Soul of Adoption

What is Attachment?

Secure attachment is a process that normally develops in the first year of life. It occurs when an adult repeatedly meets a child’s physical and emotional needs. For example, when a baby is hungry and cries, a parent quickly responds by providing nourishing food. Likewise, when a baby wants physical and emotional contact, a parent holds and cuddles them and talks in soothing tones.

For the child it does not matter whether the caregiver is a parent, relative, or some other adult. What matters is that the child’s needs are quickly and lovingly met and that there is consistency in who is meeting their needs. As time goes on, the child will become more in tune to who is meeting their needs and will form an attachment to that person.

Attachment is a two-way relationship. Not only do children need to become attached to their parents, but parents also need to feel attached to their child.

Why is Attachment Important?

Secure attachment lays the foundation for a child to be trusting of others and self-confident. It is also how children first learn how to identify and cope with stress and with feelings such as fear and anger. Children who are securely attached to their parents will appear at ease, will show delight, and will turn to their parents when they want comfort. Secure attachment also provides a sense of security when interacting with others because the child knows that they can always go back to their parent if they need support or protection.

When Secure Attachment is Missing

Children who are not securely attached to their parents tend to avoid or resist relationships. Avoidance is seen when the child does not give any special attention to the parent. Any person will suffice to meet the child’s needs — the child does not make a distinction between parents and strangers. Resistance is seen when the child actively opposes the parent. The child may swing back and forth between wanting to be held by a parent and actively fighting against them.

In both cases, the child does not see the parent as a safe and trusted person. Because the child has no touchstone or safety net, it is harder for the child to venture out into the world. The child is likely to be more passive and less curious than other children. They may seem unsure of trying new things.

Fostering Attachment in International Adoption

When a child is adopted internationally, there is a critical transition in which the child must transfer their attachment from their previous caregiver to their adoptive parents. In short, it is a matter of recreating the attachment process. This occurs when the parents consistently meet the physical and emotional needs of their child. If a child has securely attached to their caregiver (foster family or orphanage workers), then they can transfer that attachment to the parents. The key to making the transfer is that it needs to be clear to the child who their parents are and that their parents will be there consistently to provide nurturance, comfort, and support.

In order to make this transfer, it is strongly recommended that adopted children be gradually introduced to extended family and friends. As excited as everyone will be to welcome the child home and as tempting as it is to throw a big party right away, this kind of activity can be confusing and overwhelming to the child. They may placidly let themselves be passed from one person to another. Parents may mistakenly think that this means they are comfortable already. However, their acceptance of the situation may well be because they do not have a sense of where they belong. Any adult can hold them because mom and dad are not yet preferred over anyone else.

For this reason, it is recommended that the new family keep activities low key for the first weeks home. Most importantly, mom and dad should be the only ones to provide for the child’s physical needs for the first month or so. Yes, Grandma and Grandpa raised their own children and know how to care for a child. However, at first it needs to be mom and dad who do the feeding, changing, bathing, soothing, etc.

Parenting During the Transition

During the transition time when the child is beginning to attach to mom and dad, it is important to parent with the transition in mind. In order to foster secure attachment, it may be necessary to do things differently in the short-term than in the long-term. A few recommendations are:

· Do not use a babysitter for the first couple of months your child is home. The parents should be providing all of the basic care.

· Do not let your child “cry it out.” Sleep disruptions are common when a child first comes home. After all, their whole universe has turned upside down. Although you may let your child cry in the future, during the transition it is important that they know that you will be there to comfort them.

· Don’t let your child feed himself, even if he can hold the bottle or manage the spoon. It needs to be clear that you are the one meeting his needs when he is hungry. Feeding time is also a great chance for one-on-one time and eye contact.

· Play in ways that foster attachment. Any games that promote eye contact and in which your child must rely on you are good. Some fun attachment activities include: playing in a swimming pool where your child must hold onto you; give your child a laminated picture of the family that they can carry around with them; play peek-a-boo; put a sticker on your face and have your child remove it and put it back on; fill your cheeks with air and have your child “pop” them; mirror one another’s expressions; play hide-and-seek; give your child a ride on a pillow by dragging them across the floor; rock your child to sleep.

