Remember this? You maybe heard of "attachment parenting", but maybe not necessarily in the context of adoption - maybe when the issues of moms breastfeeding their children into the preschool/school-age years. That's not entirely what attachment parenting is to an adoptive mom. In the case of adoption, attachment has to do with the child learning to trust in a caregiver to provide for their basic needs - food, shelter, safety - emotional and physical, comfort, etc. In the case of most biological families, when a baby cries and you change their diaper, feed them, or comfort them, and the cycle repeats itself, the baby learns to rely on you to meet their needs.
In the case of a child that has been adopted, that was not always the case. The fact that a child needs to be adopted, means at some point, the child did not have one or two parents consistently that they learned they could rely on to have their needs met. Maybe the child was neglected/abused. Maybe the parents were not able financially to provide for the child's needs. Maybe the child was well cared-for but felt abandoned when left at an orphanage. Maybe the child was in an orphanage for an extended period of time where they had a revolving door of multiple caregivers, so they could not attach to just one or two as primary caregivers. In these cases, the adoptive parent(s) have some work to do to help the child re-learn to trust and attach to one or two primary caregivers (the adoptive parent(s).
Some recommend that adoptive parents do something called "cocooning" with their adopted children for the first month or few after homecoming. This would be where there is one primary caregiver, usually the mother, who stays home with the child 24/7, cares for every need (feeding, bedtime, clothing, bathing, playing, holding, etc). They do not so much as run an errand to pick up other kids from school or something from the grocery store. Nobody other that immediate family does not enter the home, etc. If someone provides a meal for the family, it is handed over at the doorstep with a very quick hello/thank-you/goodbye.
Cocooning, in its entirety, is not something that works for our family, but there are elements of it that we try to do. We're an on-the-go type family, and it just wouldn't work with our schedules, etc. My husband and I typically work full-time, we have 3 older busy kids, and church activities. I've taken 12 weeks off work to spend with James, but it hasn't been just me being home with him 24/7. So far, I have taken him to pick up the kids at daycare or school, to the grocery store/pharmacy, church, our church small-group, to vote, and on one play date. We have gone to restaurants to eat a couple times. We have had friends visit our house as well.
With the other kids, they do play together a lot, but we've been very clear, and have to keep reminding him, that they are not to give him any instruction - that it's important that we're the ones that James looks to for direction.
We have been careful to not leave James in the care of others at all, i.e. no other adults feeding him, holding him, diapering, etc. I have had someone hold James for a minute while I've put a coat on. I've also had to tell a couple people no when they've tried to help by taking James when I had my hands full - but when James was pitching a fit about something that I wanted to be the one to comfort him and help him understand what was going on. That said, this week at our small-group Bible study, James was back and forth between playing in the basement with the kids and coming to check on me upstairs. But older kids were helping watch the younger ones, so I didn't feel this would be an issue - and it wasn't - mostly because of how James is already attaching to us.
Honestly, I think James is quite well attached to us already - me especially since I am the main caregiver at home (until I go back to work April 1). He comes to us when he's hurt or wants something, he makes good eye contact, he doesn't push back when we try to comfort him or snuggle (except when he wants to be busy playing), etc. When we've been at church and when I visited my office - the only places we've really gone with a crowd of people or lots of strange faces, he snuggles in and clings to us/me, so we know he has a healthy fear of strangers. Our other kids all still struggle with these things at times, even 3 and 7 years post placement. It's been quite refreshing with James, actually.
I imagine that soon we'll start going with James to childcare at church, since he's getting more comfortable and more disruptive. Also, starting sometime next month, we'll have to start visiting the daycare he'll be attending when I go back to work, to start getting him used to the other children and staff there.
In addition, I believe the bedtime issues I've already blogged about might have some to do with abandonment issues. This is why James is sleeping in our room now at least for a while. He still is screaming at bedtime, when we put him or have him crawl into his bed - and even walk across the room to our bed. But since we are consistently staying in the room each time he goes to sleep (naptime and bedtime), at least until he falls asleep, and we're there when he wakes up, it is starting to subside a bit. During naptime, I usually either read or nap in the room. At bedtime, one of us stays until he falls asleep. (Jock and I have been taking turns, and while I'd love to get out of the house to do a mom's night out or something like that in the evenings, I'm not quite ready to be completely out of the house at bedtime. Jock's gone at bedtime on Mondays to take Kaylen to tumbling, but I'm not ready to do it yet.) We usually sneak out after he's asleep, but make sure to have the monitor on just in case he wakes up before we go to bed ourselves. When he wakes up, we usually snuggle for a bit - sometimes he sleeps a little bit longer and sometimes not, but I definitely think the snuggles help the bonding.
I know many other adoptive families have different ways they've dealt with attachment issues. Many people feel strongly about certain techniques or methods, but this is just our way. No two families are the same -- and no two children within one family are the same.
A couple other things I'm thankful for in helping James attach to us:
1) God's Littlest Angles, the orphanage where James lived for 18 months, is set up and run in a fashion to purposely assist in children's attachment. You see, when a child has been able to attach to one or two caregivers in the first two years of his or her life, they are more likely to transfer that attachment to another caregiver more easily. GLA has their nurseries set up such that, even though a child is in a large nursery with approximately 20 other children, they are assigned to two nannies as their primary caregiver, who rotate shifts. Another key to attachment is one-on-one attention, which at GLA is provided for by volunteers that come to visit for 2-week periods of time. They are assigned to a handful of kids, who they spend an hour with each weekday, for one-on-one time. These things combined, I believe have been a huge factor in James' ease of attachment to us.
2) After having met James' birth mother, it was apparent her love for him. I believe she lovingly did her best to care for him in the first 10 months of his life. James went to her when we first walked into the room to meet with her. With him generally being careful when meeting new people, that tells me a lot about how much she loved him and him her, and how well he was taken care of even before being at GLA for 18 months.
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