Lauri over at Adoptive Parenting has a knack for asking great questions about adoptive parenting that get me just itching to share. Today she mentioned that she recently wrote a letter to family asking them to back off a little in the affection department with her child, as she has recently been seeing some signs that her daughter needs to be better attached to mom and dad before branching out. This reminded me of a similar situation with one of my children and I wrote the following reply.

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Hi Lauri,

I read the first paragraph of this post via bloglines and knew I had to read more, because it just flooded back old memories of the attachment process with one of my children. Several times I thought he was finally well attached and gave him a little more leeway, parented a little more 'casually' (like I would a bio child) for awhile, and several times I saw the regression in behavior that made me realize he was not yet quite as as settled as I had hoped. It was more than a year of seesawing, up-and-down behavior, with him doing better, and then worse, before he finally got to the stage of true solid attachment.

All that to say that I wanted to write because I remember how frustrating it was. I just wanted him to be better, so I could treat him normally. I think it would have been easier for me to deal with if I'd had a LONG time in mind to allow for healing. But I kept thinking that ccertainly 3 months, or 6 months, or 9 months would be enough, when really it took probably more like 18 months...by the time he'd been home as long as he'd been in Korea, he was well settled in. (He came home at 20 months.)

Anyway, I just wanted to encourage you to keep at it. All along I've thought you have excellent mom-instincts. And this letter you sent to your family, however difficult it was to write, just proves in my mind once again that you're on the right track to getting your daughter well attached.

All the best,
Mary