Alexa Russell Matthews is a Social Worker with a Master’s Degree in Social Work (Play Therapy) from the University of Pretoria. She’s also a future adoptive mom and one of her most passionate work spaces has been engaging with children who are still in children’s homes or with children and families post adoption. I met Alexa at the Arise Adoption Conference at the end of last month and just loved how she explained the importance of attachment in adoption, so I asked her to put it down on paper for us. Over to you, Alexa!
‘Prepared, not scared.’ I love this phrase which was repeated last weekend by Debbie Burt throughout the discussion on adoption and older children at the Arise Cape Town conference. During this session, a question arose, a commonly asked question about RAD – Reactive Attachment Disorder and its prevalence. People who google ‘pros and cons of adoption’ or google ‘adopting an older child’ or read print stories of attachment are bound to encounter this term. It’s often used to dissuade people from adopting, or simply used to tell dramatic stories of ‘children gone bad’. Continue Reading