Pound Pup Legacy

Shannon-Bridget Maloney

An epidemic of unfounded, untested, and unregulated therapies is being foisted on the youngest members of our society. Children, most of them adopted, are being subjected to a form of "therapy" that several state licensing boards have deemed grossly negligent. Some states have had cases in criminal and civil courts against the practitioners. Therapists have been fined, sanctioned, and even sent to prison for their treatment of children. "Attachment therapy" (AT), as the practitioners call their trade, has a frightening history, a devastating present, and, if legislatures and mental health licensing boards don't get more involved, a deadly future.

The "Reactive Attachment Disorder" Diagnosis

Mainstream mental health sources state that children with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) have difficulty or are unable to form attachments in early life. The disorder may manifest itself through indiscriminant attachments, overfriendliness, or withdrawal from others. (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV, 1994.) However, self-proclaimed "attachment therapists" claim that the disorder has many characteristics that DSM-IV omits. The Institute for Attachment and Child Development (formerly the Attachment Center at Evergreen), for example, states:

Children who do not have healthy attachments with a loving caregiver . . .

• Do not trust caregivers or adults in authority.
• Have extreme control problems, manifested in covertly manipulative or overtly hostile ways.
• Do not develop a moral foundation: no empathy, no remorse, no conscience, no compassion for others.
• Lack the ability to give and receive genuine affection or love.
• Resist all efforts to nurture or guide them.
• Lack cause and effect thinking.
• Act out negatively, provoking anger in others.
• Lie, steal, cheat, manipulate.
• Are destructive, cruel, argumentative and hostile.
• Lack self-control -- are impulsive.
• Are superficially charming and engaging. (Institute for Attachment, 2003)

These "diagnostic criteria" set a child up for the roller coaster that is attachment therapy. Phrases such as, "superficially charming and engaging" are used to nullify any positive relations the child has with others as being unreal and manipulative. "Lack the ability to give and receive genuine affection or love" allows another (in most cases parent or therapist) to determine what genuine affection and love are, completely undermining the child's ability to recognize and/or exhibit such emotions. Notice, too, that the child's acting out is said to provoke "anger in others." The theory claims that on one hand the child is out-of-control and unable to be responsible for him or herself and on the other hand the child is responsible for the feelings and actions of the caretakers. Thus instead of investigating the caretakers' role in family discord, ATs blame the adults' feelings on the child placed in their care. The Institute for Attachment also lists parental characteristics that may be used to help diagnose the child:

• Feel isolated and depressed.
• Feel frustrated and stressed.
• Are hypervigilant, agitated, have difficulty concentrating.
• Are confused, puzzled, obsessed with finding answers.
• Feel blamed by family, friends, and professionals.
• Feel helpless, hopeless, and angry.
• Feel that problems are minimized by the helping profession." (Institute for Attachment, 2003)

Nancy Thomas, a "therapeutic parenting specialist" who is the leading proponent of attachment disorder parenting methods, states that a well-adjusted child should do things, "quick and snappy and right the first time." The child should also be "fun to be around." (Thomas, 2000) Thomas seems to feel that a healthy child is one who makes parents happy, not one who experiences life and grows through those experiences.