In her wonderful book Attaching in Adoption, Deborah Gray gave many great suggestions for helping kids attach well during their first year at home. Here are some of the points she mentions in her book.

Spend lots of time every day nurturing your child

The most important thing you are doing in your child's first year home is building trust. Stay with your child as much as possible. Be sensitive in meeting his needs. Respond quickly when he cries. Bottle-feed, rock to sleep, and make lots of eye contact. Feed him treats. Show your child he can depend on you. ... more

Often when you are helping a new child settle into your family, you will encounter a lot of negativity. You say up. The kid says down. You suggest the red shirt. He prefers the green one-- the one with the hole in it. You remind the child he liked a dish last time you served it. He swears it is the worst poison known to man.

Eventually with consistent, steady consequences for misbehavior and lots of love, opposition does mellow out and kids do heal. However, at the height of the challenging behavior it can be extremely challenging to show smiling eyes and loving actions towards a child who... more

Awhile back a mom was agonizing over her decision to return to work when her newly arrived 6 month old had been home just 4 weeks. Would her baby be able to attach to her in just 4 weeks? How would her absence 8 hours a day affect him?

I think she is smart to be asking these questions. Babies who have been home only four weeks are highly unlikely to have already formed a secure attachment to their parents. They may be beginning to get attached. But a primary caregiver's return to full-time work at this point is likely to seriously slow the attachment process.

I know that some women... more

Someone emailed me recently sharing her concern over the way her toddler looked in his referral pictures. Every picture she got showed him looking forlorn, and she was starting to wonder if the child would be unhappy forever.

As adoptive parents we usually have very little information about the children we are planning to bring into our lives. Because of this, we'll often spend hours looking at the few pictures we get, trying to guess more about our children's character and temperament.

While waiting for our first Ethiopian daughter to come home, we got picture after picture of... more

Our children have been taking swimming lessons for the past few weeks. I spend lesson time keeping an eye on my 3 year old in the baby pool. But I'm also able to watch my four older kids taking their swimming lessons.

Our new girls approached swim lessons with a bit of anxiety, and hung close to me on that first day. But their teacher has done a great job of simplifying and clarifying his instructions. I’ve been pleased to see that they seem to be doing well and enjoying themselves.

But there is another thing I’ve noticed during lessons. Often during the lessons my... more

I've been trying to figure out exactly what parts were the hardest during our first months home with older children. A friend told my husband, "Well, of course you're tired-- you just had twins! They're just 9 and 12." I really appreciated that validation -- no wonder I'd been feeling so frazzled.

For us, the first month wasn't too tough. I was fresh, psyched to give the kids some leeway when it came to behavior, and their ups and downs weren’t as extreme. But by the time month two and month three rolled around, the kids weren't trying to impress us anymore, and their emotions were all over... more

Each time we have brought a new child into our family, I've been very eager to begin the attachment process 'right' and to do everything in my power to help our children attach quickly. With our little ones I usually felt that some progress could be seen fairly quickly.

With our older girls I knew in my head that attachment would take time to grow. But in the first couple months after they came home I still felt a ton of pressure to do things right. I was constantly assessing my tactics. During a movie should I sit right next to a child on the couch, or give her half a couch cushion of space and... more

One of my new daughters has recently begun constantly begging for cookies. I can say no-- or even yes. But 15 minutes later she is begging again, all with big puppy eyes. I asked my husband why he thought she'd begun doing this-- she didn't do it when she first got home.

"Oh, she's just trying to yank your chain", he said. As soon as he said it, I knew he was right. She knows I want her to eat healthy food. So she's decided that constantly begging for junk is a good way to tease me. Of course she also has a big sweet tooth. But the frequency with which she asks borders on obsession.

For... more

Awhile back I found an excellent article talking about the issues adopted kids face in classroom settings, and the difficulty they sometimes have completing projects about their families.

Creating a Classroom for Adopted and Non-Adopted Children is from the September 2006issue of RainbowKids magazine and was written by Elizabeth Hunt.

"I hear this story all the time," says Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York. "A teacher gives a family tree assignment, and she tries to be sensitive telling Johnny, who was adopted, 'You can choose... more

Many children during their first months at home have times of resisting affection or outright rejecting their parent’s touch. Last week one of my daughters had a couple of cranky days, and I found myself hesitating to reach out to her for fear that she would stiffen or reject me. Even a pat on the back or an arm over the shoulder felt risky.

Especially with an older child it can be tempting to give them some 'space'. But I realized after a day or so that my drawing back left her feeling even more alienated from me. No, kids sometimes don't want a parent's touch when they're feeling cranky. And, yes, it can hurt your heart as a parent to have your touch rebuffed.

And... more