Category Archives: child advocacy

RAD Memories

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I had a dream a few nights ago. I had no money, no means of buying things. I had been given the task of engaging my adopted daughter (who has disowned me) in a conversation.

Because it is a dream, I choose to discuss an array of roasted and cooked chicken that is behind a butcher’s counter.

I try to keep the conversation very neutral, very chicken-focused.

Because when your kid is RAD that is how you learn to roll…even in your subconscious.

I am going to start laying out my memories of life with my adopted children. Like an old woman pulling sweaters from the attic. I need to organize this thing….the life we lived together.

The first thing you should know is the last thing that happened–she cut me off because she suspected I had reported her brother….suspected him of child abuse.

Ironically, as with so many things before, she unleashed her anger on the alleged reporter instead of facing the crime.

The terrible crime.

Richard Dawkins and “mild pedophilia”

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Richard Dawkins says a lot of crazy things. My favorite was when he told Ben Stein that our world was seeded by aliens.

My least favorite is from an interview in which he says that not only were he and his fellow students systematically preyed upon by a teacher, it was “mild pedophilia” and “did no lasting harm.”

Desensitizing a grown man to the concept of child rape is harm enough. I wonder whether his fellow students would agree?

I do not know any other victims of child sexual abuse who would pass it off as harmless.

It is not harmless. It is rape.

But here is the thing–so often Dawkins is most instructive when he fails to see the obvious–what he is really saying is that the children of his generation were taught to be quiet and deal with a terrible injustice.

And for Dawkins, at least, that was not a good thing. For him to draw a distinction among various kinds of egregious injuries to children is to show a grave gap in his thinking, his logic, his philosophy, and his grasp of the law.

If he is wrong about this, what else is he missing? What else is he getting so very wrong?

Tiny Brides, Big Problems

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It is funny how very kid-indifferent organizations will truck out the welfare of minors for political leverage.

Do you care about the rights of children in Yemen? Afghanistan? Cleveland?

If you do then you will do something for them–to speak and advocate for them, even if it costs you. Even if it actually puts you back personally, socially, or politically.

Yesterday I heard someone quote a politician who said they were looking for a “principled not political” vote on Syria.

Yep, me too. I figure that I might find it lurking in the same corner of the multiverse as the Yeti, the Loch Ness monster, and the Tooth Fairy.

And you? How about you?

The laws guarding the rights and safety of children in this country are on the brink of being vestigial. What chance do the little ones married off to pedophiles actually have?

Here, or anywhere else…

Talking about the “Tooth Fairy”

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Imagine you were five.

And everyone else had a tooth fairy.

But when your teeth come out your mother and father congratulate you. Keep it. Celebrate. But no magical reward.

You might ask some questions.

Tooth fairies are good, right? The Tooth Fairy is good, right?

Not in our family.

In our family the tooth fairy is absent. My son asks why? I tell him the truth. It happened like this…

Sometimes grownups do bad things, say bad things. They get angry at the victim of a crime instead of the person who commits the crime.

In those cases, when a grownup gets angry at a little kid for something that was not her fault… well, he might not say it was because of the crime done to her, because he was shamed by it’s proximity to him.

He might say it was because she did not eat all of her veggies.

But the strength of his anger would let you know. Let you know he was not safe.

So we don’t see him anymore.
Because we don’t want him to hurt you–any of you–again.

This is the part I am sure of–he would do it again.

And every child deserves to have a safe tooth fairy.

Or the truth, and none at all.

Final Words for Ariel Castro

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It is easy to rejoice in the death of a monster. It is easy to see Ariel Castro’s suicide as the final word on the life of an evil man.

But is that enough?

I don’t think so.

I think I must grieve.

Grieve for his countless victims.
Grieve for the irreparable harm of his years of sin.
Grieve for broken justice, in this case blind for too long.

Grieve because he was once a baby whose life, like all small humans, was once so full of potential…

Grieve because all he did to hurt, disfigure, and destroy was his choice.

And he could have chosen light instead.

