01/07/2026
Over the last few weeks and even the last few hours my inbox has been flooded with messages from families living with reactive attachment disorder also know as RAD. Parents. Foster parents. Adoptive parents. Adult children. People writing to say that as they read my family’s story, they felt like they were reading their own.
“This is us.”
“This is our kid.”
“This is our house.”
“I thought we were alone.”
These are not casual messages. They are desperate. Exhausted. Heavy. And for many of them, they carry a strange mix of grief and relief. Grief for what they have lost. Relief that someone is finally saying this out loud.
Almost every story follows a familiar pattern. Children adopted through foster care or internationally. Early abuse and neglect. Trauma that started so young it reshaped how their brains developed. Families who stepped in with open hearts and good intentions and then slowly realized they were in far deeper water than anyone prepared them for.
Years of escalating behaviors. Schools overwhelmed. Therapists unprepared. Hospitals that stabilize just enough to discharge. Social services that minimize and deflect. Law enforcement becoming the default mental health response because there is literally nowhere else to turn.
What people keep telling me is not just that their kids are struggling.
It is that they have been dismissed everywhere they go.
They are told reactive attachment disorder is rare. Or controversial. Or outdated. Or not real. They are told they are exaggerating. That they are bad parents. That if they were just more loving, more consistent, more patient, this would not be happening. They are told to give it time. To pray harder. To stop being so negative.
And when they finally speak publicly about what is happening, they are gaslit again. By social workers. By doctors. By counselors. By law enforcement. By strangers online who have never lived this and are very confident in their opinions.
So when someone finally talks about reactive attachment disorder plainly, honestly, and without sanding down the edges, it lands like oxygen.
That is why people are reaching out.
Reactive attachment disorder is not a parenting failure. It is not a behavior problem. It is not a phase. It is the result of severe, chronic early trauma and neglect during critical developmental windows. It fundamentally alters how a child’s brain learns safety, trust, attachment, and regulation.
Children with reactive attachment disorder often want connection while simultaneously fearing it. They may reject caregivers while controlling them. They may manipulate, lie, steal, or sabotage relationships. They may cycle between charm and rage. Some lack empathy. Some show little remorse. Some become dangerous to themselves or others. Many families live in a constant state of crisis management and hypervigilance.
Reactive attachment disorder is listed in the DSM 5. That matters. The DSM is the primary diagnostic manual used by mental health professionals in the United States. This diagnosis is real. It is recognized. And yet it is routinely ignored or dismissed in practice.
My wife and I did not come to this conversation academically. We came to it because we are living it.
We adopted our 2 oldest children through the foster care system. Before coming into our home, they were abused and neglected in every way possible. That is not hyperbole. It is documented. The trauma was severe, prolonged, and began early in life.
For years, our lives have been shaped by this reality. Residential psychiatric placements. School disruptions. Emergency calls. Crisis responses. Repeated drives 275 miles one way to Portland because there were no appropriate services closer to home. Cycles of hope and collapse. Long stretches of white knuckling just to keep everyone safe.
We have watched our children suffer. We have watched systems fail them over and over again.
I routinely talk about Oregon because it is where we live. Oregon ranks near the bottom in the country for mental health outcomes for children and teens. We lack beds. We lack trained providers. We lack continuity of care. We lack accountability.
I have been openly critical of Governor Tina Kotek, the Oregon Legislature, and major hospital systems in this state including Providence and Asante. In my opinion, the way pediatric mental health crises are handled here often crosses into criminal negligence. Children are discharged without support. Parents are threatened with abandonment charges when they refuse to bring home a child who is actively unsafe. Families are blamed for system failures.
And when systems collapse entirely, law enforcement is sent in.
During one mental health crisis in our home, a responding police officer told us we needed to beat our children. He said this in front of them.
Let me be absolutely clear. We would never do that. We have never done that. It is never acceptable to strike a child. Especially a child whose brain was shaped by violence and neglect. That moment was not just horrifying. It was revealing. It showed how unprepared our first responders are to handle trauma driven mental illness and how dangerous that ignorance can be.
And this is not just Oregon.
The stories coming into my inbox are from all 50 states. Some systems function better than others. None are doing enough. Everywhere, families describe the same pattern. Reactive attachment disorder being minimized. Parents being blamed. Crisis being ignored until something catastrophic happens.
I want to say this plainly.
Reactive attachment disorder is not just emotional injury. It is neurological injury. Chronic early trauma alters brain development. It changes stress responses, impulse control, emotional regulation, and attachment formation. We would never tell a child with a traumatic brain injury to just try harder. We would never deny services because their injury makes us uncomfortable.
Yet that is exactly what we do here.
I understand the complexity. Poverty. Addiction. Lack of education. Inadequate medical care. Generational trauma. Foster care instability. All of it matters. But complexity cannot be an excuse for abandonment.
We need better training. We need trauma informed systems that are actually informed. We need reactive attachment disorder consistently recognized as a qualifying disability with accessible services. We need support before families reach the breaking point. We need to stop using the criminal justice system as a substitute for mental health care.
I am not a clinician. I am not a policymaker. I am not an academic.
I am an influencer. A guy who makes videos on the internet. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are about hiking. My mental health advocacy started as a way to survive my own reality and to find grounding when everything at home felt like it was on fire.
I did not choose this platform for this purpose. But I understand the responsibility that comes with it.
In the last month alone, more than 50,000 people have followed me because my post about RAD on Facebook & Substack. The first particular post back in early December has garnered over 7 million views. Many found me because I finally started speaking more directly about reactive attachment disorder and the systems that fail these families.
I do not know what the future of this advocacy looks like. My wife and I are talking about writing a book. I have been interviewed by news outlets. I have been invited onto podcasts. I will take as many opportunities as I can because silence is what allows this to continue.
Reactive attachment disorder is real. The suffering is real. The failures are real.
And we must do more.
For children.
For teens.
For families who have been screaming into the void for years.
This is not a fringe issue. It is a moral one.