What About Family and Friends?

During the transition, family and friends may feel a little left out. Grandparents, especially, may not be able to spend as much time with their new grandchild or dote on them as much as they would like. This is temporary. Remember: the goal is for the new child to securely attach to their parents. Once that happens, then you will be able to see them, take them on outings, babysit, etc. to your heart’s content! Until then, visits will need to be short.

If you want to help the new parents there are many things you can do:

· Make meals, package them in freezer containers, and deliver them to the new family

· Go grocery shopping and run errands

· Offer to clean the house, do the laundry, wash the car, mow the lawn, etc.

· Help address and stuff envelopes to mail out homecoming announcements

· Be the contact person to share news and updates with other family and friends

References:

Toddler Adoption: The Weaver’s Craft, Mary Hopkins-Best (1997)

Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today’s Parents, by Deborah D. Gray (2002)

From Mia’s Blog -

This post is important to me because I think EVERYONE should be aware of the results of the laws as they stand for adoptees from closed record states. Is your son or daughter one of them? Is your niece or nephew? Your husband or wife? Chances are you know someone affected. If nothing else please read it to become socially aware.

~~~~~~~~~

Contact Denial. It seems to be a recurring theme for me these days. Have you ever noticed that the issues you need to work on (issues you may be ignoring) seem to visit you over and over in different ways until you have no choice but to pay attention? Tap tap tap….like being pecked to death by a duck.

OK, OK, I give. Contact denial. Here goes. But I have to do this a little differently. This has to be about searching to truly grasp how contact denial grips an adoptee.

When you decide to search you think of little else. Often times it becomes a full blown obsession. I am talking about active searching, not passive searching. There are plenty of people (myself included) who started out as passive searchers just wanting to “get some medical info.”, to say “thank you for giving me life”. ….blah blah blah…..these are key phrases to spot a passive searcher a mile away. It’s when you come to peace with the decision to search, and decide to actively pursue it that you dare to allow the possibility of more to enter your thoughts. This takes the ability to let go of the guilt for searching which is really hard to do. Only other adoptees can truly grasp how deeply this guilt for searching thing can affect you. The reasons for the misplaced guilt are too numerous to mention here but I will say it is mostly a condition which has been embedded deeply into the fiber of our society by the false beliefs about what adoption is and what it is not.

So you work through all of that (which can take years) and you begin to actively pursue your identity. The prospect of finally being able to recognize the face in the mirror becomes exciting! You are a flower watered, fed and nurtured by your adoptive parents (if you’re lucky) but you can only grow so much because you have no roots tethering you to the Earth. You’re just sort of stuck in the ground feeling like the slightest breeze could knock you clean over. You need your roots to grow properly. Period.

You eat, breathe, sleep searching. You try every avenue you can find and if they fail you try them again. I searched passively for several years, actively for several more and finally used the Colorado Confidential Intermediary Service because I got nowhere on my own.

Everyone not in our position should know what we are up against instead of being one of those “what problem, being adopted makes you special” kind of people. Oh, we’re special alright. This is how it goes down if you are an adoptee from a closed record state. A closed state, like most are, will “allow” you to pay them hundreds of dollars for the honor of having a complete stranger open YOUR file with YOUR name on it and view YOUR identity. If that isn’t humiliating enough you THEN get the distinct honor of asking PERMISSION from the judge (like a criminal….or a child) if this STRANGER can contact your MOTHER. You have no idea how degrading and humiliating and entirely frustrating this is. NO idea.

Regardless of whether you have to go through the state or through an agency the fate of your identity remains in the hands of someone who’s life will not be affected one way or the other by the outcome. Someone who can walk right down to that courthouse and get a copy of THEIR identity for a mere 15.00. You may luck out and get appointed a case worker who is good at what they do, sympathetic to your cause. OR you may get someone who is wet behind the ears or power tripping, rude or diplomatically challenged (meaning an assh#%*). Either way….you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. Right? Right. Because we are CHILDREN and children are to be seen and not heard.

