Parenting Other People's Children: Understanding And Repairing Reactive Attachment Disorder

While he gives some useful advice on understanding and raising children with RAD he clearly lacks some broader knowledge of developmental psychology and neurobiology. For example his assertion that kids who are seeking to control their environment without having had abuse and neglect in their early childhood should be considered spoiled brats shows a broad lack of knowledge on neurobiological disorders. He might want to google 'Aspergers' and he'd be surprised.
This book would have been much better had he written about what he knew - raising kids with RAD. And I am sorry -his assertion that a degree as a dentist does qualify 'to clinically diagnose and treat' does in my opinion not extend beyond dental medicine. It is an overambitious book and with his personal knowledge he could have written something better and more to the point.

True, there is too little useful, available literature on RAD and this book supplies some understanding. Nevertheless, I found it too repetitious, too lacking in examples and how-to's. If I weren't an experienced dad who has had three foster kids, one adopted kid, one birth kid, plus a nephew for six years, I would have not been able to overcome the vagueness. Push-pull is the big technique but there are too few examples. I got only one thing from this book: to make it clear to my RAD son that I am in control and it's for his own good and he can/should trust me. Oh, I'd said that to him before reading this book, but the strong emphasis can be helpful. That's not enough help for my time and money.
Also, the author is an amateur at psychology. Bright, sincere, experienced, well-meaning, and well-read. But still an amateur. His hubris in blasting the whole field of psychology is unfair and uninformed. He never met my kid's counselor.

The information in this book is excellent. Anyone thinking of adoption or foster parenting need to read this information

I can't begin to name all of the books I've read on adopting older children, raising foster children and Reactive Attachment Disorder. I should state that I am a mental health professional who works with kids in addition to being a foster parent of a child. I tried to prepare myself before getting into this reading a variety of books. Some of the books I read were interesting, but didn't really give an accurate framework to why my child behaves as he does. Some of the books were all theoretical and hearing some "success stories" from a therapist were really useless.

If you are thinking about adopting an older child, interested in Reactive Attachment Disorder, becoming a foster parent then this book should be required reading. It's concrete, its not written for therapists although they would benefit from reading it and it puts everything together. What a huge relief it was to receive this book!

I have been a foster parent for 5 years to some children who did not have healthy beginnings. Having raised two biological children, and knowing what worked for them, I was frustrated when the usual parenting approach didn't work for our foster kids. I tried a variety of approaches, reading books about child development, but it wasn't until I read this book that the problems I was struggling with, with our foster kids, made sense. Once I understood the 'why', it was easier for me to put into action different approaches to raising our foster kids. It is not an easy road, but we've seen progress and that gives us continued hope.