Anger is a Symptom

The list of symptoms for Reactive Attachment Disorder ends with "parents present angry or hostile."  When I read this before our adopted kids came home, I felt a patronizing kind of pity for those parents.  Now I am one of them.

Our adopted kids don't make us angry like normal kids.  Our bio kids frustrate us and occasionally that frustration boils up to anger.  By contrast, these attachment disordered kids make us angry every day.  It's on a whole different scale.  Our kids do things all day long that are INTENDED to make us angry.  They're not making mistakes, they are intentionally breaking rules to piss us off and keep us at a distance.  Part of me wonders if they aren't even trying to get us to beat them.  By the end of the day, when they've been working at it all day long, we are left with a seething anger that doesn't shake off easily.  Oh, and I did I mention, that all the while we've been working at nurturing, soothing, and connecting, because that's the only way to get the behavior to change. 

Living with anger that never fully extinguishes has been the hardest part of raising adopted kids. 

This life requires that I have enough self-awareness to make sure my anger doesn't boil up to rage.  That means self-care and respite.  My husband and I discovered that respite isn't optional for us.  I'd read that parents need a weekend a month away from the kids.   It took seven months of crazy before we admitted we truly needed that kind of respite, but now we are committed to it.  Those glorious two days let the fire of anger burn all the way out to cold ash.  We come home with much longer fuses and much more capable of doing attachment work.

After almost a year, I have even discovered that our anger can actually be helpful.  Our kids are very sneaky.  Often they dance on boundaries but don't actually cross them.  They're not obviously defiant or oppositional, but we still get worn out.  Are they really being defiant or are they just full of energy?   The answer is our anger.  Low level defiance makes us angry, even when we don't notice it in the moment.  Just reflecting on our own feelings helps us identify what's going on with the kids and respond better tomorrow.

Our lives are backwards.  Attachment disorder began with our little children receiving coldness when they needed love.  And now we find that anger helps us parent them better.  Yep, it's crazy.