Trauma parenting has not just tested my marriage; it has exposed blind spots I did not know I had. Holes that I’ve fallen into more times than I can count. And in many ways, those holes were made wider by my professional identity as a teacher and principal trained in childhood development and trauma, my identity as a man who can never fully comprehend the connection and unity between a mother and child, and my role as a father within the trauma dynamics of our family system.
I Am Not the Targeted Parent—and That Matters
In families impacted by RAD, partners rarely experience the same child. My children do not treat me andmy wife the same. In the eyes of my child with Reactive Attachment Disorder, I am not the nurturing enemy.
My wife is.
My child has primal wounds that are born from the abuse and broken attachment caused by her biological mother. Those scars and the severed unity now transfer routinely to my wife, the adoptive mother. To support our child, and all of our children, my wife takes on the unique manifestations of developmental trauma and reactive attachment disorder–the lashing out, the control, lying, manipulating, slander, violence, and heartache.
Especially in the early days, I was blind to all the ways RAD was manifesting in my home. I was the idealized parent. I was triangulated against my wife, often subtly, very often overtly. Sometimes that triangulation looked like my child seeking me out after an incident with my wife, calm and regulated, offering a completely different version of events. Other times it looked like praise, affection, or compliance that appeared only in my presence. I was used by the disorder against the nurturing enemy to fulfill an ingrained need for control. I was perceived more as a pawn instead of the nurturing enemy and was spared the vast majority of the aggression, the control, and the relational warfare that my wife endured daily.
Because I was not targeted, it was a long time before I finally saw the truth. And because I did not fully see it, I did not fully protect my partnership. I did not protect my marriage. Honestly, much of the time I worked against it. The shift didn’t come from a single incident, but from listening long enough—without interrupting, correcting, or explaining—for my wife’s experience to become undeniable.
This is one of the hardest truths I have had to reckon with: my wife was living in a reality that I only partially could understand, and at times, I contributed to her isolation, pain, and fear by failing to recognize manipulation and triangulation for what they were.
Communication Without Validation Is Not Support
Looking back, much of my communication was filtered through my instinct to fix, analyze, or contextualize. I played devil’s advocate to theorize about our child’s behavior. That often sounded like, “I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way,” or “What if she’s just mistaken?” —comments that felt reasonable to me but landed as dismissal to my wife, who had just endured another round of manipulation or attack. I moved quickly to solutions before my wife had been heard. I tried to make sense of problems instead of sitting with their emotional cost. Offering advice or criticism before truly understanding or believing my wife and the lies and manipulation that my eyes didn’t see. I tried to see and analyze the actions, without trying to understand the emotions and the weight.
I did not sit in the empathy puddle with her. Instead, I stood at the edge, offering towels and solutions, while she was asking me to step in and feel her reality with her.
What my wife needs, what I believe all wives need, is not my professional insight or my sequential logic. She needs validation. She needs someone to say, “What you are experiencing is real, and it matters.” Trauma parenting demands presence before problem-solving, and I was slow to learn that and am still working on it daily.
Psychological safety in a partnership is not built through competence; it is built through attunement. The bricks are small but carry a great weight.
The Mental and Emotional Load Was Uneven—and I Didn’t See It
Another reality I had to confront was that we were carrying vastly different mental and emotional weights. My concerns, stressors, and grief were real—but they were not the same. I was not managing constant vigilance for myself and our other children. I was not bracing for emotional attacks and constant boundary violations. I was not experiencing the daily erosion that comes with being the nurturing enemy.
My wife was surviving a different reality altogether. She was living in a state of constant vigilance at home—anticipating escalation before it surfaced, scanning tone, posture, and language for signs of rupture. She absorbed behaviors designed to destabilize, control, and avoid attachment, all while continuing to show up for our other children and manage the practical demands of caring for our home. There were repeated boundary violations, accusations, and distortions of reality, often without anyone else to witness. She carried the weight of protecting our other children, maintaining structure, documenting behaviors, communicating with professionals, and holding the emotional fallout after each episode—only to wake up and do it again the next day. This was not a shared load. It was a sustained, isolating erosion that is difficult to see unless you are the nurturing enemy receiving the brunt of the trauma response.
