Hell Loop

If you are planning on being a foster or adoptive parent, watch all three seasons of the Natalia Grace Documentary... Especially Season 3, Episode 3.

Season 3 Episode 3 of Max’s documentary The Curious Case of Natalia Grace is a masterclass on attachment. It’s called Hell Loop for a reason. They should be showing this episode to every psych and social work student at every university in the US, and especially at every adoptive and foster care training. Why?

Because Reactive Attachment disorder can be a family killer. And most professionals, in my experience, barely get it.

The De-tached Brain

Reactive Attachment Disorder (or RAD) as it is called today is really just another way to say attachment disorder.

It means that in the very early stages of development, the child reached out for consistent nurturing, love and care and found none, or found it so inconsistently that it was more frustrating and unexpected, than comforting. These kids learn that the world is dangerous and their brains re-wire around that idea. They are prone to disrupting the shit out of every human interaction and relationship, and they have no idea they are even doing it.

Kids going through this tend to live in (but not always) orphanges and over-crowded, understaffed and underfunded institutions. Or in homes filled with chaos, neglect and abuse. Hunger specifically derides attachment because it is the first way we show a baby we can meet their needs. When babies cry our for food and do not receive it, they understand that world is not a place that will care for them. And again, the brain re-wires itself to the baby’s surroundings.

This re-wiring is how these kids survive in a hostile world.

The problems occur when these chaotic, re-wired brains meet adoptive and foster parents who come in with a “We are going to love them through it” agenda of how to parent special children. They pour all their love and intention into these kids, and the re-wired brains don’t like it, understand it or trust it. They rebel against the stability because all they have known and trusted is chaos. Thrown into a new family, these brains find love overwhelming, painful, too much. They do whatever they can to make it go away.

Think: A child who steals grandma’s beloved cocktail ring from the jewlery box and leaves it unhidden in their room. Children who feel entitled instead of grateful - I wanted the red one, not the blue one! Why didn’t you get me what I wanted?! A child standing over their parent’s bed at 2am holding a knife because they know it will scare the shit out of them. A child who calls CPS and reports that they are being abused when nothing bad is happening in the home. A child who urinates on their clean clothes for the hell of it, because it grosses everyone out and creates the reaction they most understand, which is ambivalence and disregard.

These kids are excellent manipulators because they have had to manipulate to get their needs met. Sometimes the manipulation is a feeling you get being around them. It feels off. Inappropriate. You wonder if this is a child you can trust. The questions build as the off-putting behaviors pile up.

At one point in the doc, after Natalia has been re-aged by one of her adoptive parents in court - something both cruel and strange - a now eight year old, labeled as nineteen year old, is foisted into a non-accessible apartment for her dwarism and left to fend for herself in a “redneck” part of town.

Natalia manipulates her way into neighbor’s houses, stays too long, people find her playing with their children, going through their fridges. They feel compassion, but are put off by her neediness and boundarylessness. They don’t know what to do with her. She skeeves them out.

They wonder if she might be a sociopath, when the truth is that she is a child who doesn’t know how to care for herself. We know that kids who have been through this kind of neglect, have not had a chance to be empathic of other people, they do not stretch that muscle because they are so intently trying to manage the bare minimum for themselves. Their behaviors can feel narcissistic. I have no doubt everything felt off about Natalia. That’s the trauma.

The Hell Loop Brain

And this brings us to the Hell Loop episode because it is an accurate look at how these re-wired brains create all kinds of havoc in families.

Natalia Grace, at this point in the doc, has been through an orphanage, a set of Ukranian foster parents, and three adoptive families in the US, all who have abandoned her and abused her in spectacular, sometimes ridicuous, ways and had her diagnosed as a sociopath. By the time we get to the Hell Loop episode, Natalia has been fucked around by some of the most dysfunctional, ill-prepared adoptive parents on the planet. And it shows.

Natalia cries out for help and is rescued, in a dramatic middle of the night kidnapping, by the DePaul family, who have dwarfism themselves, and have always wanted to adopt her. (They tried when Natalia was younger but it was upended because they wouldn’t buy her.) When the DePaul’s get Natalia home after the emergency rescue, they realize that she is defending her last family, the Manses, who made themselves her payee, took all her disability money and the $300,000 she got from doing the Dr. Phil interview, and bought themselves a trailer and used it to support themselves. Then, they stuck Natalia with the tax bill for money she never had.

