Children with severe Reactive Attachment Disorder have had their hearts so broken; in order to heal they need an emotional heart transplant. The mother is the donor. You cannot give more than your heart to give a child life. This is a physically and emotionally exhausting undertaking. A mom must be prepared to focus and devote six months to a year toward the child’s acceptance of the heart. This means the mom’s main priority must be the child. Younger children, career, volunteer work, etc should not be an obstacle. The most successful environment for healing is to have the child with RAD be the youngest in the household. Birth siblings placed together when both have RAD have a very low success rate when both remain in the same home.

One possible way of increasing the odds, if birth siblings with RAD have been placed in the same home, would be to hire a full time nanny with a minimum three year contract to bond with one of the children while the mom bonds with the other. If the mom must be employed the child still has a possibility of success if the mother can hire a day care provider with a minimum three year contract that will agree to do the bonding activities and provide the structure and love the child like her own. The best scenario is a mom able to focus on healing the heart of the child while being supported emotionally and financially by a loving husband. Unfortunately that is not an option sometimes. We have seen success when two single parents team up as well as the grandparent and the mom teaming up. It takes a team!

The medication that is required to keep the child from rejecting the transplant comes in the form of: loving eye contact, gentle touch, smiling eyes, movement and sugar. During the healing time a child must be kept in close and kept away from contaminants, such as television, movies, video/computer games, too much materialism and the opportunity to be cruel to animals and other children. Just as a child fights taking bad tasting medicine a child with RAD will fight this medication.

As the mother battles for her child’s life the child will continually fight against the mother. A mom who is enduring this kind of pain must have tremendous support to succeed. The support must come in the form of hugs from other caring adults, words of encouragement and hope, and unwavering belief in her ability to love the unlovable and to continue to hug the unhuggable. When we are on the mom’s side we are on the child’s side. When we take the child’s side against the mom they both lose. So often, from the outside looking in, it’s easy to judge a mom as too tough or not tough enough. One of the cruelest statements anyone can make to a mother who’s donating her heart for a child to have a chance in life is "Just love him more." There are few words that can cut more deeply into the heart of a mom worried about her child. When you donate your heart to a hurting child and provide the healing time and "medication" necessary, the amazing miracle called love begins.