As an educator, I was also processing grief differently. I had spent my career advocating for children with significant needs. I prided myself on doing good work for kids. It is part of my identity. Something I value greatly. That identity made it harder to accept the depth of dysfunction happening in our own home and harder still to acknowledge how profoundly it was affecting my partner. My wife.
Professional experience and our perceived identity can become a shield. It can delay reckoning. And it can deepen our blind spots if we are not willing to truly listen to our partner’s reality with curiosity and an open heart.
Grief Looked Different for Each of Us
Grief is a real part of parenting children with Developmental Trauma and Reactive Attachment Disorder. Grief from loss, from hope, from sacrifice, from our expectations, and the realities that set in over time, and our individual experience. From each wave of chaos that hit the shores of our home, my wife and I grieved different losses, in different ways, on different timelines. My grief was internal, often rationalized, and sometimes denied. My wife’s grief was embodied, relentless, and compounded by being the primary target of our child’s trauma-driven behaviors and reactive attachment disorder.
For a long time, we mistook these differences as disconnection rather than divergence. It still takes intentional effort and communication—often uncomfortable communication—to understand that we are not grieving against each other. We were grieving alongside one another, just from different positions.
Healing begins when we can name that reality without defensiveness.
We Are In This Together
Trauma has a way of making partners feel like adversaries. It has a way of isolating mothers and turning fathers away. In RAD dynamics, that division can be actively reinforced by the child’s behaviors. When fathers are triangulated effectively away from wives, the child’s behavior is reinforced, continued triangulation is enabled, and no micro-healing can occur. Fixing this and turning the tide requires intentional effort, focus, and communication daily between both parents. Reclaiming your connection with your partner requires you to repeatedly return to a shared truth: “We are in this together. We are on the same side.”
That return for us was not automatic. It required us to have difficult conversations, humility on my part, and a willingness to see and acknowledge what I had previously missed. As a husband, I had to acknowledge my failings and shortcomings. I am called to listen without defending–for which I still struggle greatly– to validate my partner without qualifying, and to recognize that my wife’s lived experience carries an amazing authority—even when it challenges my assumptions.
For Fathers
If you are a father reading this and you are not the primary target of your child’s trauma-driven behaviors, your role matters—perhaps much more than you realize.
Being the idealized parent can feel deceptively comfortable, especially in your assumptions. It can mask the severity of the disorder in your house and what your partner is enduring. It makes it easier to minimize, rationalize, or unintentionally dismiss your partner’s experience. Your job is not to be the referee, the fixer, or the voice of reason. If your child tells you one story and your partner tells you another, ask yourself: Who is carrying the cost if I choose to stay neutral?
Your job is to be there for your partner and together be there for your children. Your job is to foster attunement with her emotionally, physically, and spiritually…which best serves your entire family. You do this together.
I encourage you to sit in her reality without fixing it. Validate, and only after rationalize the situation at hand. Protect the relationship by refusing triangulation—even when it flatters you. Ask yourself not, “How do we solve this?” but, “How do I show up for my partner right now?”
The strength of your family does not rest on your insight, critique, or analysis. It rests on your willingness to stand attuned, shoulder to shoulder with the person carrying the heaviest load.
What I Know Now
Supporting a partnership in trauma parenting means confronting uncomfortable truths about ourselves. It means acknowledging blind spots in the micro moments where we react…when we should intentionally respond. It means understanding that being the non-targeted parent does not make you neutral—it gives you responsibility.
The partnership does not survive because one parent finally “gets it right.” It survives because both parents are willing to repair, to grieve together, and to reorient toward each other when trauma pulls them apart.
When I miss it—and I still do—I practice a simple repair: “I didn’t show up the way you needed. I’m listening now.” That repair matters more than perfection in trauma parenting.
I am still learning. We are still learning. But we are learning together.
And in trauma parenting, that may be one of the most powerful forms of support there is.
– Zack James MSEd, MEd-EdL
Trauma Dad, RAD Dad, Educator, and School Administrator
I write this as a father, an educator of sixteen years, and a parent to 2 adopted children—both with developmental trauma and one with Reactive Attachment Disorder. I also write this with humility, because much of what I now understand about partnership in trauma-parenting came only after continued and significant missteps.
