Presentation Notes:

" *Parental dreams of love and understanding solving all problems are quickly dashed.

*Frustration of the parents to receive reciprocal loving and bonding

*Venting of hatred towards the mother, who sometimes suffers emotional breakdown or post traumatic stress syndrome (anxiety attacks? panic disorder?)

*Apparent close bond to the father.

*Schools, churches, friends, and relatives become critical of parents

*The family becomes controlled by the antics of the child, withdrawing the family from normal social functions (to a smaller degree because Tim would not allow it, but certainly we didn't have the freedom to participate as a whole family or as a normal family)

*Siblings are targeted and threatened.

*Family pets are targeted and endangered (the rooster helped with this and the cat grew up and moved outside, so we don't see much of this anymore...long story. As far as we know, he never messed with the guinea pigs, gerbils, or gekko)

*Normal times of closeness such as Christmas become outbursts of reactive anger

*Automatic parenting does not work. There is no logical point of reference.

*Parents appear to be hostile and/or angry

**Needing to control their environment, the AD child will quickly target the Mother as the one who has to be broken. This is because the mother is the one who instills discipline on a daily level, and ensures that chores and work is performed to standard. It may also be because, "a mother" was the one who let them down in the past, and they target the mother in a sense of pay-back.

Father's are charmed into believing that this child is innocent of all accusations, and if the father allows any benefit of doubt to creep in, the child will work that against the rest of the family. Quite often the child will exhibit a "Dr. Jekyl, and Mr. Hyde," disassociation between the family and the father in order to control, and if necessary, split-up the family."

-from a RAD site.

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This is why Jumoke is there at our friends' house and not here at his home. This is what I need to focus on for the next few weeks. Well, not this in particular...my focus has to be getting us back to "normal". But this will help me to focus on what is real at our house.

The above is 100% correct in what our family has become.

Well, I don't know for sure about that last one. I guess I'd have to ask those who interact with us. Certainly there were times that we appeared to be hostile or angry to other people because of how we had to handle Jumoke. If it's appearing hostile and angry, then yes. If it's being hostile and angry, then I don't know.  I sure did feel hostile and angry at times.