Third in a series of articles sponsored by the Adopt America Network.
Have a Kid with Attachment Issues?
Since the diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder has become so popular for children who have spent some of their lives in foster care or institutions, there are hundreds of resources out there for living with children with these issues. It is important to remember that nearly all children coming from these backgrounds have attachment issues, regardless of weather or not they have an official diagnosis.
Parenting kids with attachment issues is hard work. The reason it is so difficult is that they do not inspire the kinds of responses that they need. Let me explain.
A child or teen with attachment issues has a goal to keep people as far away as possible because they are afraid of emotional intimacy. Their behavior is ugly, nasty, rude and mean. They push people away by disobeying, cursing, or being consistently oppositional. After a while, parents just want to STAY AWAY from their attachment disordered kids.
So when a therapist like Dan Hughes suggests that what parents need to do is to practice playfulness, love, acceptance, curiosity and empathy, our internal response as parents is “YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!!” After weeks or months or even years of being barraged with negative energy from kids, the idea of being playful and loving seems it will take more emotional energy than we can find within ourselves.
But it’s what they need. Unfortunately, we did not cause them to be this way but in order for us to help them heal, we need to practice very intentional parenting. Here are three tips that will help you be able to give your kids what you need.
1) Make sure you take care of yourself. You’ll need to be in the best emotional shape possible in order to continue to give when not receiving in return. Hang out with people who support you. Get enough sleep. Exercise and eat right. Consider yourself to be in training for a special mission – because this is harder than almost anything else you will ever have to do.
2) Pick your battles wisely. If you are consistently arguing about small things, there won’t be time to engage positively. Arguing with a child who has attachment issues simply gives them what they want. Distract them by changing the subject. Do unexpected things to make them laugh. Don’t let yourself get wrapped up in an argument that has no end in site. It’s not easy to be playful, loving, accepting, curious, or empathetic when they have gotten you to a place of anger and frustration. So be the adult. Don’t let them take you there.
3) Find things that you really like about your son/daughter and focus on them. Bring to mind positive memories you have shared. Focus on them as people, not their behaviors. Challenge yourself to make positive moments in each day that will create memories to look back on tomorrow.
If you have met me in person you know that I seldom get this right, but I do understand the importance of doing it. It’s not an issue of having the right personality or temperament. It’s about reframing the way you see things, and changing your response to your kids – because it is going to take a long time for them to change, if they ever do.
In conclusion, living with a kid with attachment issue requires living by the principles found in the revised serenity prayer, which I repeat to myself and quote often (even though I’ve never seen it attributed to anyone except “anonymous”):
Lord, give me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change;
The courage to change the person I can;
And the wisdom to know it’s me.
YOU CAN DO IT. Believe you can and start making small changes today.
Showing posts with label attachment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label attachment. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2007
The Teen Attachment Cycle
Anyone who has had pre-adoption training has heard about bonding and the attachment cycle. They have heard about how a baby has a need and expresses that need and how the parent meets the need and trust is developed.
This weekend, amidst the ups and downs of parenting a bunch of teens, I realized that teens and preteens reenact the attachment cycle over and over again with a slight twist. Because their physical needs are now being met, they don’t have to worry about them any more. So instead, they test their attachment every time they make a mistake.
So, the teen or preteen screws up. It can be something small, like manipulating by not telling the truth, or as big as getting arrested. Immediately, they go into a period not accepting responsibility and taking it out on their caregiver. This can take many forms. In my family alone, each person’s response is different. For one, it means sulking and whining. For another it means continuous arguing and not relenting. For another it means blaming me for the way I handled the confrontation. For another it means slamming doors, kicking walls. For another it means getting very angry at the person that reported their wrongdoing. I think you get the picture.
This part of the cycle can last for minutes or for days. It is a relentless unwillingness to accept responsibility, apologize and move on. It takes many forms.
Finally, though, the teen, often when they need something, must rebuild the relationship and move on. So they apologize. And, we forgive. And then they realize, “Hey, they really do love me! They’re not giving up! I didn’t screw up so bad that I can’t be forgiven!” Trust is once again rebuilt and they are calm again . . . until the next time they make a mistake and it starts all over again.
If you have heard the song “We Live” by Superchick you know that the song has a circular melody. It keeps repeating itself just as the pattern of forgiving teens must repeat itself in the lives of adoptive parents.
Those lyrics have been going around and around in my head as I have gone around and around the teen attachment cycle these last days. The key is to not get caught up in the myriad details, but to simply remember that each day is a test.
My kids are saying to me, “will you continue to love me no matter what? Will you accept me even if I don’t please you? Are you really there forever?”
And so just as a new parent dances the dance of attachment with a newborn, we who adopt older children must dance the attachment dance with teens. Just as a new parent is exhausted with the strain of caring for a newborn, we are exhausted with the stress of going through the cycle of blame and hatred day after day. But just as the parent of a newborn cannot get into the mode of blaming a newborn for expressing their need for a clean diaper or a bottle, neither can we get caught up in blaming an adopted teen for expressing their need for unconditional commitment and love. And finally, we cannot have expectations that are too high for our teens just like a parent of a newborn cannot demand, after six months, that the baby start feeding themselves or changing their open diaper.
