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Welcome Home, Adopted One
Easing Your Newly Adopted Child into the Family
By Keath Castelloe Low
Jenny remembers feeling this way after Nate's arrival. "We hardly had any visitors," she says. "I was very disappointed to not have many offers of meals or extra help with Carrie or housework when we brought Nate home." She felt overwhelmed. She was not only trying to adjust to her toddler's arrival, but also to having two children in the home. Additionally, Nate had some difficulties adjusting that Carrie did not have.
Gray notes that children, like Nate, who have started their lives in orphanages, do not yet know the basics of calming themselves or relating. "The parents have a lot of work to do," she says. "Friends and relatives should be supporting the parents for exhausting, but worthwhile 'catch-up' parenting." She agrees that parents must teach relatives to ask about what kinds of interactions and support are appropriate.
"Parents can say things like, 'Jaydon is just learning who her parents are. Please help her to learn this. We are reserving lap-sitting and big hugs for parents,'" Gray says. She explains that research has shown children do much better with attachment when indiscriminate affection is actively discouraged. "Children are actually relieved over time that they do not have to work so hard to relate to new adults," she says. "Approaching strangers for affection is a survival strategy left over from having no steady parent."
Drs. Foli and Thompson sum it up nicely: "Time is an important element in adoption: time for parent to bond with the child; time for the child to bond with the parent; and time for extended family to accept and know the new family that has been created through adoption."
* Last name withheld to protect privacy.