This is where it gets tricky. Natalia defends them. Even considers going back. Natalia says one thing to the Manses, and another to the DePaul’s. She pits them against each other, until all the parents are fighting and arguing in this vortex of hell, while Natalia stands in the middle of it, comfortable in the chaos. This is a common RAD behavior known as “triangulation.” It’s very uncommon to witness how traingulation happens, because it is so insidious and sneaky, but episode 5 lays it all out in glorious chaotic color.

I nodded my head through it all because in the nine years that our son Raffi has been with us, after being in fostercare, David and I are always staving off his attempts to pit us against each other. He doesn’t even realize he does it. He is a wonderful kid with a loving heart, but relationships remain diffcult for him, and probably always will be. I suspect the same applies to Natalia.

Notice the press got it wrong, too.

The Doomed Intersection

Of course, the DePaul’s freak out. This is the place where marriages start to unravel. Where people start to decide what to do next. There is blame. What have I done by taking in this child is the feeling that sets in. Have we bitten off more than we could chew? Was this a huge mistake? Can we get out of this?

Right here, at this doomed intersection, is where one of two things are about to happen.

The foster/adoptive parents make plans to either:

1) disrupt the placement, which means the child’s behaviors have worked and the world has proven again to be an abandoning place, and the parents begin to disenegage love and care, and look to cut their losses and pass the child along. Or….

2) the parents stick it out, but employ punishments and constraints for the behaviors, like locking up food, installing cameras through the house to document bad behaviors, sending kids away to boot camps and residential treatment to “break them,” and get the out of the house, using unfair and often barbaric punishments to force kids out of behaviors.

In the documentary, Natalia experiences many of them, like one family making her sleep outside or spraying her with pepper spray to get her to “tell the truth.” None of this works, of course, and the family lives in chaos until everyone is deeply removed from each other, or the child is sent away to save the family.

Kids are not (Only) their diagnoses.

If you think this doesn’t happen often then you have never visited the world of underground RAD chat rooms and groups. They are notoriously difficult places to bear witness. Participants refer to their child as “My RAD” a jarring inter-weaving of child and diagnosis, as one.

The kids become their disorder. An object. A non-human. An enemy. Anti-social behaviors are seen as un-human. They are stripped of their humanity. Here are just some of the statements from parents impacted by having children with RAD.

• Guess what today is?? My RAD daughter’s 18th birthday! She hasn’t lived with us for a long time but has been causing chaos since Sept—well, that’s her most recent round of chaos lol. We’ve been looking forward to this day! Happy dance!!!”

• Our RAD steals food. It won’t change. Get used to the locks. It’s a way of RAD life parenting.

• I’ve only been part of this life with a RAD for 2 years. She’s only 4 and my life has been turned upside down and is consumed by her 24/7. I’m always stressed and never in a good mood anymore. I’m just beginning this journey and can’t imagine it getting worse although I know it’s going to. God help me through I’m not sure I have what it takes to do this.

• We terminated our parental rights. She is in CPS custody. We were charged with abandonment.”

• I have 3 years and 6 months left with this child/ 14 Year old teen /enemy /devil.”

• What is wrong w/ me? Why can't I feel anything that even approximates love for AD RAD15?“

• Due to raising RAD, my personality has changed significantly. I used to be fun and flirty. I used to be daring and mischievous. Not anymore. I’m very structured with everything in my life…I can’t seem to flirt with my husband, doing things spur of the moment is almost impossible for me, I have to plan.”

• Yes, I am just getting glimpses of the woman I was 17+ years ago. I've missed her.

• I really dislike who I've become.

The family breaks apart. RAD is, in fact, a family killer.

What do the Depaul’s know that the other Adoptive Families don’t?

The adoption industrial complex requires adoptions to have happy endings. Birth mothers are brave. Adoptive parents are saviors. Adopted kids are grateful for whatever they are given. No harm no foul. We all live happily ever after.

There is little REAL support for families with severely traumatized kids. When these parents ask for help, they are given very little in return. Help is just not out there for them. If you haven’t been a foster parent and done a lot of training, then as a potential adopter, you probably have no clue how to handle a kid with these pro-level issues. Don’t even think about talking to your adoption agency - Agencies have their money. It’s not their problem.

And dare I say, we live in a world that honors biology over everything else. Which is why it’s easy enough to get rid of a child who isn’t working out in your family. Like Natalia. Or Huxley Stauffer, rehomed son of former family youtubers, Myka and James. Or Rep. Justin Harris, Republican from Arkansas, who gave away his two adopted daughterz, after flying someone in to have the demons exorcised out of them. I remember his wife talking about how they had to protect their sons from these two little girls. These are my biological children, I have to protect them first.

