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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 a solemn, unhappy looking kid. Multiple adoptive families very kindly checked in on her as we waited. Out of all the pictures taken, we got ONE smiling picture. I was so afraid she’d resist attaching and/or have a very unhappy personality.
None of that was true. She came to us at 20 months of age and looked just like her pictures for 3 days. Then she started clinging to me and smiling and cuddling and and begging to be picked up and just being a sweetheart. She had a wonderful transition and now at age 5 she continues to be an optimist with a very happy heart.
Whatever your child looks like in pictures, I would strongly encourage you to be prepared to begin attachment parenting as soon as he or she comes home. Plan to carry him a lot if he is age 3 or younger. If he is older than that, plan activities that will keep him very close in those first months home. Feed your child goodies, rock him, tickle him, and laugh and play on the floor with him every day.
It is wonderful to get pictures of your child as you wait for him to come home. You may indeed get a window into the kind of person that he or she is. But don’t worry too much if your child looks sad. An orphanage, even a good one, is a tough place for a young child to be, and it is perfectly normal if your child looks less than happy at times. Soon enough your child will be home, and then you can learn more about the kind of person he really is.
More about attachment
Jump-starting attachment
Is bonding happening?
Pushing past rejection
In the referral picture and all the pictures traveling families took for me, my daughter never smiled. But once I met her in person and have brought her home, she is the most smiley, happy kid I have ever seen.
We are adopting a (roughly) 1.5-year-old girl and her older brother. We probably have two dozen pictures of our daughter taken by our agency and traveling families, and she is not smiling in a single one of them. I have been worried about her- is there something *really* wrong with her? Is she just absolutely miserable? Does this mean she’ll have major attachment issues? This blog entry was very reassuring. Thank you!
There can be many reasons why our kids look the way they do in their pictures.
In addition to being in a new and perhaps frightening environment (that is especially if the photos are taken shortly after arrival at the orphanage), these first picture taking sessions are likely to be the first time our children have seen a camera. All of the many pictures we received of our son, from the agency and from traveling parents showed a very serious often crying little boy. He was reportedly a very serious little guy and had great stranger anxiety. I was concerned about the reports, but not the pictures. I could somehow see in some of the pictures that behind that sad little face there was a great giggle waiting to burst out. Happily I was right. He bonded fairly quickly and very well. And now he is the life of the party, no longer serious. Well ok that is unless I say no to something like say…jumping as high as he can on the furniture or pulling the piano bench to the middle of the floor and standing up on it and calling mommy come quick look (DS name) with a huge smile on his face, then he’s your typical 2 year old who hasn’t gotten his own way
I echo Mary on the attachment parenting. I wore our son 4 to 6 hours a day when he first arrived, and he is still co-sleeping. Also limiting activities and changes are important as well. For each of our kiddos (3 from Korea, 1 from Ethiopia) we’ve kept things on a very restricted schedule for about a month. I did not leave the house for a month, DH took the girls to ballet and piano. Other than that there were no comings or goings. We homeschool and DH’s office is at home, so we had very few changes to our daily life as we all got to know each other. I really think this ”
“cocooning” is very important.
I would also mention that our son from Korea was a happy, smiley little guy until you got the camera out and then he became Mr. Sobersides. I remember following him around the house taking picture after picture trying to capture his smile. Sometimes, I’d have to tickle him to get the smile on camera. He just plain did not like his picture taken.
So there are many reasons our children look sad, besides that fact that in many of the pictures they probably are, especially if as I said the pictures we receive are taken shortly after arrival.
Every picture we received of my brother was of him frowning or red faced from crying moments before the picture was taken. We even got video of him screaming during a routine exam. When we went to pick him up at the orphanage he screamed every time he saw us. My mother and I were scared, the plane ride was going to be a long one. He fell asleep on the plane and slept most of the way. Once home he attached to my father, my father had to skip work for nearly a month because he would cry and scream when he left him. After a little work and a lot of patience my brother now has a really close bond with us. He was 16 months when he came home. He is now 12 and is completely content in his family situation, I just tried to put myself in his situation, how scary to be abandoned and put in an institution. It is enough to make anyone sad, it also makes one thankful for a loving secure environment.