Hi everyone!
Julia and I have gone through a rough time this summer, but we are coming out the other end, and coming out in better shape than we went in. To those who don't know, my husband and Julia's beloved Daddy died in July after receiving a heart transplant in March. I was worried that this sadness could reverse all the attachment work we have done, but that was not at all the case. Julia seems stronger in our relationship, she talks about taking care of me, and she has turned to me to talk about her grief and to cry when she misses Daddy too much. If I understood what we did together to bring this about, I would write the book, but alas, it is the result of a year and a half of attachment therapy, great friends and support, and luck. Julia is also enjoying school for the first time ever, and boy, is that wonderful. She still has lots of challenges but her progress this summer has been miraculous. I am very grateful.
Thanks to everyone on and off this group who wrote to me with thoughts of sympathy and support. Every email and message helped me through a very dark time.
This fall I have enrolled in UW's MCH LEND program which provides interdisciplinary and disciplinary leadership training for graduate students and community professionals to improve systems of care that promote the prevention of disabilities and assure access to services for children with neurodevelopmental and related disabilities and their families. Classes are held at the Waisman Center and as a trainee, I have access to many, many incredible researchers, scholars, and clinicians.
As part of my program, I have to develop an individual leadership project which I will work on for the year. I am interested in doing work on attachment and the behaviors of children who have failed to attach to a primary caregiver in the early days of their lives. So far, that is all I have. I am looking for idea to flesh out this project, and thought I'd use some of the adoption related yahoo groups that I am a part of as a resource.
And so,
What would you like to know about the lack of attachment?
How would you like the information?
What have you done to encourage attachment with your child that is slightly out of the box?
What behaviors did you child do that led to faulty diagnoses which later were revealed as attachment issues?
What other questions should I be asking?
I am going to post this to a few groups, so forgive me if you see this a few times.
Thanks for taking the time to think about these issues. I hope that I can be of some use to our adoptive community and the beautiful children we bring into our families.
1 comment:
Hi Suzanne,
I had to post anonymous, but it's me Becky Rose - Jenae's mom. I have an attachment question. I'd like to know to figure out that issues and symptoms are indeed attachment related. Oftentimes symptoms seem to present themselves as other various disorders. Or does it matter? Is it best to just treat the symptoms, with the knowledge that the underlying cause could be attachment? Because my kids are adopted, sometimes I think I jump to the attachment conclusion too quickly.
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