I don’t know how old a child has to be before they fully believe we will love them forever. I have heard it said that it is double the number of years they lived without a family (thus, an 11 year old will feel like a member of the family when he/she hits 22). But I think for each kid it may be different, and for some people, it may take a lifetime.
For several years I think I was trying to stop the cycle. I was trying to prevent it from beginning by keeping my kids from making mistakes, hoping to avoid the trip around the forgiveness merry go round, especially the blaming, raging part. But I’m coming to realizes that I’d have no more luck getting a newborn to stop needing to be fed and changed.
And so I’ll keep on keeping on, recognizing one more piece of the puzzle that helps me to patiently do an exhausting tasks with results that are long in coming.
And I will remind myself that none of my teens chose to enter the world as a baby that nobody picked up and held. They didn’t choose to have birthparents who were addicted to drugs or alcohol. They didn’t ask to scream and cry and not be cuddled, changed and fed. They simply arrived on this earth like we all did and didn’t get what they should have. And so it’s my responsibility to make it up to them. And what I wasn’t there to do with bottles and clean diapers, I’ll do with enduring their rage and forgiving them again and again until they discover that they are worthy of love and that there is someone committed to them forever.
This weekend, amidst the ups and downs of parenting a bunch of teens, I realized that teens and preteens reenact the attachment cycle over and over again with a slight twist. Because their physical needs are now being met, they don’t have to worry about them any more. So instead, they test their attachment every time they make a mistake.
So, the teen or preteen screws up. It can be something small, like manipulating by not telling the truth, or as big as getting arrested. Immediately, they go into a period not accepting responsibility and taking it out on their caregiver. This can take many forms. In my family alone, each person’s response is different. For one, it means sulking and whining. For another it means continuous arguing and not relenting. For another it means blaming me for the way I handled the confrontation. For another it means slamming doors, kicking walls. For another it means getting very angry at the person that reported their wrongdoing. I think you get the picture.
This part of the cycle can last for minutes or for days. It is a relentless unwillingness to accept responsibility, apologize and move on. It takes many forms.
Finally, though, the teen, often when they need something, must rebuild the relationship and move on. So they apologize. And, we forgive. And then they realize, “Hey, they really do love me! They’re not giving up! I didn’t screw up so bad that I can’t be forgiven!” Trust is once again rebuilt and they are calm again . . . until the next time they make a mistake and it starts all over again.
If you have heard the song “We Live” by Superchick you know that the song has a circular melody. It keeps repeating itself just as the pattern of forgiving teens must repeat itself in the lives of adoptive parents.
We live, we love, we forgive and never give up
Cuz the days we are given are gifts from above
And today we remember to live and to love
Those lyrics have been going around and around in my head as I have gone around and around the teen attachment cycle these last days. The key is to not get caught up in the myriad details, but to simply remember that each day is a test.
My kids are saying to me, “will you continue to love me no matter what? Will you accept me even if I don’t please you? Are you really there forever?”
And so just as a new parent dances the dance of attachment with a newborn, we who adopt older children must dance the attachment dance with teens. Just as a new parent is exhausted with the strain of caring for a newborn, we are exhausted with the stress of going through the cycle of blame and hatred day after day. But just as the parent of a newborn cannot get into the mode of blaming a newborn for expressing their need for a clean diaper or a bottle, neither can we get caught up in blaming an adopted teen for expressing their need for unconditional commitment and love. And finally, we cannot have expectations that are too high for our teens just like a parent of a newborn cannot demand, after six months, that the baby start feeding themselves or changing their open diaper.
I don’t know how old a child has to be before they fully believe we will love them forever. I have heard it said that it is double the number of years they lived without a family (thus, an 11 year old will feel like a member of the family when he/she hits 22). But I think for each kid it may be different, and for some people, it may take a lifetime.
For several years I think I was trying to stop the cycle. I was trying to prevent it from beginning by keeping my kids from making mistakes, hoping to avoid the trip around the forgiveness merry go round, especially the blaming, raging part. But I’m coming to realizes that I’d have no more luck getting a newborn to stop needing to be fed and changed.
And so I’ll keep on keeping on, recognizing one more piece of the puzzle that helps me to patiently do an exhausting tasks with results that are long in coming.
And I will remind myself that none of my teens chose to enter the world as a baby that nobody picked up and held. They didn’t choose to have birthparents who were addicted to drugs or alcohol. They didn’t ask to scream and cry and not be cuddled, changed and fed. They simply arrived on this earth like we all did and didn’t get what they should have. And so it’s my responsibility to make it up to them. And what I wasn’t there to do with bottles and clean diapers, I’ll do with enduring their rage and forgiving them again and again until they discover that they are worthy of love and that there is someone committed to them forever.
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