Adrian

Great smile, right?!!  Adrian was 3 years 10 months when he moved into our home.  Adrian came into our home like a tornado with bipolar.  It is difficult to know where to start with him - so I'll just shoot from the hip.  (How's that for an over-used American saying)?  After struggling with Adrian's temper and anger issues for a few months we found a great in-home psychologist who helped us sort out what was going on in his head.  Adrian was diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the fall of 2009.   Go here for information on  RAD, check out the list of symptoms.  In the past few months he was also diagnosed with ADHD.  Adrian went through hell in his birth home, we all struggle daily to overcome the obstacles that were built for him through his experiences in that home.

Adrian attended 2 years of preschool and is now in Kindergarten!  He is extremely intelligent, which sometimes makes parenting him that much harder.  Adrian has some pretty thick walls built up to protect himself from ever being hurt again.  Even though it has been over 2 years, he still keeps those walls up the majority of the time.  Rarely he will drop his guard and Trent and I are able to see the sweet, loving boy that is buried deep inside.  We have a little analogy we use with Adrian (an analogy another parent of children with RAD shared with me).  We call his facade that he puts up daily his "tiger" and that sweet boy inside the "kitten".  We have to remember to "Parent the kitten, not the tiger".  But MAN is that hard when the tiger is in a full on tiger rage!!!  We have to remind ourselves of this multiple times a day.

He is bursting with life and energy.  We are always on our toes with Adrian.  He is full of surprises, and not always the balloon and confetti kind!  He has changed drastically in the last 2 years, we do see progress and that is encouraging.  Parenting a child with RAD is exhausting, enlightening, different than any parent could ever imagine and hard!!  Every second of every day it is hard.  I am blessed to be doing it with such an amazing husband who reminds me when I am failing - oops, I mean not making the best choices and helps pick me up.  He allows me to do the same with him.  It is a team effort, I couldn't do it alone!!  We also have pictures like these to look at and see that sweet boy within, that scared little kitten, that we need to nurture to come out of hiding.  The saddest part is; that kitten has to make the choice to come out - we cannot force him to.