You are still obsessing and completely excited by the way but unlike searching on your own now you are without ANY control. There is no word invented to describe this cluster—- of emotions so I am not even going to try.

If you are lucky enough to have a competent person holding your file they may actually find your mother. (Please note: I say mother because most people search for mother first and then if they still have any sanity left they search for their father. Not always, but it has been my experience that this is most often the case.) Once your mother has been located they either call her or send her a letter. When they do this, the method they use and what they say is entirely left to their discretion. You have absolutely no say in the matter. So, if you have a “diplomatically challenged” case worker you are out of luck if they decide to make a brash call out of the blue to an unsuspecting first mother. If your mother is completely FREAKED OUT by this call and hangs up…..guess what? Too bad for you. Case closed. Sorry about your luck, mom doesn’t want to meet you. They may or may not leave your file on their desk for a time. They may or may not try again. They are fully under the guidelines of the law if they decide to stick your file back in what I like to call the Vault of Shame and call it a day. Leaving you scratching your head saying “what just happened here?!”. That’s IT? That can’t be it I still don’t know who the hell I am!

Guess what? My intermediary was outstanding. I mention the above because for countless adoptees this is exactly how it goes down. MY intermediary was the best, the cream of the crop, they broke the mold good. She was compassionate, completely knowledgeable and as fair and just as she could be without breaking the rules. The day she retired adoptees everywhere lost a true friend. Still, the method in which contact had to be made remains the same. The emotions involved remain the same. The lack of control over one’s own identity remain the same whether you have a good case worker or a bad one.

And this is just the formal search process. This doesn’t even touch upon the countless hours of futile searching one may do on their own. It’s exhausting and it is beyond frustrating to know that it is only necessary because of the completely UNNECESSARY restrictions placed upon our person as adoptees. Every single adoptive parent, every single birthparent out there should be banned together in a unified front to fight the injustice served upon your children. A lot of time is spent disagreeing and in the meantime adoptees are DYING because they don’t have the right to know who they are. Medically speaking it is a no brainer but don’t kid yourself, we are emotionally dying inside too by being outcasts in a world which vastly believes we are unworthy of knowing our own identity, of knowing ourselves. Instead we are forced to use strangers to handle something we would probably handle FAR better on our own.

Now please, really try to put yourself in our shoes for a moment while I sum this up. We fight with ourselves to even get to a place emotionally where we CAN search. We face frustration after frustration in the process of searching. We are humiliated, discriminated against and chastised. We are often left to our own defenses by those we love most simply because they can’t deal with their own issues of self-worth. We face ignorant opinions like “why would you want to do that to your parents?” forced upon us by complete strangers or worse…..by friends. We forge ahead because we must. For many of us it is at the expense of the love of our own parents whom we thought would love us unconditionally. We realize that at a time when we can use comfort the most we have been emotionally abandoned by the people we count on for that kind of support. It seems at times that everyone is against us, leaving us to question our decision. Perhaps our real identity should remain a dirty secret. Perhaps it is (I am) ugly and should remain locked away in the bell tower, because nobody really wants to look at it’s ugly face…..because it scares them. No, no. It is WORTH FIGHTING FOR! I am worth fighting for. All of that sadness and frustration of searching for this CRUCIAL missing piece of our identity. Multiply it by months or in my case years of futile searching. Combine all of that with the belief, hope and promise that one MUST hold on to while searching. Grasp the perfect comparison in the widely used term; rollercoaster ride.

Feel my excitement. Feel my joy. Feel my frustration. Feel my pain. Feel my desire. Feel my longing. Feel my emptiness. Feel my hope.

Then, slam the door in my face and LOCK IT and you might begin to understand what contact denial feels like.

When we first decided to adopt, I was blind to what really happens in adoption. Your focus is so much on the dream of becoming a parent that you do not see things that might otherwise be red flags into what is good or what is right or what is fair.

