TwinkleToes’ Attachment
I do not believe that TwinkleToes had ever attached to anyone while in the orphanage. And being that she was almost two years old at adoption, the attachment literature would tell us that attachment with her should have been a nightmare.
But really, it wasn’t hard at all. She did not attach right away, of course – attachment is a process, it doesn’t happen right off the bat. And we had to follow all of the advice about attachment in order to foster it. But as I’ve said before, on a scale of 1 to 10, her attachment issues were about a 1 or a 2.
Understand though, that at 2 years old she wasn’t crawling, wasn’t walking. She didn’t have enough muscle tone to stand up without someone else supporting most of her weight for her. She was shut down for those first few days, so we did everything for her – we fed her with either chopsticks or our fingers or the bottle, we held her, we slept with her, we frequently checked her diaper to see if it needed to be changed (once we realized she would not cry or anything to alert that it needed changing), we offered almost unlimited snacks and food, we bought her clothes and shoes, and we held her or were touching her or in some way interacting with her almost constantly. When we went out we made it clear she was with us, which meant holding or wearing her the vast majority of time. We did get a stroller in GZ, but by then she was great in the stroller. Plus, whoever was not pushing the stroller walked up beside her in the stroller, and often GG walked beside her and held her hand while TT was in the stroller – so even in the stroller she wasn’t ‘alone’, as many babies are if they are being pushed out in front of the rest of the family. My point with this paragraph is to say that we didn’t have to regress her – we could easily treat her like an infant because that is where she was developmentally. With “baby exercises”, lots of activity, and lots of nourishment and calories – she quickly gained muscle tone and was standing and even taking very hesitant steps before long. Also, because she was so malnourished we were supposed to keep up with the formula two to four times a day (four at first, but just two later on – but always with supplements in the formula) on top of feeding her meals at the table when we ate as a family. That also played in our favor, as we kept the bottle feeding going for over a year.
So when I say it was a breeze, that there were no issues, that doesn’t mean we didn’t have to pay attention to attachment. It just means that it was easy for us to do all of the things we were supposed to do, and that everything worked out really well. Also, I believe that having GG with us helped TT’s transition a great deal. GG was obviously looking to us for her basic needs, and she was happy, and she was bouncing around all over the place, and she was very accepting of her new “baby” sister. It seemed like that made it okay for us to take care of TT, since GG seemed to have survived our care. It’s hard to explain, but TT’s facial expressions as she watched GG bouncing around like tigger, and as she watched us caring for GG, told a story. Whether we got the story right? Who knows. But that was the feeling I got.
We also did the sign language thing with TwinkleToes, and she actually got into it a great deal more than GlitterGirl did (though it took her a lot longer for her to understand we were showing her how to talk with her hands – something like two months, IIRC). GG just wanted to know the basics in order to communicate the necessities, but once TT got started, she wanted to know words for everything. She’d point to something and do her hand to the side and shrug her shoulders to ask how to say it with her hands. I found a few sites online that had ASL dictionaries, so I could type in a word and get the sign. As a result, we know the signs for most animals (the penguin is hilarious), and most activities, and lots of really odd things now. She hasn’t signed in forever, but while we were using it, it was once again priceless to know what was going on in her little head before she could verbally tell us.
Attachment is a process – where some would have said she was attached when we came home, in reality I know that she had no choice but to be somewhere at the start of the attachment process at that point in time because she was dependent upon us for all of her needs. She wasn’t attached completely yet, though the process had certainly gotten a good start at that point in time. Six months later I think she was pretty well attached, and certainly a year later I feel that she was firmly (and securely) attached.
It is my belief, at this point in time, that TwinkleToes has formed a healthy and secure attachment to us. Next year we may see issues surface that need to be dealt with, I understand that this is an ongoing process, but as of right now, other than continuing to do all of the “right things”, I think we are in a very good place with her attachment.
January 15th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
We kept our daughter on formula too. The others that travelled with us had the US doctors tell the parents that the kids don’t need formula after a year old BUT that is for babies that have been on formula or breast fed for the first years already not an baby from the orphanage.
NOTE: many asians are lactose intolarant or have a dairy allergy. We got a baby with a dairy allergy who had been on a watered down formula. When we came home we put her on Nutramigen. She had 4 bottles a day from 11 months until 2 years. Then 2 a day from 2 yrs to 3 yrs. Now in her 3rd year she gets a night cap. She is now very healthy. She is also taking a daily vitamin.
Don’t rush to cows milk because it it cheaper. Your child needs the extra vitamins in the formula.
January 15th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
I’m going to China on 1-29-10 to pick up my daughter. She is 15 months old and resides at the orphange. She has never been in foster care. I had a question about grief and attachment. I’ve read that the children suffer a grief from the abandonment from their birthparents and then from their orphanage family. I understand the grief from the orphange but not from their birthparents at this young age. My daughter was abandoned as a newborn (most likely the day she was born). I can understand as she gets older and develops an understands about her birthparents abandoning her and have grief but how does a newborn know any different since she was placed in the orphanage at age 1 day? I would think she wouldn’t know anything else. Is it a primal grief? Thanks, Alison.
January 15th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
“Attachment is a process” – thank you for pointing that out. I cringe when I hear or read APs say that their child was “attached” immediately. I just saw “Adopted:The Movie” and the couple claimed their DD attached to the dad in 3 days. Huh? (I’m not trying to pick on them but it was like nails on chalkboard for me to hear that.)
We have a child who is attaching well, as far as we can tell (she’s not very verbal yet). My DD was in foster care, which helped, but she also needed a lot of time & care to transfer the attachment she had for her foster mother to me (and DH). She wouldn’t call me “mama” or let us kiss her for a very long time, despite relying on us for all her basic needs and being with me 24/7 for the first 3 months. I don’t think allowing someone to feed, hold, bathe or clothe you means you are attached to them, and I wonder if some AP’s mistake this for attachment. For me, it was so obvious that she wasn’t attaching immediately because of that, which let us know we needed to appreciate the fact that it’s a process, not a one-step event.
RQ, did you have setbacks with either girl when you returned to work and/or changed a caregiver? Our DD started to have night terrors on the first day we left her for more than one hour alone at daycare. She was happy to go there during the daytime (after a long transition) but clearly it was getting to her and being expressed at night. We also had a major setback when I had to leave her with a new-ish babysitter for 2 days when she was sick. She really regressed quite a bit and was expressing a lot of anger & fear. We’re working hard to get her back on track after that.
Thanks for all the attachment discussion – so helpful!
January 15th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Our girls have never stayed with anyone except our daytime caregiver, and my parents. Well, and school.
Before I went back to work I went to the daytime caregiver’s and hung out with them (GG, and then years later, TT) for a week, so that I was there with them, and they could get used to being there. The next week I took them and stayed, then left for a little while, then came back, then went into another room and read, then came back. I was in and out, so they could see me leaving and coming back. A lot. The third week, I went back to work.
I do not believe I have ever taken them somewhere new (to them) and just dropped them off.
When TT started Pre-k I did the same thing, hanging out in the pre-k room until TT was okay with me leaving. I sat back in the corner with a book and didn’t intrude on anything, she just needed to know I was close until she got familiar with everything.
Kindergarten has a “phase in” period where the parents come to school with the kids for a few days – the final day they take the parents in another room for a three hour orientation session (so the kids get to be without mom, but she isn’t too far away), and then the next day you bring the child and drop them off and leave. GG did great with it, and I’m sure TT will as well, since she already knows the teacher from seeing her around when we’re there for GG’s activities.
GG is older now and she sometimes spends the night with friends. But it’s her choice to go, and she’s got her friend there, and she knows either the friend’s mom or dad a little (because we all have to volunteer at school).
alisoninillinois – just because they may not consciously remember it, does not mean it’s not part of who they are. Babies actually “attach” while still in the womb, they recognize the voices of those they hear even before they are born. And then all of that is disrupted and they are with strangers, where the care is likely not very good at all. That original loss can greatly affect some babies later in life, while for some others it doesn’t seem to be a factor later in life.
Think of it like a program in a computer that runs in the background instead of the foreground. That first loss “programs the software” a certain way. And then when another loss happens, it just compounds whatever issues are already there.
I think it still affects GG a great deal, but it doesn’t seem to be as much of a big deal with TT. But, TT is just four, we won’t really know for sure for a while.
January 15th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
OH, there was regression when they were sick. Sometimes I could stay home with them, a few times (when they weren’t that sick) my mom took care of them for me. No matter though, when they were sick we saw regression.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Interesting post. You say TT was unattached, but then also that she shut down, which indicates that she was grieving for SOMETHING. So she may have had a smidgen of attachment lurking within her.
I have mentioned before that my daughter was unattached when we adopted her, and I mean REALLY unattached. She did not shut down, she did not grieve. She came into our lives with a smile and laughter. She spent the first afternoon with us standing in a Pak n Play, rolling with laughter at my two little boys (they came with us on the adoption trip) and inciting them to cut up even more.
For months, she would flirt with anybody, no matter how strange. She didn’t do the avoidant thing that one reads about on the RAD sites. She was happy to hug me and smile at me and make eye contact. But it was shallow. She would do that to anybody.
