Attachment is a Two Way Street

There is much talk in adoption circles these days about the importance of bonding and attachment and the struggles that happen if a child doesn’t properly “attach” at the right times.  Reactive Attachment Disorder is becoming more and more of a familiar term as families deal with children who struggle to form natural attachments to their adoptive families.

I haven’t dealt with diagnosed RAD much, but I have had to work to form attachments to a lot of kids who weren’t born to me.  This can be a complicated process depending on the history and personality of the people involved.  If you’re looking for a resource about creating attachments, I highly recommend Karen Purvis’s book “The Connected Child”.  It is very practical and hopeful.  But there’s one part of this issue that I want to speak to from my experience.

Attachment is a two way street.

When you hear about a child who “can’t attach” you often hear about the negative behaviors.  This child acts out because they don’t trust.  They may do strange things, irritating things, scary things.  So here’s my question- as the adult in that relationship, how much would you want to attach to that child?

During our group home days, we had kids we bonded quickly and easily with.  We had other kids that were more of a struggle.  We were thankful that between the two of us and then our two interns, we always had somebody who felt a natural connection and easily attached to each of our boys.  But it wasn’t always that each of us felt that natural connection with EVERY boy.  We each had a couple kids that we found easy to love because we had personality similarities, or common interests, or we had a strong compassion for their story, or just a natural connection.  We all had kids that took some hard work for us to establish a bond with because those attachments didn’t form quickly or naturally.

When we think about these kids with attachment problems, we often don’t think about the adult standing at the other end of that relationship and how after many attempts at creating a bond, they may be ready to give up on attachment too.  While an adult may be capable of a healthy attachment to a child, they may not always develop one when there are difficult behavioral issues or even just a lack of emotional connection.

I am not casting judgement on those parents who struggle to connect.  I am one of them.

I struggled to bond with one of my own children.  This child came to us very young, but with some unusual behaviors.  There was a lot of crying.  Crying that couldn’t be comforted.  Crying that turned to screams.  When I gave a bottle, this baby would turn their head as far away from me as possible while still keeping the bottle in their mouth.  While I was the one with the baby all day, this baby would only smile when Brian came home and would always prefer him to me.  This baby had a difficult time relaxing into my arms, always seeming like there was a desire to push away and reject what I was offering.

There were visits happening with birthfamily and I don’t know how that effected this child’s ability to trust.  I know that for a couple hours a day I would send this child off to a strange environment where the regular routine would be disrupted, new smells, new foods, new toys, adults that used to be familiar, and then a return trip “home” to our house.  After months of this the visits stopped and those people disappeared.  How then does this child learn to trust or have an idea of what “normal” life is like?  And how do I- who was so used to bundling this baby up and sending it out into the world with the full understanding that family reunification was the goal- how do I change the expectations of my heart so that I can open up to consider this child mine forever?

So there are two attachment issues going on here- this child’s ability to attach to me who seems foreign and untrustworthy because I keep sending them away, and MY ability to attach to a child who seems to be rejecting me and who I consider someone else’s baby.

I think we too often look only at the child’s issues and fail to see the attachment issues going on in our own hearts.  I think open adoption (or any kind of adoption where you’re familiar with the child’s birthfamily, like foster adoption) can complicate this, especially during the early days.  It is difficult to feel you have a “right” to parent and this child belongs to you.  You may be envisioning the birthmother’s face or feel the weight of her choices as you’re seeing your child make their own choices.  When your child falls down and bruises their knee, you can imagine the disapproval of birth mom over your lack of supervision.  If you aren’t able to afford swimming lessons this year, you can imagine her disappointment.  You may feel frustration for the hurt she caused this child or the prenatal damage that was done, but you know you should feel grateful.  You want to have open communication, but you’re concerned about how she might perceive your parenting and if she respects you as the child’s mother.  All these things can complicate what should be the most important task of motherhood- forming a bond with your child.

I want to validate that bonding isn’t always easy.  I struggled and it was with a beautiful child who was relatively easy.  No poop smearing, no angry outbursts, no food hoarding.  How much harder for the parents out there working through the really tough and strange behaviors that can come with a child who has a difficult history or who spent years institutionalized.

I want to encourage you that the bond I now have with my child is strong.  With persistence and work to build trust with my child and work in my OWN heart of letting go of hurts and the weight of invisible birthparent expectations, we have established a beautiful, sweet relationship.  It wasn’t easy, but few things worth pursuing ever are.

I am hoping this week to share the stories of two of my friends who were adopted domestically (in adoption lingo, this just means it wasn’t an international adoption) as infants.  Both of them have helped me in different ways to understand the depth of love and attachment an adopted child can have to their parents.  At times where I was feeling the rejection of my child or had concerns that they would some day resent their adoptions, these friends helped me normalize the adoption experience- that it really isn’t so different from any other parent/child relationship as long as I was treating my kids with love and respect.  They helped me let go of some of those hang-ups I had about birthparent expectations and freed me to do right by my kids while still speaking positively of their families of origin.  I hope hearing from them will be helpful for you, too.