Raising a Healthy Adopted Child: Attachment & Bonding

On Monday we talked about trauma triggers and the job we have as parents to help our child navigate through them to emotional health. This was a huge part of parenting Mae in the first three years. For children who, sadly, had a harder institutionalization experience, dealing with trauma triggers may continue to need work throughout their lives. But you can do it! There is a large community that will support you.

Moving on to another big word in adoption, let us talk about Attachment and Bonding. Attachment in adoption can be tricky. If your child was lucky enough to have been in foster care, she probably did form an attachment to her caregiver. When transferred to you, there was most certainly a grieving period for that caregiver. Older children will often go to the door of the hotel, trying to return to the person who cared for them.

Many children spend their months in an orphanage, a Social Welfare Institute, or an institution. These three words mean the same thing and usually translate to a high baby to nanny ratio and limited engagement with the same caregiver. Initially, Mae and I bonded right away. She had never bonded with another caregiver and had no one to grieve for, other than the familiarity with her surroundings.

But a solid attachment is still hard, because these children, like Mae, have never learned how to bond. So they don't trust you. They don't trust that you will always care for them. They don't believe that you will come back to them when you leave. In short, they continue their institutionalized behavior of shutting down and not letting anyone in.

I was told by my adoption agency, CCAI, to seek eye contact as an initial step in bonding with my new daughter. This went well and she was able to make that step easily, while still in China. Other areas remained difficult for us.

• Showing Affection manifests itself in different ways for different children. Many children withhold affection and tense up when being hugged, etc. Far from denying me affection, Mae has always been overly affectionate. While this is a pleasant problem, it means she is not fully bonded to me. It means she still thinks she needs to work hard to make me love her. I return the myriad hugs and kisses with my own, hoping that one day she will relax into her role as my beloved daughter.

• Seeking Comfort is an area in which Mae has flip-flopped from what I would expect. Rather than shutting down, which we will discuss next, she demands my comfort when she is upset. It is wonderful that she wants and needs my consoling. But it is distressing that she cannot comfort herself. Still, I'll take this area on willingly. It is very rewarding for a parent to hold a sobbing child and watch her relax and calm down in your arms.

• Shutting Down is a more typical response to pain, whether it be emotional or physical. These children often sleep more than usual (Mae did this in China) as a way to avoid the confusing emotions they experience when they are awake. Older children will not make eye contact, especially when "in trouble," and have a very hard time working through things that are troubling them. These children seem to have a very high threshold for pain, since they do not cry when hurt and do not ask for help.

• Superglue Baby was a term I affectionately used for Mae, but since she is almost six, it is wearing a little thin. Some children will roam and only return on their own terms (as a reader commented in Don't Leave Me Alone) while others will cling to the parent. Mae used to spend all of her time with me, either next to me or on me. Touch was key for her. As she's aged, I no longer have to hold her, but she is always with me. I try to have patience. I encourage her to color in the dining room while I prepare dinner in the kitchen; that way we can still chat without me tripping over her. But it is a process, and a slow one.

• Sleeping Alone affects many children, adopted or not. But for the adopted child, many parents find that their child simply cannot sleep alone at first. Even now, Mae sleeps with her door open and the hall light on. She is not afraid of the dark, but she is terrified of being alone. Many parents practice Attachment Parenting, and for those that embrace it, it is a lifesaver for those families. We chose to stay the route we had begun with our boys, but we did so gradually and with much love.

• Expressing Feelings is the, dare I say, last step towards a full attachment. When your child can tell you that she feels sad because she is thinking of her Chinese mommy, for example, her world opens and suddenly all of those overwhelming pre-verbal emotions can be discussed in the light of her current knowledge. Mae is not yet able to express her feelings verbally, but responds well when I state them for her. "Are you feeling sad because you don't want to have different hair than your friend?" will elicit a wonderfully healthy discussion about how being different can feel very hard some days. With this last step, a child is ready to deal with the emotional trauma she has been storing.

