Let me tell you right off the bat that I am not an attachment expert; I am not an adoption expert. What I am is an expert on MY kids. Because I, like so many before and after me, intended on adopting a baby AYAP (as young as possible for those who don’t know the ‘lingo’), I hadn’t done more than some very basic skimming of the toddler attachment in adoption books. Also I was already a practicing attachment parent so I figured what more did I need to know? Basically what I’m saying is that my kid has taught me a lot but I have no idea how what I’m saying here compares or reflects what is advised or expressed in The Books. So take it for what it’s worth.

Attachment does not have a finish line but rather is an endless journey that ebbs and flows.

I’ve been having a really hard time writing these posts lately. I’ve tried and probably written 5000 words on the topic but none of them have properly encapsulated my experiences. Today I was meditating on the issue of attachment, looking for the missing piece of the puzzle I needed to properly express my thoughts when the above thought entered my mind.

So often you hear internationally adopting parents proclaim, before their feet even hit US soil, that “attachment is great” or “we are well bonded already”. If parents are being very aware, however, and very honest with themselves they will admit that attachment this early on is just not possible. Some children will cling to their adoptive parents in an attempt to make a safe connection with ANYONE but this shouldn’t be confused with true attachment which is a journey, not something with an end point. If you ever say or think “We are done! We are attached!” you need to look closer. Attachment, as a process, will ebb and flow even with biological children. Think about the natural DEtachment that happens during the teen years. Think about your own relationship with your parents – it probably doesn’t look quite the same as it looked when you were 2 (at least I hope not!). Attachment is a journey and how it looks today may not be how it looks next year. I think if you open yourself up to the journey through attachment (instead of to attachment), you are more likely to be aware of weaknesses, strengths and changes and more willing to bend to them or accept them, when appropriate. Or at least I would have been.

It took me a full 16 months to get to the level of attachment I current possess with Addison. She was 6 months old when we met her. She was a searcher which made us feel immediately loved and made her feel, on the very most fundamental survival level, safe and secure. She was easy to know and it, combined with my own instincts, made it easy to know what she really needed and how her personality was really meant to manifest itself. It is only recently, after 16 months of patiently waiting and trying different things, that I have finally seen these needs manifest.

If you had asked me when we left Vietnam if I felt that Addison was attached to us, I think I would have said yes. She wasn’t grieving; she was sleeping, eating and happy. She was even nursing, she let us hold her and she laughed for us and played with us and looked in our eyes. But the thing is she never grieved. She played with anyone. She was a searcher, she looked into anyone’s eyes. She let us meet her needs and so long as she was surviving, she was happy. She had no coping mechanisms to deal with grief, pain, sadness, hunger, exhaustion, illness, etc. So she was either quiet and reserved or happy. To us this felt like attachment but it wasn’t. I mentioned before that it took a long time for her to learn to express negative emotions at all. All of that was part of the on-going attachment process.

Through her first year it was just not 100% there. She was still more or less indiscriminate about her affection. She wasn’t likely to climb into my lap and never asked me to pick her up. She was resistant to me soothing her to sleep; she was resistant to sharing her sleep space with anyone. She even called other people Mom. Of course she was still happy as a lark. But I knew – I just knew – that this wasn’t really her. There was still healing and growth that had to happen.

And sometime in the last 2-3 months it finally just clicked and true attachment really started to happen. Suddenly she needed me in ways that went well beyond survival. She needed me to sooth her tears away (tears!), kiss her owies, and hold her just because. She asks me to pick her up and hold her or carry her. She now needs to feel not just safe but important to me. She developed comfort rituals that involved direct skin contact with her Daddy or I. She stopped calling me Mommy and Mom and started calling me Mama again. She no longer runs to others indiscriminately but sticks close to me and interacted from a more healthy distance. She turns our face to look into her eyes and tells us she loves us, spontaneously. I wish I could say what finally worked, what changed. I have lots of theories but no real answers.

And lest you think this sounds a whole lot like insecurity and regression, let’s talk about that for a minute. Regression is a natural and normal part of the early part of the attachment journey. Regression is also not something Addison was interested in. There were some points we were unbending to – we fed her every single bottle she ever took, we carried her when possible, we rocked her to sleep almost every nap and bedtime. But if you’ve followed my blog for awhile you will know that Addison is naturally driven, extroverted and independent. Regardless of those personality traits, I have always intuitively felt that she was not ready for the big independent steps she wanted to take, that she still had work to be done as a baby that she had not yet done. Now I am finally seeing the manifestation of that. She is still outgoing, she is still very friendly and loves to play with other kids, she still goes off and plays by herself at home. She is not clingy, she is not insecurely needy. She is just….healthy.

I know that the work has just begun, though. To say “we are attached” would be to dismiss the great ebb and flow of human relationships. I can say we are more attached than we had ever been before, for sure. I can say that for the first time in 18 months I can see my daughter’s true potential, her true capacity for love and affection and it is pretty awesome to see after KNOWING it was there for so long and just not being able to coax it out.

I also don’t believe Addison’s attachment is unusual or that she ever had an “attachment problem”. I think that for adoptive parents to believe that a child who has lost not only their first mother whose womb they knew, whose heartbeat they were in sync with, whose sounds and smells were their world for 9 whole months (or more) but then to lose yet another familiar environment most often with loving nannies whose sounds and sights are familiar, smells that are familiar without serious effect regardless of the temperament of the baby is extremely naive. The human spirit is amazing and has the capacity to rebound from these losses but not without much time, much work and much love.

At 24 months old Addison’s spirit has rebounded and now we continue on this attachment journey together.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Adoption, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.