There are many disorders associated with infancy, childhood or adolescence. One such disorder is known as Reactive Attachment Disorder. This article describes the signs and symptoms of this disorder.
Instructions
Identify Signs and Symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder in Early Childhood.
1. Look for markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness in most contexts, beginning before the age of 5 years. This must be evidenced by one of the following:1. Persistent failure to initiate or respond in a developmentally appropriate fashion to most social interactions, as manifest by excessively inhibited, hyper vigilant, or highly ambivalent and contradictory responses. Examples of this would be the child responding to caregivers with a mixture of approach, avoidance, and resistance to comforting, or may exhibit frozen watchfulness.2. Diffuse attachments as manifest by indiscriminate sociability with marked inability to exhibit appropriate selective attachments. For example: excessive familiarity with relative strangers or lack of selectivity in choice of attachment figures.
2. Evaluate to make sure that the symptoms in step 1 are not accounted for solely by developmental delay such as Mental Retardation. If there is any possibility that another condition could account for the symptoms listed in step 1, Reactive Attachment Disorder cannot be considered.
3. Look for a lack of adequate care as given by primary caregivers as evidenced by at least one of the following:1. Persistent disregard of the child's basic emotional needs for comfort, stimulation and affection.2. Persistent disregard of the child's basic physical needs.3. Repeated changes of primary caregiver that prevent formation of stable attachments. An example of this could be frequent changes in foster care.
4. Look for a connection between the symptoms in step 1 and the behavior in step 3. The disturbances in step 1 must begin following the behavior described in step 3. There is a presumption that the behavior in step 3 on the part of the caregiver directly results in the symptoms present in the child described in step 1.
Tags: Attachment Disorder, Reactive Attachment, Reactive Attachment Disorder, Attachment Disorder Early, attachments example, behavior step