First and foremost, I want to say that I am an adoptive mother to two absolutely precious little girls from Guatemala. I would not trade my little girls for anything and I have made it a point to love them and to put myself in their shoes with regard to how they may see their lives as adoptees.

To me, as an adoptive mother, I cannot be blind to the fact that my children are adopted. I think, so many times, adoptive parents get caught up so much in the fact that they will become a parent, they deny or push aside the fact that their child will be different. Very quickly after my girls came home, I began to research and I am so thrilled that I learned stories from adoptees and mothers who relinguished their child. We are all a part of adoption and the more I educate myself and the more I learn about the feelings my children may experience, the better mother I will be in helping them reconcile who they are.

In learning about adoption, I have found there are so many holes in the system and all of us are getting hurt by it. You may be an adoptive parent and you may think that your child is “yours” and you do not have to think about their adoption journey. But, our world is changing and as long as adoption is in the limelight with celebrity trends and as long as adoption is the most unregulated highest profit industry in the U.S., we are all going to be hurt by it. Mothers have attorneys standing at the foot of their beds to pressure them into signing their child away. Attorneys and agencies send brochures to high schools preying upon young girls who fear telling their parents they are pregnant. Do we really want to take babies or do we want to become mothers through ethical, happy means? How would I explain to my children that I knew their first mother was coerced? That was not the case, as far as I know with my children, but I’ve met countless incredibly wonderful women who did go through that. Think of how much you love your child and think of how hard it would be if they were taken from you. That is how many mothers who have lost their child to adoption feel.

As adoptive parents, how many hoops did we jump through and how much money did we pay out? Who did it go to? How much profit was made at the cost of our deepest desire? What does the industry do to make sure there is a supply of babies combined with nickle and diming potential adoptive parents to death? How many facilitators have any interaction with parents and children after an adoption is complete?

We must realize that our children are the adoptees of tomorrow and how adoption is perceived in our community is how our children will perceive a part of who they are. In my opinion, there is no threat for adoptive parents to become involved in reform. I think the majority of us wanted to be parents, but I hardly think many would adopt when they knew there was unethical practices involved. As I continue to post on this blog, I welcome questions, feedback and your thoughts with regard to adoptive parents supporting reform. I adore my two little girls and I also adore the mothers and adoptees that I have met through my education. I know I will be a better mother because I’ve taken the time to educate myself on what my children may experience.

New babies are always a significant event in any family, but forgive me for a moment while I assert that this time is even more special. This time, it is MY sister having the baby. This time, it is MY nephew who is about to make his entrance into the world (any time now!). And, for the first time in my life, I will get to greet a new life who is related to me at the most basic, biological level who is not “of my body.” This is not my sister’s first baby. It is not, in fact, the first child born to my rather large herd of siblings. My very large family has given birth to what nearly equals the number of people who make up the population of a small country! We are rather prolific breeders. LOL

But this is the first one born since I was reunited with my family after 35 long years.

I talked on the phone with my sister just a few minutes ago. She is waiting for the goahead to drive to the hospital, be admitted, and probably induced in the morning if she does not go into labor before then. When I hung up with her, I burst into tears - tears I barely choked back as I told her I would be thinking of her constantly and that I love her. Never has the distance between Michigan and Virginia seemed so great, yet at the same time, I can feel her - right beside me - right next to me. I can see her oh-so-familiar face if I just look in the mirror. I can imagine her beautiful belly carrying my incredibly handsome nephew - I only have to remember what my belly looked like as recently as 12 years back.

Today is my youngest’s birthday. Today or tomorrow will be the birthday of what will now be my youngest, and almost certainly last, nephew. These cousins share more than close birthdays, they share a first name. And with the Universe willing, they’ll always understand that they share a biological link, a genealogy, a history, a family.

