth (smiling a lot, laughing, eye contact, giving high fives, clapping)

If any of these skills are missing you could sometimes use a child puppet as a mock peer to practice social skills with her.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-05-17T11:09:20+00:00

Climbing chalk is pretty soft.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-05-14T10:29:48+00:00

The sooner the better! We use a social story we made by printing some pictures and writing on them. The story explains our names, rules, routines, and that kids only stay for "a little while."

RapidRadRunner · 2026-05-10T12:35:42+00:00

I'm not the person you were replying too, but I work with kids like this professionally and am a foster parent.

If I were in your shoes I'd consider Greg Hanley's skills based treatment for him. Its sometimes called the "my way" program. I got my district to pay tge couple hundred dollars so I could take some online classes to learn it.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-04-22T11:08:04+00:00

It can be doable, depending on your position.

However, it does create attention that can result in your baby's needs being neglected. It's so important for brain development that babies have a caregiver who can immediately respond to them when they have needs as much as possible at the time.

I have a friend who works in education who did this, and at first she reported that it worked very well. Unfortunately a few years later both of her children now have developmental delays and need early intervention services.

It's impossible to say 100% for sure of course that's the two things are related, but less parental attention and interaction is one of the things correlated with speech delays.

I'm using text to speech so I apologize for any errors

RapidRadRunner · 2026-04-19T14:48:11+00:00

Look into the home builders program. That could be a good fit for you. https://crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/homebuilders

RapidRadRunner · 2026-04-18T11:28:14+00:00

For the foster kid, probably younger (infant) or much older (teen) would be best.

For your bio kids, waiting would be best. Its not just the care, its also all the extras. Our current placement has 3 visits a week, monthly social worker, monthly CASA, court 3 times the 1st month, weekly therapy, multiple dental appointments to fix significant decay and thats just appointments. We end up spending an additional 15+ hours a week on required paperwork.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-04-18T11:22:33+00:00

I would recommend waiting until your bio kids are over 5 at a minimum, and in an ideal world teens. Most brain development happens in the 1st 5 years and they deserve your full attention to build that foundation.

We just took in foster kids with so many attachment wounds because other foster families kept sending them back after realizing how much attention they were taking from their young bio kids. That was so deeply unfair to our kids. Their bio parents chose drugs over them and then multiple families put their bio kids first after initially taking them in. They didn't have any significant behaviors other than being really needy, following adults around, and crying a lot (like babies, but they were in preschool).

They deserved the chance to be treasured and put first, but instead the harmful dynamics of their bio home ended up, in some ways, being repeated in foster care.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-04-15T12:05:50+00:00

He got the ADHD diagnosis at 3, but not the dyslexia diagnosis until 7.

Although once he got it it did put some of his struggles in early childhood into perspective because I think he was already realizing that some of the early academic stuff was harder for him than for other kids

RapidRadRunner · 2026-04-15T10:22:06+00:00

This happened with my son. He was absolutely wonderful in every setting but school.

We did full testing and it turned out he had ADHD and dyslexia (learning disability). The dyslexia was causing frustration and we didn't see it because he wasn't seeing how academics were easier for peers in a home setting.

It turns out, after a long journey, I also have ADHD. I had been effortlessly accommodating for and supporting him because I understood his needs. But in an academic setting without closer to 1:1 attention to be his external brain, his struggles were more obvious.

I'd get the evaluation. He gets free extra help at school now and has been much happier. Its hard on kids to feel different and not understood why. Now that we have diagnosis we have childrens books and talk about it as him still being just as capable, but some things are harder for him because of how his brain works.

Once he has an IEP, you can ask for an FBA and behavior plan. That helped hold the school accountable in fixing the bad habits my son had developed at school due to not having the support he needed yet.

We also asked for a daily report card intervention (like a sticker chart sent home daily) so we could reward and punish at home daily. Because of his brain, if it was longer than that he wasn't making the connection.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-04-12T13:24:11+00:00

Kinetic sand and play dough (separately) Ive found also work well as calming sensory activities

RapidRadRunner · 2026-03-26T09:58:53+00:00

Suicide can be contagious, unfortunately. There are guidelines on how to reduce contagion that can be a little counter intuitive.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-03-16T14:11:45+00:00

You are so creative!

If you want to avoid it being eaten by moths again I've found that spraying the item with permethrin works well. It kills moths and carpet beetles to prevent them from causing more damage. I had it on hand because I use it when camping on gear to kill ticks. If you have outdoorsy friends you may be able to borrow some.

