We are well-attached to our children and they to us. We mostly take it for granted, as the process of attachment with our children goes on without a huge amount of thought or effort. They came to us as needy little babies and we met their needs to the best of our abilities. We picked them up when they cried. We fed them when they were hungry. I nursed them when they needed comfort. We changed their diapers when necessary. All the while, we looked them in the eyes, spoke sweet words to them, and soothed them with our touch.
I am reading a lot of books right now on unique parenting issues with adopted children. Some things I didn't know before recently:
1) Adopted children often have to be taught to make meaningful eye contact with their adoptive parents.
2) Children who have never had a stable, dependable relationship with one or two caregivers will often have no stranger anxiety, falling into the arms of anyone who will show them love, without getting verbal or non-verbal communication from their parents that the stranger is "safe." While many may find this to be a "loving" quality of the adopted children (and it is), it is also a sign of poor attachment, which hopefully will be remedied over time as parents meed their needs.
3) Children who are adopted often have to work through the stages of attachment they may have missed early in their lives in order to create complete, healthy attachments with their parents. Sometimes they work this out in what most would consider to be undesirable behavior. With proper education and a lot of empathy, we can work proactively to help foster healthy attachment.
4) Children, adopted or not, need to know everything about where they came from in order to have a healthy understanding of who they are. Adopted children especially need to be given all of the known details of where they came from and who they are. It is necessary for building trust, for their own identity formation, and for building healthy attachment to their adoptive parents.
We are not naive enough to believe that these parenting challenges will always be met with ease, but we are hopeful we will be able to meet them well with wisdom, perseverance, empathy, patience, and unconditional love.
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Doug and Shelley, friends from MN, have two birth children and adopted two brothers who lived next door to them in a foster home. When they did this, the kids were 4, 7, 8, and 9, I think. Now they're all 15, 18, almost 19 and 20. The two older ones (the birth children) are in college, and the adopted boys are in high school. The youngest, I'll call him C, has fetal alcohol syndrome, along with major attachment issues. It was amazing (and devastating) to share life with their family for five years as their youngest was going through pre-adolescence and they had three teens to raise as well. what a journey! C has gone through major counseling, retreats, treatments and also attachment camps and classes with his parents. He is continually blossoming into an amazing young man who cares for people deeply and shows his love well. Just beautiful. I am confident that you, Jon and the kids will all work though your situation with grace and love, all while seeking His guidance.
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