Attachment in adoption is one of the key issues for many families, while others have no problem with it. This is another testament to the many different types of personalities our beautiful children have. Some children are naturally sensitive. Some are naturally optimistic. These differences are apparent in both adopted and biological children, but when we can help our sensitive ones to truly trust us, these differences can be slightly minimized.

Was attachment easy in your adoption? What help can you give to those that are struggling?

Raising a Healthy Adopted Child: Emotional Triggers

Welcome to the first post in my summer series about the Health and Education of the adopted child. Since June is Emotional Health Month, let's dive right in and start with the emotional triggers that many adopted children share.

A trauma trigger is "an event causing traumatic memories or feelings to resurface." (Wikipedia)

When talking about events that happened before a child has the capacity to remember them, it is referred to as "emotional memory." In many adopted children, the emotional memory of being cold, alone, hungry or sad can become easily triggered, causing the child to "overreact." This overreaction is actually a very useful coping mechanism; it is the flight or fight response to a threat of survival.

Our therapist explained to me how the amygdala, the area of the brain that processes emotions, can, through repeated trauma, become oversensitive. An oversensitive amygdala translates to an overreaction to a mild trigger. For example, Mae would scream when she was cold. Even though I would diligently put her little mittens on her hands, she would continue to scream. If I didn't warm her immediately, it could escalate to a full "episode." Why?

Because (our therapist and I surmise) she had been cold in the orphanage but no one had met her need for warmth. When a need is not met that is perceived as a threat to survival, the amygdala goes on alert, firing on all pistons and urging, "Flee! Flee!"

There is a beautiful story that drives this point home like no other:

****

One cold early Spring morning a beautiful, healthy baby girl, 3 days old, wakes up to find herself alone on a deserted street, hungry and cold. Her mother does not answer her cries, and in fact no one responds for hours. The baby, increasingly agitated and distressed, screams with primal urgency. Eventually a stranger happens by, picks up the crying baby and delivers her to the police station. Through several more intermediaries, the baby is eventually delivered to the local social welfare institute. ...

Eventually the baby stops crying altogether because she has learned that crying rarely draws anyone to her. She is often lonely and scared, especially at night. The sounds of other babies crying and in distress cause her great anxiety, which she learns to tolerate by shutting down and withdrawing deeper inside herself in an attempt to protect herself from the constant stressors in her environment.

****

Read the full article here.

This was an article that made my understanding of Mae's emotional memory much clearer. Our therapist agreed that it was a solid explanation of the whole picture of emotional triggers. Our babies may have been pre-verbal, but they were not pre-emotional. Understanding this piece of their history can help us de-escalate "episodes" before they go to far.

Another piece of advice from our therapist was to articulate Mae's feelings for her. As a little child (and even today), we'd say, in an angry-ish way, "Wow! You're angry! That made you so mad!" Oftentimes, rather than ramping her up into a full-blown tantrum, this simple comment would seemingly relax her. She'd nod emphatically and need a hug. And move on. Amazing.

I used to try to avoid triggers altogether, but as she aged, I worried I was turning her into a spoiled child. A daily example is when she talks back to me. "Please brush your hair, Mae." "I WILL! STOP TALKING TO ME!" might have earlier been ignored by me in an attempt to prevent her from escalating.

In the last year or so, however, we've instituted House Rules into our home. A violation of the House Rules earns the offender a time-out. As I mentioned earlier, time-outs on the steps work much better for Mae than being sent to her room. With these practices in place, she is learning, albeit slowly, to speak to me politely. And I am teaching her to be respectful, while still showing her that I love her (remember, all time-outs end with a hug!)

Our adopted children have more on their plates than our biological children. They have pre-verbal, stored, emotional memories of grief, loss, and for some, intense anger. Understanding why and working to help them manage these feelings is one of the most important ways we can help our children develop into emotionally healthy adults. Understanding the emotional triggers behind their behavior can be the key to their happiness.

Thursday's post will focus on Attachment and Bonding, an area with which many families struggle.

Does your child have any triggers? What have you found helps with those triggers? Do you have any advice for families struggling in this area? In what areas do you struggle?

photo credit