Dear All,
Melissa has experieince with her young daughter and her "happy places". Melissa recently asked me what it was like in my happy place, how I felt and if I felt any connection to others. It's a complicated answer, and I will do my best to highlight 1 major example. This is when I flew my first Mooney Bravo at 14 years old. This is a great example of joy in the simplest terms. Read more below!
RAD is rife with reports (deservedly so) of RAD children and adults that lack emotion and connection to others. It's just a simple fact of life for the RAD sufferer. What makes a difference, however is the joy that we take in what we are interested in. For us, it's a double headed sword. We know that happiness is happening, we are enjoying it, but we fail to connect to it completely because we know, soon it will be gone. Our "Happy Places" are wonderful while they last, but with our learned experience of loss and abandonment, our minds are waiting for the hammer to drop and for everything to dissapear.
When I was 14 years old my father said, "Mike were headed to the airport..." I jumped with joy because I loved looking at all the shiny aircraft on the tarmac, just begging to be flown. This time, however it was different. What was odd was that instead of looking at the airplanes, we actually walked back to where the pilots got ready for a flight. My heart raced. I knew something was up.
My dad shook hands with someone and sheepishly I stuck my hand out and this man said "Wanna fly today?". I was shocked beyond comprehension? Me? Fly a plane? As it turned out, my dad was taking pictures from the air of a building he wanted to sell. As we settled onto the runway I was checking the altimeter, suction guages and monitoring the EGT's, just like a real pilot would do. This at the age of 14. I was born to fly.
The pilot throttled the plane up and we went roaring down the runway. As soon as the pilot rotated (pulled back on the yoke, raising the nose) he looked over at me, smiling and chortled in his mic "Your plane". I was shocked. With shaking hands, I gently took the yoke over and started flying the aircraft. As the green world below us screamed past I was lost with the chatter of other pilots, the hum of the engine and the gentle bumps of turbulence.
At that moment, I became the son my father always wanted. No more anger, no more abuse, no more killings, no more negativity. At that moment I was the proudest pilot in the world. My dad, I know for a fact was the proudest father in the air that day. His son, who never flew a plane before, flew it like he had been flying for years.
All the anger I felt, all the despair was gone and it was replaced with the grace and the beauty of sky that was ahead of me. All the the people that spit on me in school, all the death that I seen, all the rage, the hospitalizations was replaced with a eutopia that most people feel on a daily basis in one form or another. I was free, just like everyone else. For 2 hours.
"Happy Places" for us are more about US than YOU. I am not directing this to Melissa specifically but the community. When I was flying it was about my joy and being able to enjoy life on it's terms. While many parents may shiver at that response the fact remains that so many RAD children are too angry to enjoy life, those little "happy places" we do tend to run into give us a freedom like no other. It's a time to simply enjoy a life that we feel was taken from us.
My father understood this and let me fly the plane without asking too many questions.
My recommendation is this:
When your child is in his/her happy place sit back and watch the show. Only when they invite you into their "Happy place" should you consider joining them. I say this for two reasons:
1) This gives the RAD sufferer time to enjoy life for themselves. It gives them time to diffuse their anger, their fustration and their pain. Intervening on that may indicate to the child "This is your time, it's OUR time and I will be invading your emotional space." If and when they invite you to be a part of their happy place, you are making great headway with your RAD family member.
2) This gives you time to witness your child in his/her best emotional state. It gives you time to cool down as well from the excercise of dealing with a RAD child.
Sincerely,
Michael
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