Adoptive parents Kathy and Steve Rhoten have been indicted on two counts each of criminal restraint for tying their teenage daughter to the adoptive father's belt and then to the sofa to prevent her from self-injuring. The daughter had been hiding knives, pins, and other sharp objects for cutting herself. The child has been diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) but was not diagnosed until after she began cutting herself.

This story is tragic on so many levels. Where do I even begin?

Let's start with the self-injuring. As I stated in my post, Adopted Child and Self-Injury: Advice to Adoptive Parents, the worst thing you can do as a parent is forbid a child from self-injuring. Self-injury is a coping mechanism, and I doubt it is coincidental that she begin self-injuring at age 13, right around when puberty hits.

Traumatized children, particularly those who have been sexually abused, often react very strongly at the onset of puberty. While the article does not specifically mention sexual abuse, it does state that there were signs of neglect and trauma when the Rhotens adopted their daughter from an orphanage. While the timing could be coincidental, I know many sexual abuse survivors who began self-injuring around the time that puberty hit. It is heartbreaking that this couple did not talk with a qualified therapist with experience in counseling children who self-injure. Cutting is a way of trying to express pain that the child is unable to express in any other way.

Another tragedy is the lack of education that the Rhotens appear to have received. Because RAD happens in children at a young age, the Rhotens likely had been dealing with classic symptoms of RAD in this child for years. However, the child was not diagnosed with RAD until she was between 13 and 14 years old.

The real crime is the lack of education that adoptive parents receive before adopting a child with RAD:

Ronald Federici, a neuropsychologist specializing in foreign adopted children, said the Rhotens' story was becoming more and more common these days: Kids suffering from early trauma and neglect behave in ways that push their parents to the brink.

"The parents have no help, no support, no training," he said. "They go in there with typical, normal parenting skills and the kids reject that. The parents start getting out of control and look for ways to restrain and contain the kids," said Federici, who has testified nationwide in abuse and murder trials of parents who adopted from orphanages. - Case reveals course of troubled child

I have several good friends who have parented children with RAD. In their cases, nobody prepared them for what they were getting into. Their families have revolved around one out-of-control kid, and people in their lives have been unsupportive because those people do not appreciate what it is like to live in a home with a child with RAD.

This story is heartbreaking on so many levels. On the one hand, the adoptive parents' actions are being scrutinized because restraining a child is considered abusive. On the other hand, they were put into a position for which they were ill-equipped to handle, so how else could we expect them to react? I wish every adoptive parent could receive education about parenting a child with RAD before being placed into this situation.

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt