Attachment and Orphanages
Today I took Marie to the Denver Childrens Hospital's International Adoption Clinic to have her assessed for attachment issues and sensory integration issues. A little background - I did a lot of reading online and off on adoption issues such as attachment before we adopted Marie. Then, after the adoption, I focused on parenting books for a long while. Everything seemed to be going well attachment wise. Then about 6 months ago I started back to work and also started reading some online adoption groups at the same time. Which lead me to today - worry about attachment and sensory integration. Before I started reading all those groups again I had a little tiny worry about some things Marie was doing, after reading them for 6 months I had full blown worry. I kept doing all the things I had read were the best way to create attachment but these behaviors that worried me weren't changing. And to be a "good" mom obviously I needed to take care of it now before it bacame a big issue years down the road :)
Now Marie isn't doing anything on the disorder side of the spectrum but just some little things, like going up and hugging complete strangers when we're on vacation or turning to the closest person instead of me sometimes when she was hurt, that worried me. So I decided to see some professionals and hopefully set my worries at rest. And it did, thank goodness.
The interesting thing though, and the reason I'm posting this, is what the specialist told me. It was something I had not heard before in all my reading. She said that Attachment Theory is mostly based on the US system of foster care and doesn't really take into account orphanage learned behavior.
So a child in foster care, especially one who's been in multiple placements, is a child who had multiple connections and then had them broken. Then if that child does not connect to their current primary caretaker and instead will go up to anybody, that's attachment disorder because there is no connection with anybody and no attempt to connect. They've learned that connection hurts so they don't do it.
But for a child who grew up in an orphange, it's actually a connecting behavior to go up to anybody because in the orphanage setting that is what gets you connection with your caretakers. So in this case, the child is actively trying to connect when going up to strangers vs. the foster child who is no longer trying to connect. A big difference as far as attachment goes.
And for a child like mine who shows attachment both to me and my husband but also will go up to anybody, then she has merely not yet given up a behavior that worked for her in the past. She is trying connect in both the new ways and the old ways and hasn't learned to give up the old ways yet. In Marie's case the psycologist also pointed out that based on my description, Marie really only falls back in the old ways when she's tired or stressed. To me this is even more proof that she really is attached correctly but just has some behaviors that were adaptive but aren't anymore because all kids tend to regress in those kinds of situations.
So in this case, it's my job as parent to teach her better ways of connecting with strangers rather than focusing on attachment which is what I had been doing. This is a big aha for me. After I would see her doing these behaviors, I was spending more time with her to "attach", more holding time, more eye contact, more attention. What I wasn't doing was pulling her back as I saw her heading to a stranger or suggesting other ways to show she was interested in someone, like talking to them, shaking their hand, or asking them to play. This is a huge change in viewing the situation that I believe will create a huge change in my (and her) behavior. A very positive result for something I had been worried about.
Now Marie isn't doing anything on the disorder side of the spectrum but just some little things, like going up and hugging complete strangers when we're on vacation or turning to the closest person instead of me sometimes when she was hurt, that worried me. So I decided to see some professionals and hopefully set my worries at rest. And it did, thank goodness.
The interesting thing though, and the reason I'm posting this, is what the specialist told me. It was something I had not heard before in all my reading. She said that Attachment Theory is mostly based on the US system of foster care and doesn't really take into account orphanage learned behavior.
So a child in foster care, especially one who's been in multiple placements, is a child who had multiple connections and then had them broken. Then if that child does not connect to their current primary caretaker and instead will go up to anybody, that's attachment disorder because there is no connection with anybody and no attempt to connect. They've learned that connection hurts so they don't do it.
But for a child who grew up in an orphange, it's actually a connecting behavior to go up to anybody because in the orphanage setting that is what gets you connection with your caretakers. So in this case, the child is actively trying to connect when going up to strangers vs. the foster child who is no longer trying to connect. A big difference as far as attachment goes.
And for a child like mine who shows attachment both to me and my husband but also will go up to anybody, then she has merely not yet given up a behavior that worked for her in the past. She is trying connect in both the new ways and the old ways and hasn't learned to give up the old ways yet. In Marie's case the psycologist also pointed out that based on my description, Marie really only falls back in the old ways when she's tired or stressed. To me this is even more proof that she really is attached correctly but just has some behaviors that were adaptive but aren't anymore because all kids tend to regress in those kinds of situations.
So in this case, it's my job as parent to teach her better ways of connecting with strangers rather than focusing on attachment which is what I had been doing. This is a big aha for me. After I would see her doing these behaviors, I was spending more time with her to "attach", more holding time, more eye contact, more attention. What I wasn't doing was pulling her back as I saw her heading to a stranger or suggesting other ways to show she was interested in someone, like talking to them, shaking their hand, or asking them to play. This is a huge change in viewing the situation that I believe will create a huge change in my (and her) behavior. A very positive result for something I had been worried about.
posted by Lael | 1:43 PM
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