Bonding and Attachment Issues Revisited

Back in August 2006, I created a post pertaining to Bonding and Attachment issues when bringing home Chelsee. I have continued to read up on attachment disorder and ways to help a newly adopted child cope and learn how to bond with her new family. There are strong signs and signals to look for and very definite ways to help a child begin to form its first lasting attachment. All we teach Chelsee in the beginning will help her become a healthy, happy, well adjusted person - which is our goal for all of our children, right?

Here are some strong viewpoints on bonding and attachment that ring true for me:

Emotional Age
Many attachment professionals agree that the emotional age of a child at placement is set back to zero months. It is important to always consider the emotional age of your child and not the chronological age. Emotionally, your child needs regression in order to go through the attachment process with his forever mommy and daddy. Baby that baby!

Stay Home
Stick close to home and avoid the revolving door of visitors until the child has had time to adjust and learn who his parents are. Remember, you are strangers to this child. He has not been waiting a long time for you. When the time comes to introduce the child to family and friends, it is best to limit holding to Mother and Father.

Meet Child's Needs Quickly and Consistently
Allow child to see you and be held by you as much as she needs to feel safe and comfortable. Respond to all cries immediately while being both calm and loving--no matter what time it is or what you are in the middle of doing.

Co-Sleeping
A valuable attachment tool, co-sleeping has helped families continue the bonding process throughout the night.

Routines
As your child adjusts to the many changes, find a schedule in which you can begin to incorporate routines. Consistent routines help a child predict what will happen next and help him feel safer.

Interact
Use every opportunity to make eye contact and enjoy your child. Interact and play during feeding time, mealtime, floor time, bath time, etc. Make interacting a large part of your day. Some children have trouble with eye contact or face-to-face interaction. In these cases, sit with her in front of a large mirror so she can still see the delight and joy in your eyes while playing in a less threatening way.

Games
Playing games that focus the child's attention on Mom and Dad like peek-a-boo and "Where's Mommy?" help establish over and over who the important caretakers in her life are now.

Family and Friends
Because of separation from birth mother and at least one foster mother or auntie, often the child may be waiting for the next caregiver to come along. Once the child has had time to adjust to all of the different changes and learn who Mom and Dad are, it is often helpful to not only use family members and friends to run errands, cook meals, help keep house, etc. but to help them to always redirect the child back to Mom and Dad. This will help establish that these two people are the primary caregivers and the most important people in his life.

True Story 1
A few months after my son came home, it was clear that he was waiting for his next mommy to come and take him away. He even began to do a lot of "mommy shopping" and would make cute noises for other women and reach out to strange and random women no matter where we were. During playdates he made it his mission to sit in another mother's lap and not mine. To the rest of the world he looked very social, happy, and personable. Our friends and family were thrilled, each thinking they had a special relationship with our son, but little did they know he would have just as happily gone to a complete stranger. Allowing this behavior to continue was allowing my son to continue to avoid me, his forever mommy, reinforcing that mommies are replaceable. I needed to prove otherwise. Upon seeing an attachment therapist one of the first things we had to work on was his lack of stranger anxiety and his use of other women to avoid an attachment to me. We taught all of our friends and family members whom we saw often to redirect his attention back to me immediately. Instead of allowing him to reach for Grandma and focus on her, Grandma would instead say "Hello, Johnny. I am your grandma. Where is your mommy? There she is. Mommy takes care of Johnny." And she would physically turn him around to go back to me. Exchanges like this continued for a long time until he knew I was his mommy and I was the one who took care of him. This is something that can be done from day one to help the baby learn and accept who Mommy and Daddy are and that they are forever. The baby cannot have a true relationship with anyone else until he has a healthy attachment with his mother and then father first.

True Story 2
FAQ: Why can't other people hold my child? So many people have waited for our child as long as we did. How can I hurt their feelings and not let them hold our child?

While every child is different, here is our experience. Our son came off the plane happy, smiling, and laughing. He was a beautiful and happy sixth-month-old. We planned on not letting anyone hold the baby until we felt he adjusted. Well, he looked very well-adjusted from the get-go. Everything made him happy and he took to everything so easily. Carseat, stroller, crib, new bottles, new formula, sleeping through the night…everything was so easy to introduce to him. What a happy, easy baby! And boy did he love people! It even said so in his pre-flight report. He seemed so happy and so willing to go to his grandparents, aunts, and uncles...a lot of people were waiting anxiously for this baby along with us. He seemed to adjust so well that we threw away the no holding policy and let close family members hold him earlier than we expected. He was not passed around nor held for long periods of time, but he was very loving and seemingly unaffected by the exposure to multiple family members.

As time went on our son distanced himself more and more from me, his mother, but still went happily to everyone else. I was his primary caretaker and doing a lot to promote bonding, but he avoided me more and more in ways that seemed innocent but didn't feel right to me. By the time he was home four months, he was not happy when I fed him, changed him, held him, gave him a bottle or anything that required me caring for him. By this time he completely ignored my existence and became a full-time mommy shopper. He learned lots of interesting tricks to get the attention of other women. This child would have willingly left with a complete stranger from the grocery store and never would have looked back. Meanwhile, everyone else continued to see a baby who was so easy and sweet and good and loving...I did not see that child because when it was just the two of us, he avoided me and pushed me away. It was very painful and I thought at first it had something to do with me not being a good mother...I know that is not the case now.

We had our son evaluated by an attachment therapist at ten months old. We learned that he was sensitive to the attachment process. Basically, he had the opinion of been there, done that...mommies are not trustworthy, mommies leave, I will pick my own mommy...I am safe when I control who takes care of me. From that point on no one held our son until he was out of the avoidant stage. We trained family and friends how to redirect our son back to me so I was no longer the mean lady taking him away from the loves of his life....any other woman. It took about three months of no one holding him and everyone redirecting him to Mommy, including Daddy. This was very hard on some family members who did not understand, but who would blame them? After all, he always looked happy to them. They didn't see what went on when potential mommies were not around.

Because my son was sensitive to the attachment process, allowing anyone, including the grandmothers who waited as anxiously as we did, to hold him for even a few minutes was confusing because he did not know or accept that I am his mommy and I am the one who will take care of him forever. It was a lot of hard work, really hard work that might not have been so hard had I stuck to the original plan. So even if they look happy and well-adjusted, try to remember, you are a stranger to this child. Not all children will react like my son, but since we don't know for sure--and remember it was a few months before our son began to push me away--I highly recommend that you put the baby's emotional health before the feelings of family members who do not live with you.