We Need to Chat...
That sounds a bit serious huh? Well, I admit it may seem a little bit like click-bait, BUT this is in fact a really important note to all of our family/friends that we do life with on a regular basis, or even if you see us out and about. It may seem a bit lengthy, but we hope you will take the time to read and learn how you can best help us lay a strong foundation for our sweet boy to become a well-adapted part of our family.
We also invite each of you to ask questions. We really want everyone to feel comfortable to do so, and to not be afraid to interact or approach us once home (the extrovert in me will NEED this!).
What we hope you’ll learn from this note is what the transition period is going to look like for Team Twenty one – and how you can help! Please note, that these are not our original thoughts, but are the combination of research, our medical/social worker support team, and many, many families who have walked the road of adoption before us.
Once home, we need to implement specific parenting approaches to help encourage a strong, attached, emotionally/spiritually healthy family member. Our sweet Judah will need to learn what family is, and that we are his parents -- not something natural to a child raised in an orphanage, with many, many caregivers over their lifetime. His primary need we will focus on is making sure he feels nurtured and safe, and this may look very different than how you’ve parented or what you think “right” parenting looks like.
We are certain that God’s design of our hearts and minds is perfect. His heart for us so often displayed in a family’s love for each other — and the children’s natural trust of their parents. However, for many children raised thus far in institutions, this natural trust has never been established and will take more time to form between our child and us beginning the day we meet him.
Attachment between a parent and child occurs over time when a baby has a physical or emotional need, communicates that need, and a primary caretaker meets the need and soothes the child. This repeats between a parent and child over and over to create trust within the child for that parent; the baby is hungry, cries in distress, mom nurses and calms the baby – which teaches him/her that this person is safe and can be trusted. By God’s very design, an emotional foundation is laid in the tiniest of babies, which will affect their learning, conscience, growth and future relationships. The security provided by parents will ultimately give children a trust for and empathy towards others.
Children who come home through adoption have experienced interruptions in this typical attachment process. The loss of a biological mother and father at an early age can be a major trauma on their little hearts. For our son, he is about to experience the loss of familiar and comforting caretakers as well as the sights, smells, and language of his birth country. When he comes home, he will be overwhelmed by this loss. Everything around him will be new and he will need to learn not just about a new environment, but also about love and family. His world will turn upside down. He may struggle with feeling safe and secure and may lack the ability to trust that we will meet his needs.
The good news is that, with God’s help, we can now, as his forever parents, rebuild attachment and help him heal from these emotional wounds. The best way for us to form a parent/child bond is to be the only ones to hold, cuddle, instruct, soothe and feed him. As this repeats between us, he will be able to learn that parents are safe to trust and to love deeply. We are, essentially, recreating the newborn/parent connection.
We want to rebuild the child/parent relationship — and we really need everyone’s help and support as we do this. The best way for him to see us as his parents will be for us to be the only ones to meet his needs and cries for a time. (Don’t worry — this won’t be forever! We will very much need family and close friends to feed him his favorite snacks in time!) Because we are bringing home a little one who is already walking and talking, our child may walk up to you at gatherings and ask you for help with something, for something to eat or drink or want to just snuggle. In the orphanage setting, any caregiver might meet his need, but at first we need to be the ones meeting his needs. For that reason, you can help us by redirecting our little one to mommy and daddy if he asks you for something. Over time he will see us as his primary caregivers, and he will learn that we are safe to trust. After he has a healthy relationship established with us, he will be able to branch out to other, healthy relationships.
At first, it may seem we have a lot of structure, boundaries and close proximity to our child. Please know that these decisions are prayerfully and thoughtfully made choices based on immense amounts of research and instruction from trusted adoption mentors. We will be doing what we believe is best to help him heal from those interruptions in attachment as effectively as possible. We don’t know an exact timeline on what this will look like or at what point we will say that he is “attached” to us. This takes time and every child is different. We hope and pray that this transition will be smooth, but given the huge amount of new sights, people, and experiences awaiting him back home, we don’t know what to expect.
Why are we telling you all of this? Because you will actually play an awesome and vital role in helping our son settle in, heal, and lay a foundation for the future. There are a few areas in which you can help us:
The first is to set physical boundaries. It will help us immensely if adults limit what is typically considered normal, physical contact with our new one. This will (for a while) include things like holding, excessive hugging and kissing. It is totally fine to let him hug you, but please don’t pick him up or hold him on your lap. Children from orphanage settings are prone to attach too easily to anyone and everyone – which hinders the important, primary relationship with parents. Waving, blowing kisses or high fives are perfectly appropriate and welcomed! He should know that the people with whom he interacts are our trusted friends.
The second is to be patient and understanding with us as we may hunker down at home for awhile. Children raised in institutional settings are not used to the pace of life we live here always on the go. "Leaving home" for years has meant maybe walking down the hall or going to the small playground gated around the orphanage. We want to ease him into all the changes he will be experiencing from new family, new language and a new home – so our first months we may be limiting our outings closely watching how he handles one change at a time. This is called “cocooning” where you stay at home for a bit – just like a new mom stays home from the hospital after having a newborn. Only our time at home will be with a very much awake preschooler getting to know new foods, new sounds, and new surroundings.
As each new thing becomes comfortable to our child, we will slowly introduce him to new environments. This will not be easy for us as we are very used to being on the go. JG will still have a desire and need for friendship and interaction, so please feel like you can reach out and ask if she needs a play date or outing while we stay home.
We are incredibly blessed to have so many loved ones around us. We couldn’t ask for a better extended family and circle of friends for our sweet Judah. While we are over the moon excited to bring our child home, we are also very nervous – and will need your prayers and help to help us settle in and connect to our new one. Thank you so much for your love and support in this time of growing. We count each of you as such a special part of our family – and we can’t wait for our littlest bear to know and love each of you as much as we do!
Joyfully in Christ,