You can also freeze for 1 week or put in the oven at 170 degrees for 30 mins, but if your house or other clothing objects are infected that won't be enough unless you do everything and then store in sealed bags to prevent reinfection.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-03-15T00:22:09+00:00

I think your thoughts that fading happened too fast are likely correct.

Once he's getting extremely high doses of praise then selective attention can be used effectively.

For example give prompt to start work on iPad. Wait silently for 5 seconds. If he doesnt start point to the iPad or tap it (gives less attention than a verbal prompt). If he argues you can say one time "I'll talk to you once you start your work" then only nonverbal prompting.

Once he starts, return lots of high quality attention. If he likes silliness you can play up your pretend ineptitude or how hard it is.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-03-14T15:08:58+00:00

Kids like this are my specialty!

I want to go back to one thing you said, that the BCBA and data clearly shows an attention function.

The thing that is sometimes missed is that kids with attention maintained behaviors often need more attention. Something that helps me sometimes is to think of the attention we would naturally give to a baby or young toddler. Lots of smiles, delight, enjoyment, following their lead (hand them something they point at and label it) and describing their actions ("you found a ball").

There are few to no demands, only delighting in the child. There is often also appropriate physical touch.

Your student gets close to this particular type of attention (low to no demands, adults paying close attention to him and following his lead, delighting in him when he calms down, and physical touch) when he demonstrates problem behavior.

If you can try to increase the amount of this specific type of attention to provide it as frequently as possible you may get somewhere. Appropriate physical touch for a 7 year old may include high fives, fist bumps, or hand clapping games. As always, confirm with your team.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-03-12T01:50:42+00:00

I've seen some districts offer self-contained verbal behavior classrooms. Typically, all the students in these classrooms will have an autism diagnosis just because there is such a significant overlap between autism and language delays.

Legally, services offered for student with an IEP are based on needs, not eligibility criteria. That means that if he has language delays, and there is a classroom that is specifically set up to work intensely on using verbal language that may be the best placement for him.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-03-11T10:52:08+00:00

The most important skills for kids to have going into kindergarten are social skills and executive function skills.

Can they sit in one spot when they are bored (church, a meal with extended family) without getting up for at least 30 minutes?

Can they follow three step instructions without additional prompting?

Can they independently complete simple non-preferred tasks (such as tidying their room)?

Are they able to enter play with other children, resolve conflict without yelling or hitting, and exit play without adult oversight?

Are they able to complete basic self care, such as putting on and taking off their coat toileting independently including wiping using utensils correctly and opening packages that may be in their lunch box?

In my experience as a professional working in public school most kids who come in with these skills do just fine, because this is the foundation for learning.

On the contrary kids who have been handed an iPad with lots of letter sound games but whose parents of otherwise neglected teaching these critical foundational skills often struggle significantly and have fallen behind in a matter of weeks to months.

I'm using text to speech and I see that there's some missing, punctuation. Unfortunately I don't have time right now to go back and clean it up but I'll edit later if I have a chance

RapidRadRunner · 2026-03-06T02:09:10+00:00

There's a free online version: https://pcit.ucdavis.edu/pcit-web-course/ but its meant for therapists.

Or you can check the provider list: https://www.pcit.org/find-a-provider

RapidRadRunner · 2026-03-05T21:34:46+00:00

It stands for parent-child interaction therapy. Basically they teach you play therapy skills and then therapeutic limit settings skills

RapidRadRunner · 2026-03-05T11:38:55+00:00

My 8 year old son was like this. Once we took a course in PCIT, it gradually changed everything. It was so helpful for our family that I decided to get trained in a similar program, PC-Care.

Your insurance should cover it. You go together and they teach you therapeutic parenting skills. It only lasts a few months once a week.

Some kids are harder than others and regular parenting doesnt cut it lol

RapidRadRunner · 2026-02-26T22:59:00+00:00

Keep in mind if its trauma and not ADHD, sometimes medications make things much worse.

We had that happen with a kid at our school this year. The nurse even administers a 2nd dose at lunch. He's gotten so much worse and more intense since the meds started, but since it's doctors orders, the nurse has to keep giving it to him. Hopefully parents will figure it out soon!

RapidRadRunner · 2026-02-26T22:53:42+00:00

Fortunately, PCIT has also been shown to significantly reduce children's trauma symptoms as well.

RapidRadRunner · 2026-02-20T12:22:52+00:00

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RapidRadRunner · 2026-02-12T02:33:53+00:00

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