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My one year old is sick. She’s got the flu, with fever and vomiting. She and I were up rocking quite awhile during the night. While rocking I was thinking how precious it is to be cuddling her. Kids always seem to soak in the cuddles so eagerly while they’re sick. If there is any good side to illness, maybe that is it.
While rocking I also got to thinking about attachment, and how it always feels so natural to rock a sick child. During normal times, the busyness of life can sometimes get in the way of cuddles. But illness forces life to screech to a halt and make time for nurturing.
Maybe if we thought of newly arrived kids as sick in a way, or at least emotionally fragile, it would be easier and more natural for us to make cuddling high priority. When you think about it, actually what newly arrived kids are doing is recuperating from a heart wound.
In the best case scenario, they are grieving someone who cared for them before they came to us. In the worst case scenario they haven’t yet gotten the chance to fall in love with anyone, and desperately need the chance to fall in love for the first time.
No matter what the exact circumstance, every newly arrived child needs that extra-special nurturing, that extra grace in the face of bad moods, just as if they are recoving from the flu. If we make nurturing high priority in the first months home, their heart-recovery will be ever so much faster.