One of the big problems we had was that, unlike TT, my daughter was way ahead developmentally. She was close to walking when we adopted her, at 10.5 months. She literally could do almost anything for herself, and wanted to. This made it very difficult to do the classic attachment process of encouraging dependency. She did not want to be dependent on anyone for anything. To give a particularly creepy example, at one year of age, she would go get her own clothes – she knew where they were – and try to put them on herself. For at least a year or two, she would not tell anyone if she got hurt, but she would go find the bandaids on her own and try to put one on (and make a big mess in the process).
We are now in the anxious attachment stage, which I think is a huge leap forwards. She runs and hides her face when strangers are around, she gets very upset when I or my husband leaves the house on an errand, and we do endless rounds of “You are mommy dinosaur and I am baby dinosaur and daddy is daddy dinosaur”. But she is still too self-sufficient for her age, and I don’t know what to do about that. You can’t really force a child to be dependent.
January 15th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
RQ, your posts are really helping us figure things out with our dd – age 7. She seems to be going through a hard time now, which I think may be mostly sensory after reading your posts. But then again with a trip to China to get her little sister approaching (we’re dtc 4-11-06), I’m also thinking it might be anxiety over the family dynamic changing, etc. And then there’s the question about whether to take her to China with us especially when she’s having such a hard time with little things and is easily over-stimulated.
Sensory-wise she seems most like Twinkle Toes. She needs extra sensory stimulation to make it through the day. She’s a sensory seeker. She’s been active and restless since the day we got her. This has been an issue in first grade where she is expected to sit and listen or work most of the day — lots of comments about her being wiggly, unable to sit still, etc. These were not issues in kindergarten and preschool, which had many more sensory outlet types of activities. At home we just addressed these issues with more activity, and it seemed to work in the past.
Attachment-wise she seems more like Glitter Girl. She has always needed one of us, mostly me, in the room or nearby. We met these needs because I knew a lot about attachment. There are still a some times where she needs us – first thing in the morning I manage to carry her to the stairs, but no farther and some nights, she’s still like us on the same floor at least when she goes to sleep.
But recently her sensory issues have changed. Things really aggravate her that she only occasionally complained about before – the seams in her socks must be perfect, the clothing must be soft, etc. (more like GG, right?). Everything seems amplified right now.
This week teachers have stopped me in the hall ( My daughter attends school where I teach.) with reports of ‘unusual’ behavior which I am attributing to sensory issues – rocking back and forth, more wiggling, etc. So I have put out OT at school on the case. She’s going to make an observation and make recommendations.
The decision to take her to China still looms. My heart wants her to go see her birth country, experience her sister’s adoption, etc., but my head says that it will all be too much for her sensory-wise, too stimulating, too different — and she won’t be able to handle it right now. Anyone have any insight?
January 15th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
I don’t think TT shut down because she was grieving. I think she shut down because everything was new and little miss control freak was out of her element and wasn’t happy about it so she just completely shut everything out. Remember, she’d already shut down most of her senses as a survival device, shutting down was how she handled things.
January 15th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
These are great discussions and I totally agree about how the early abandonment and then transition to family are BOTH traumas the brain must somehow survive and adapt to it. IMHO–it is a true testament to our children’s resilience that they usually incorporate well into our society and families. Your posts of the last few days remind me how important it is to remember that every child is going to be different in their disposition and development.
My first DD#1 was sharp as a tack and talking away at age 2. We thought nothing of her conversational ability until other parents would comment on it. DD#2 was not even brought home until 2.5 years and had no language at all. In fact, when I met her I have to admit I was TERRIFIED because she seemed so much like a little animal instead of a toddler. Isn’t that just awful to admit? I feel horrible remembering this.
I am surprised by all that I was willing to do to teach DD#2 about having a family and what it means to be a little kid. I am determined that she will be able to develop to her potential what ever that might be. It sure is a journey and not a destination! RQ and other parents have written a lot to help us, otherwise, I would have been pretty clueless.
January 15th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
I just wanted to share a bit on this. We’ve been home 17 months with our little girl and she really didn’t grieve in any outward way for the first year – at least not in the way that many posters here describe. That said we have have a few interesting episodes where I sense it is related to grieving or attachment. To keep this short my advice to a friend who is about to bring home a 12 month old is that no matter what – never forget that our little ones have been through some serious trauma and it can manifest in so many ways. One thing is certain, I have learned to “double up” on the bonding/attachment/just plain ol’ mama love when ever we’re going thru any kind of change – and I mean any — whether it is a new paint color in the kitchen or a new activity/school. I can never hurt to do this and boy can it help.