I’m crying as I write this. Tears of joy for my sister, who has wanted this baby for so long. Tears of sadness for my sister’s lost child, a life known only for a moment. Tears of excitement for my niece and brother-in-law, who wait eagerly for their brother and son. And so many tears of thankfulness that I am here to witness this incredible event.

Because of the era in which I was adopted, I grew up with no expectation of ever knowing my first family. It “simply wasn’t done” back then. No one could have predicted the advent of the internet and what that would mean to millions of adoptees hoping to find that connection. Science Fiction was a nice fantasy, the idea of a world wide web where every bit of information was at your fingertips - but even that fantasy had an element of reality, the knowledge that even there, information would be restricted. Our identities would be denied to us, even as we could find the gross national product of a country which has not existed for 1,000 years.

There is a very special woman in the world whose identity will remain a secret everywhere but in my heart. Without her loving friendship, I would not have just got off the phone with my sister to talk about the impending birth of her child. Her willingness to let her heart guide her is what made it possible for me to find my sister, my family, my history. Thank you, my friend - I love you, and I will NEVER forget the great gift you gave to me.

So tonight, I will sit by my phone and wait. I will do this tomorrow and the day after if needed. I will wait for my beautiful niece to call and tell me that she has a new cousin, that I have a new nephew, that my sister has her son.

It is going to be a rough wait - but so worth it. C’mon out Superman - we’re waiting for you. It’s safe. We love you. And we will never let you feel alone.

All my love,

Your aunt

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The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, founded in 1996, is a national not-for-profit organization devoted to improving adoption policy and practice.  What follows is a partial list of links to important and ground breaking reports published by the institute.  We encourage our visitors to spend some time exploring the valuable information put out by the Donaldson Adoption Instititue.

Safeguarding the Rights and Well-being of Birthparents in the Adoption Process

Adoption in the Schools: A Lot to Learn

Expanding Resources for Children:Is Adoption By Gays and Lesbians Part of the Answer for Boys and Girls Who Need Homes?

Taken from a discussion on our forums:
Often on adoption forums, I read an aparent say “I just don’t want adoption to define my kids”.  Or, in a more hostile tone, sometimes I see “Why do you let adoption define you?”.

I want to talk about this, and see if I can explain my thinking about adoption better, but also how my adoptee ears hear that statement or question.  First how I hear it, because that’s easier, lol…

When someone asks why I “let” adoption define me, it feels hostile to me.  It feels like it’s saying that first of all, I’m just choosing to look at the negative side of things.  And it feels like it implies I am painting (deliberately I guess) a role for myself that is just not necessary.  It feels dismissive of my reality, and it’s a reality I’m not all that unhappy with (more below, lol), so that kind of bothers me.  It’s kind of like the “angry adoptee” statements in terms of how I react to it emotionally.

When I hear an aparent say “I don’t want adoption to define my kids” my reaction to it is different.   And this probably is greatly influenced by being a child of the closed era, where parents generally tried to avoid talking or thinking about adoption as much as possible, with all the problems (in my own opinion) that often caused.  I hear those words and I hear more like “I don’t want adoption to be a big deal”, “I don’t want us to really have to think about or talk about adoption, except to give the facts.”  and, understandably (to me) “Please, dear God, don’t let my child suffer or feel bad things, or have problems related to this.”  and its corollary out of self-protection and love, “Please let me believe that if I do it all right, and am a great Mommy or Daddy, that none of this will be an issue for my kids.”

But here’s the thing for me — adoption DOES define me.  And it was more difficult for me precisely because I KNEW at the core of my being, that my parents didn’t want me to talk about it, think about it, feel about it.  Those were frankly pretty much the hardest parts for me then, and still are high on the list of things that hurt or are hard.

Why do I say adoption defines me?  I know many adoptees would not agree.  To me it just IS.  It defines me in the same way (though to differing degrees) that I’m defined by my race, by being raised in a two-parent home, by being raised in a middle-class family, by my religious background, by my other life experiences (college, relationships, places I’ve lived, people who have touched me).