{"id":23957,"date":"2018-12-27T13:54:19","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T13:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adoption-2020.local\/ask-the-adoption-coach-bonding-with-your-adopted-child\/"},"modified":"2020-12-16T05:58:23","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T13:58:23","slug":"ask-the-adoption-coach-bonding-with-your-adopted-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adoptionnetwork.com\/ask-the-adoption-coach-bonding-with-your-adopted-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask the Adoption Coach: Bonding With Your Adopted Child"},"content":{"rendered":"
Reader: We have 3 biological children and adopted a girl from Ecuador a year ago. Bonding is going slowly. It\u2019s going slower for me than I anticipated, but even worse for the kids. They argue a lot, keep track of others wrongs and annoying habits. They compare almost everything\u2014who has more of this or that. Sometimes they are just plain mean. It goes in both directions, but mostly the bio kids to our new daughter. I have done a lot to make things as equal and \u201cfair\u201d as I can with all 4. I went easy on things in the beginning and didn\u2019t try to force the kids on each other, but after a year nothing is better yet. All of the negativity can really bring the mood in the house down. Any advice?<\/span><\/div>\n
Adoption Coach:
Dear Reader:<\/div>\n
It seems as though your concern is two-fold. One, you are attempting to build a bond with your new daughter. Two, you are struggling to initiate and maintain a bond (and peace!) between your children.<\/div>\n
First, if you haven\u2019t already, find an experienced attachment therapist in your area to work both you and your daughter as well as with your family as a whole. The professional can come into your home and help you create a plan of action, as well as recommend resources, activities, and therapies that will promote healthy bonding. You might research and consider implementing attachment parenting practices such as co-sleeping, child-wearing, adoptive breastfeeding, and skin-to-skin contact. Attachment parenting practices can be tweaked to fit the needs and age of your child. The practice of hibernating, where you or your partner take an extended leave from work and focusing on family-bonding, might be an option worth considering, as well.<\/div>\n
As a mother of three close-in-age children, I can certainly understand the struggles of \u201ckeeping the peace\u201d in your home among siblings. Let\u2019s look at your situation from your biological children\u2019s point of view. Thomas C. Atwood and Jayne E. Schooler, authors of The Whole Life Adoption Book: Realistic Advice for Building a Healthy Adoptive Family, discuss your concerns in their book. The siblings\u2019 struggles may include changes in birth order, witnessing the emotions of the parents, changes in discipline techniques and household rules, feeling less important, pigeon-holed into supporting their parents\u2019 decision to adopt, explaining adoption to their peers, and particularly, children feel pushed aside and unimportant (98-110). Furthermore, a child who is adopted, and especially transracially adopted, tends to receive a lot of attention from not only friends and family members, but also strangers. An ordinary trip to the store to buy milk can quickly turn into an all-about-the-adopted-child extravaganza. Meanwhile, people coax your other three children to be excited about the new sibling, perhaps asking, \u201cDon\u2019t you just love being a big sister?\u201d or, \u201cAre you mom\u2019s big helper?\u201d<\/div>\n
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So what is a parent to do? Shirley Crenshaw, an attachment therapist with over thirty years of experience, allowed me to interview her when I was writing my book. She offered my readers the following suggestions:<\/div>\n