When a Child Struggles to Connect

When a Child Struggles to Connect
Understanding Reactive Attachment Disorder, Childhood Trauma, and the Path Toward Trust, Connection, and Healing

Your child doesn't cry when they're hurt. They stiffen at a hug instead of settling into it. The comfort you offer, again and again, never seems to land.

If you've been told to just love them more, try harder, be more patient, and it still hasn't worked, this book was written for you.

When a Child Struggles to Connect is a clear, compassionate, evidence-based guide to Reactive Attachment Disorder, one of the most misunderstood conditions in child mental health. Drawing on established clinical research, including the DSM-5-TR and decades of attachment and trauma studies, Dr. Rachel Sinclair helps parents, foster and adoptive caregivers, teachers, and social workers understand what's actually happening beneath the behavior, and why the child in front of them isn't cold, manipulative, or unreachable. They're protecting themselves, in the only way their early experience taught them how.

Inside, you'll find:

• A clear explanation of what RAD actually is, and isn't, cutting through the myths and misinformation that circulate online
• How to tell the difference between RAD and autism, ADHD, anxiety, and ordinary adjustment difficulty
• What a real clinical assessment involves, and why self-diagnosis can do more harm than good
• Honest, evidence-based guidance on treatment, including a clear warning about coercive approaches that have caused real harm
• Practical strategies for home, school, and family life
• A full chapter devoted to you, the caregiver, and the toll this work takes
• A realistic, carefully balanced look at what recovery and progress can actually look like

This is not a book of easy answers or guaranteed outcomes. It won't tell you your child is broken, and it won't promise a quick fix. What it offers instead is something more durable: a grounded understanding of your child's story, and the patient, informed tools to keep showing up for them, one ordinary day at a time.

Because a child who struggles to connect is still, underneath the struggle, a child who needs connection.