We are driven to protect our biological lines. Adopted children, without that genetic connection, can be more easily discarded for not “fitting in” to the family. The ties are flimsier.

What made the DePaul’s different as a family is how they handled the Doomed Intersection. They had multiple visits with Natalia when they originally wanted to adopt her as a little girl. They took time to make sure she and their biological daughter connected - they did. They didn’t pick her up in a skeezy office, under suspicious conditions, from another family looking to re-home her.

Instead, the DePaul’s went to an expert on RAD that they trusted. They were told to be patient. Patience it turns out is the key phrase here, and solid advice.

The DePaul’s simply started to accept that Natalia was going to act in biazarre ways because of everything she had been through and they would just ride with it, support her as they could, while laying down boundaries for themselves and fortifying their own relationships. They talked to her. They listened to her. They convinced her to go to therapy. They were the first family to focus on her dwarfism and the surgeries she needed. They didn’t expect her to be typical. They encourgaed her to see her boyfriend in London.

They helped Natalia re-wire her brain around safety and family. They were patient. They knew it would take time. They gave her time.

Building empathy in children takes years. It means that everytime a kid does something that pushes you away, the parents have to lean in with love, give positive attention, and acceptance, even when the behavior makes you want to run away or punish.

Years ago, when Raffi was new to us, he went through a period where every interaction we had was combative and often aggressive. I was tired of being manipulated. His stealing and lying ramped up. Hell Loop. He was struggling. We were, too. His doctors tried to medicate him out of it. They know how to handle this, right? We went along. Nothing changed. Talk therapy didn’t work because his therapist was afraid of him and didn’t understand RAD.

I can’t speak for David, but I came to the Doomed Intersection.

I remember Raffi walked into the living room one day, and I wanted to leave the room immediately. I knew he was trying to break us all apart. I knew whatever he wanted to say was designed to make chaos. Mayhem is a word that makes sense here. I knew this couldn’t go on. So I made a decision. I decided that I was going to fall in love with my son all over again. I decided that every interaction with him was about discovering him and falling in love with him.

Three things made the difference:

• One: David and I read a book that changed our parenting completely. We now use something called CPS in our parenting which has worked beautifully. CPS is short for Collaborative Problem Solving which is featured in the book by J. Stuart Ablon, Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, School and Work. There is also a fantastic FB support group for CPS and its use in the family, called The B Team.

The foundational idea of the book is that kids do better when they can. So this idea that Raffi was “oppositional” and “defiant” implies that he could control his moods. He opposed us. He defied us. He did this stuff to us. But what if he couldn’t control it? We couldn’t blame him for something he couldn’t control, right? Once, we changed our parenting mindset about Raffi and his behaviors, he did so much better. It was us, not him.

• Two: We accepted him where he was and focused on not making him be a typical kid. We focused on finding out what he needed to be the best he could be and then making those accomodations for him. (He can’t handle school, for instance, but he is good one-on-one, so we pulled him out of middle school, got him a tutor. His behavior settled a lot when we released him from that pressure to handle all those relationships at school.)

• Three: When I focused on every interaction being about falling in love with him, it made me have to see all these great things about him. He was funny when he let himself. And I discovered how much he loved to watch these videos where people just silently fix old broken machines. It was niche and delightful!

We both loved The Walking Dead. When he was dysregulated in those days, or lying or stealing, struggling in some way, the “consequence” was watching zombies together. We stopped punishing bad behavior and leaned into it. This assured him that even when he did not-so-good things, we would be there. It proved to him that there was nothing he could do to make us leave. And we used that zombie time to chit-chat about his feelings and why he made whatever choices he made. That allowed us to calmly talk him through it.

And re-wire his brain!

For kids who have RAD, they don’t have to prove anything to us to be in our families. We, the adoptive parents, have to prove to them that we are worthy, by re-learning how we parent, understanding that weird, unsavory shit could happen, and changing the narrative that kids are there to make us feel good, to make us whole, to build out our families, even to provide us money, adulation and attention from the public. To remember that adoption sits very close to, and easily boils over, into child trafficking.

If you think you might foster or adopt, if you are currently parenting a traumatized child, if your family is in tatters and you can’t wait until your kid turns 18, if you are considering, fantasizing, about disrupting a kid in your home and sending them back to fostercare, watch the whole doc, but linger on Season 3, Episode 3. The answers are somewhere in there.

Thank you, as always, for reading. xo Kim