As you probably know, in addition to my Jewish creds, I am a board certified pediatric neuropsychologist. To become board certified, I had to take a wicked hard written exam (mainly on neuroanatomy, neuropsychological diagnosis and psychopharmacology), and then had to present a clinical case that I had submitted previously to the board to evaluate. I thought my formulation of the case was pretty thorough and frankly spot-on (or else I wouldn’t have chosen it as the case!), but surprisingly I got a bit of push-back from the committee, because they felt I hadn’t considered seriously enough the possibility that the impairments I had documented were due to reactive attachment disorder. Reaction attachment disorder refers to a failure of a child to adequately bond as an infant with a caregiver, which may result in a number of social impairments and learning challenges. In this case, the child I had evaluated was adopted, and not under the best of circumstances. Although I knew about RAD, you can be sure I read up on it some more after my board certification was complete.
I relate this background story to set up the following article that was sent to us very recently by a parent. Although I don’t agree completely with everything in the article, I think it does an excellent job of explaining the “two brains” model, and how and why problems with emotional regulation so often develop in children who have experienced trauma or developmental delay. This sort of analysis underscores a lot of our philosophy at MWJDS in helping our students to thrive academically and psychosocially. I thought you would enjoy reading it, and I would be happy to discuss further if you’d like.
Rav-Hazzan Scott M. Sokol, PhD
https://gobbelcounseling.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/a-trauma-informed-approach-to-behaviors-in-the-classroom.pdf