Children with attachment difficulties often have a very different view of life and what it means to be part of a family. Attachment disorders occur when a child doesn’t have a safe and secure opportunity to learn how to attach during the first three years of life. There is a lot of information about attachment disorders, and the symptoms. The purpose of this series will be about parenting for attachment with our children. Parenting for attachment is a positive way of parenting any child and regardless of the type of attachment disorder a baby, toddler or child may have parenting to promote attachment will always be a good choice.
It doesn’t matter how old our baby or child is when we become their parent and it doesn’t matter how we became parents in the first place. It doesn’t matter if we have been the parents of 12 other children or if this is the first time, we have become a parent. The truth is that once our baby or child is placed with us for adoption–we are just plain parents with a few extra things to worry about due to the circumstances. We want exactly the same things for our children as every parent would want for their child and we love our children just as much as we would love any child. We want our kids to grow up feeling safe, secure and loved by us. We want them to learn the skills to function in the world without us one day. And, we want happy well-adjusted adults to be the outcome.
I have often written about my four children. My oldest two were born to me 14 months apart I had both of them before I was the age of 22. I am also the mother of two siblings adopted at the ages of one and five years old. The most difficult bond I had to make with any of the four children was with my second child–my biological daughter. She is 21 now, and she is exactly everything I am not and she has always been like this!
The next several Blogs I write will talk about parenting our children for attachment. As we get started, it’s important to understand that as parents our own feelings are less important then being a safe, secure and loving parent is. Even when our own feelings of bonding are difficult, even when we face Post Adoption Depression, even when we find it difficult to bond with our biological child, it doesn’t matter–we have to at least act the way we expect a good mother or father to be.
Childbirth and Adoption are equally stressful life changing events, sometimes during huge changes in our lives, emotions are numb and feelings are held behind the energy it took to get to the point we were parents. It is not unusual to have difficulty in this area of being a parent, for any parent, those feelings can happen to anyone. The important thing is to work past it and not allow our own feelings to change the way we expect good parents to be.
The next Blog entry in this series will outline some of the developmental miles stones adopted children face and positive parenting responses.
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Special Needs and Adoption-Related Terms:
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For more information about parenting special needs children you might want to visit the Families.com Special Needs Blog and the Mental Health Blog. Or visit my personal website.