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I have a high school friend who will be bringing home her first child on December 22nd. She leaves for China in just a few days to meet the daughter that she has been waiting for for over three years. I can’t imagine what is going through her head right now and I also can’t imagine what is going through her father’s heart…his first granddaughter.
Oh boy!
What to do about that!
When we brought AJ home we were lucky enough to be six hours away from our family. Lucky enough you say? Yep! We were so exhausted that we did not want any hoopla, anyone meeting us at the airport, or anyone to dote on AJ at our house. But, I know that others feel differently.
AJ is a totally different kid than some of you adopted so I will give you what we did and then I want to hear from you…so that my friend can get some ideas too.
AJ's Attachment and Bonding Tools for Family and Friends
Please read this before entering the house.
To help facilitate AJ's attachment and bonding we ask that you please
follow the following rules when visiting and playing with AJ over the
next few months. The premise behind this is to show AJ that Mom and
Dad are the PRIMARY caregivers and will fulfill ALL of his needs
ALL of the time.
1. Please do not hug, kiss, or pick up AJ. If he approaches
you please reciprocate and then send him back to mom or
dad. (In other words, don't reject him but send him on to
mom or dad)
2. Please do not let him sit on your lap to play. He may
sit next to you and play or read a story.
3. Please do not give AJ food or drinks.
4. Please do not change his diaper or take him to the potty.
5. Please do not speak loudly, make sudden movements, or speak
very close to his face, as this may frighten him.
6. Please limit visits to 10-15 minutes. We know you want to meet him
and spend time with him, but everything is so overwhelming to him
right now. There WILL be plenty of time.
We appreciate your help with all of this. We know some of these
will be hard to follow but ultimately
it is for AJ's well-being, not ours. In ten years we
want to look back and say that we are glad we took the advice
of our attachment therapist not be kicking ourselves because we didn't.
Ultimately, we had friends and family who were very upset with us for these guidelines. But, it was not about them; it was about AJ. We limited AJ’s world for a long time and to be honest, I would not have done it any other way.
Readers, what would you suggest she do? What worked for you?
997 days ago
Laura, please feel free to pass it on. We did fear the reaction from our friends and family but what mattered most was not their reaction but AJ’s reaction.
We had friends try to pick him up and get mad when we told them not to. We even had family members do it right in front of us just to test us. We stood our ground and AJ is in the place he needs to be now (and he had a VERY hard time getting there).
Not all kids will have a difficult time like AJ did but we know we did the right thing for HIM. Once you see your son is doing well with you test it with friends you trust but that don’t have an emotional attachment to him (we did this). He was okay with this and so we knew we could allow more. If he was not okay we knew he would need more time.
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997 days ago
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for this post. We are getting ready to bring our son home and fearing the reaction of our friends/family on attachment….these rules are a GREAT idea to send everyone! THANK YOU!!
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