So....this past week I had the AMAZING opportunity to volunteer at Camp Attach in Leesburg, Florida. Camp Attach is a week long training for parents who have children with various attachment disorders....Reactive Attachment Disorder, Opositional Defiant Disorder, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, etc. We teach the parents techiques to use in their home, do lots of bonding and trust building activities, and give the children opportunities to start the healing process. It was the most absolutely draining thing I've ever done, but also the most 
rewarding. We worked 16 hour days, helping families and hearts heal. The work that they do at those camps is nothing short of miraculous. I could talk about it for days.
rewarding. We worked 16 hour days, helping families and hearts heal. The work that they do at those camps is nothing short of miraculous. I could talk about it for days. Nancy Thomas is the director of the camp, and I was so blessed to be able to learn from her this week. Nancy is an inte
rnationally known Therapeutic parent, and is recognized for her ability to heal children who have killed. She is a top contributor to the Attachment community. We were able to attend a two day seminar entitled "When Love Is Not Enough," before the week at camp started. Also heading up the camp was Mr. James Dusmenil, the leading attachment therapist in the nation. Not only was I in awe of Mr. James and his abilities with disturbed children, we became very close over the week in the Florida, and I can't wait to pay him a visit. This post is sounding very official haha. Anyways, the week was AMAZING and I have been commissioned to attend another camp in, oh, three weeks! It will be at Nancy's ranch in Colorado, I hope I will be able to arrange my schedule so that I can go. If you have any questions about Nancy's camps and/or Reactive Attachment Disorder, I would be MORE than happy to answer them for you! We need to spread the awareness...... Love it.
rnationally known Therapeutic parent, and is recognized for her ability to heal children who have killed. She is a top contributor to the Attachment community. We were able to attend a two day seminar entitled "When Love Is Not Enough," before the week at camp started. Also heading up the camp was Mr. James Dusmenil, the leading attachment therapist in the nation. Not only was I in awe of Mr. James and his abilities with disturbed children, we became very close over the week in the Florida, and I can't wait to pay him a visit. This post is sounding very official haha. Anyways, the week was AMAZING and I have been commissioned to attend another camp in, oh, three weeks! It will be at Nancy's ranch in Colorado, I hope I will be able to arrange my schedule so that I can go. If you have any questions about Nancy's camps and/or Reactive Attachment Disorder, I would be MORE than happy to answer them for you! We need to spread the awareness...... Love it. 
A little explanation on this picture.... our main responsability as staff was "Starbucks"....whenever a child did something inapropriate or disrespectful, the parent would raise their hand and yell STARBUCKS....then we would run over, take the child to the starbucks room, give mom a hug, and she would give us a card with what the child did. In the starbucks room the child has to "strong sit", like in this picture, do jumping jacks, or jump on the tramp until they've cooled off, can tell us what they did, and come up with an idea for restitution to the parent (back massage, make the bed....). Then the starbucks crew takes the child back to mom where he tells them what he did and asks if he can give restitution. We had lots of meltdowns in the starbucks room....kids with RAD don't like it when they don't get their way. We had kids that weren't calm enough to leave for 15 hours. One night we had a newspaper fasion show, and right in the middle, little Skyla got starbucksed.....peacock costume and all.
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