Provocation of rejection or yearning for closeness? The significance of the relationship between a foster parent and a child in bridging the deficiencies resulting from the reactive attachment disorder diagnosis
Marta Nowak1, Agnieszka Gawęda1, Małgorzata Janas-Kozik1,2

The authors discuss the issue of significance of a relationship between a foster family and a child manifesting the reactive attachment disorder (RAD) symptoms. The domain of these symptoms is a disposition – developed due to numerous traumas, including a rejection in the critical period of a child’s life (3-month-old to 3-year-old) – to reproduce and provoke early rejection in future relationships, either through exaggerated attempts to attract attention and gain support from any of the available adults, or through an extreme resentment to initiate or accept consolation and affection, especially in the melancholy state. The presented case of Patryk reveals difficulties which may appear in the process of shaping the parent – child relationship in a newlyestablished family unit – a foster family. The case also shows the importance of institutional support in this process which covers both the child’s individual therapy and family therapy. The aim of the former is to give the child a possibility to work out the initial rejection and disadaptation mechanisms of functioning, the most frequent of which is the rejection of emotions and emerging needs. On the other hand, the aim of the latter is to facilitate the implementation of those changes into the family system, to help in developing a correlative relation between the child and the new family, as well as in consecutive working out of emerging problems. The case description also discusses the difficulties experienced by the children diagnosed with RAD and points out the dilemmas frequently encountered by their foster parents. The paper also highlights the dependencies between a child’s normal development, the effectiveness of therapeutic influence and the personality construct of the foster parents, which are the critical elements for the quality of the relationship which starts to emerge between the “new” parents and a child.