Mark Ruffalo and Miley Cyrus

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So much noise lately–first Mark Ruffalo lends his voice to the pro-abortionist cacophony, then Miley Cyrus lends that and a bunch of other body parts to our monkeys-on-display culture.

I have not and will not watch the Miley display. Poor girl. But I have read the Ruffalo letter and found it remarkably resonant to both situations.

Ruffalo describes his mother’s abortion as

“traumatizing…shameful, and sleazy, and demeaning.”

He is right. All abortion is traumatizing, shameful, sleazy, and demeaning.

There are plenty of places where prostitution is legal, but there is no place on the planet where it is anything but “traumatizing, shameful, sleazy, and demeaning.”

A point Ms. Cyrus has just proved rather infamously on a public stage in front of millions of people.

Abortion, prostitution, and this much publicized burlesque–so much in common, and none of it–none of it–raises the dignity of women.

You can make a great many immoral acts legal–SCOTUS has proved this over the course of the years, but no matter how legal a thing is, if it ever was “traumatizing, shameful, sleazy, and demeaning”…it still is.

Antoinette Tuff: Hero

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I read the story thinking everyone seemed a bit too chill about what could have been a nightmare in a Georgia elementary school.

And then I got to the part about Antoinette Tuff. She is a hoss–and my kind of hoss; the kind God sends.

She used her wisdom, her compassion and her heartbreak to avert a tragedy.

What a woman. What a hero.

Proof that every story matters.

Repercussions of Reporting Child Abusers

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Recently I came under attack for allegedly reporting a known child rapist for babysitting.

Seems like a slam-dunk to me. I admit it–I do not think any convicted rapist should be alone with a child ever.

So it was weird getting lambasted for what really should be a legal and moral mandate–if you know someone who is or has been violent or abusive and that person is alone with children…. Report them. If they were convicted of felon child abuse, assault, or rape? Yep. Call CPS

And then…

I was reminded that an entire church has an extremely low opinion of me because I….reported a pedophile in order to protect children.

I am a messy woman with a messy life and most people wisely keep their distance. But to be hated, misunderstood, and rejected for not tolerating child abuse?

Kinda seems like an honor.

Who would Jesus defend?

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Over the last few years my belief that pedophiles were at or near the lowest rung of human society has been challenged.

The truth is pedophiles get a lot of consideration, even deference from most of us.

We look away and pretend they are not predators. Shame on us.

No. The true bottom rung of human society is firmly occupied by children.

Because they are young, small, defenseless, and cannot vote children are not given the same consideration as adults–including the ones who have hurt them.

When I think of these stories of children being exploited, marginalized or abused, I think about Jesus.

Jesus, unlike many who profess his name, actually did protect children. He speaks unequivocally about the need to protect children and the grim consequences of not doing so.

Matthew 18 is the primer on this, but this is good as well–

Matthew 25:40,45 (NIV)
“The King will reply, `I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ [45] “He will reply, `I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Our acts of compassion matter.

Believe it or not this comforts me. I made a lot of costly decisions for some small people once. It hurts to know how costly and how unrequited these decisions were.

Jesus reminds me that the good, the bad, and the ugly in my life is his. I stand behind his love. He paid the price…for all God’s children.

RAD parenting–no hugs, no learning

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Recently I have wanted to find a book, a blog, a map for what happens to reactive attachment kids when they grow up. I haven’t found it yet and it’s absence in my life has been a reason to keep writing.

No two human beings respond to the same life trauma in the same way. One dude with a lonely, difficult childhood invents physics, another robs banks.

Same with RAD kids. Everyone gets a chance to write the story of their own lives. “My” RAD charges are not writing great stories.

In addition to a tendency to lie rather flagrantly and manipulate people without shame, the RAD adults I know are bullies, using the force of emotion and accusation to intimidate.

I worry about the children in their care.

Children whose babyhood and childhood begin to mirror the lives of their mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts–young people who have not come to terms with their own childhoods and the toxic wounds created by the absence of love.