Attachment Injury--the Dos and Don'ts

I talked about the power of yes earlier.  It is crucial to kids’ development to receive innumerable yeses.  While meeting that need, we must monitor exactly who gives out those yeses.  Getting a yes from anyone and everyone doesn’t serve the kids well. On the contrary, it actually causes harm.

We are fearfully and wonderfully complicated creatures, praise be to God!  As such, no part of us functions in isolation—and there are many parts to us.  Kids need those yeses to develop cognitively, emotionally, and socially.  However, forming strong, healthy attachments is just as imperative. 

Kids from hard places often sustain significant and multiple attachment injuries.  Some are injured to the extent that they stop seeing people and relationships as valuable (because they are unreliable).  Instead, they see people as tools to get what they need—or want, but that’s another post for another day. 

It is easy to see how this happens. Kids go to school and daycare where every adult is there to respond to the kids’ needs.  Both places—daycares to a greater degree—have a high turnover rate.  The kids are trained to listen to and receive help from any adult.  Add social workers to the mix and consider how we tell foster kids to get into a car with the new social worker (a stranger) who will take them to see their parents.  I remember with every foster placement we had losing count of the social workers. How wacky is that?! 

In addition, kids from hard places don’t often attend family functions where the parents are the sole caregivers in a sea of ‘other’ adults.  Think about birthday parties, libraries, children's museums, and places of worship. Because of this, foster kids can lose the ability to distinguish the significance between adults.  When they don’t have a steadfast set of adults who are only there for them, there’s no wonder.

Autumn starts with too many Halloween events where kids literally wander around taking candy from strangers. Next, there are a plethora of Santa visits where kids are told to sit on the laps of men they do not know and tell them their deepest wishes.  Foster kids are often enrolled in extra programs like WIC, therapies, services, and medical screenings.  That means more strangers are asking personal questions and conducting exams (with the requisite piece of candy at the end of every meeting).

This doesn’t even touch on family/home life, where strangers are primary caregivers.  Strangers doing baths and bedtime routines.  Strangers doing breakfast. Strangers, with their different smells, different voices, different food…  Strangers meeting the need for comfort and affection—or not. And who knows how long this place will be?

It makes perfect sense that over time a kid would think that all adults are there to serve them.  Understandably, kids from hard places have a weird sense of entitlement.  It also follows that they wouldn’t dare attach to any particular adult, but still be happy to get a much-needed hug and gift from one, without bothering to learn that adult’s name or caring if they meet again.

This is when kids learn to use affection as a commodity and develop masterful manipulation skills.  These behaviors are cultivated to survive but can become ingrained and intensely difficult to undo even when they find a safe and stable environment.

To protect children from a diagnosis like RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder), we must help them know who their adults are.  And it is important for other adults to consistently direct the kids to their primary adults for all their needs.  This is tough.  The kids are sweet and huggable. Their stories inspire compassion. Their reactions to even little gifts are phenomenal; who wouldn’t want that hit of dopamine?  But true love does what is best for the other, and what is best for kids from hard places is to heal from attachment injuries.  And that is done by letting them know they have special adults who belong to them above everyone else. 

What does this look like day-to-day? You don’t have to push them away or do anything that feels like rejection.  Gentle redirection with open body language builds appropriate connections without undermining the attachments growing in the new family.

Ø  Showing joy with smiles and high-fives when you see kids from hard places. 

Ø  Limiting tangible gifts.  This helps them see you as a person with value in your presence, rather than what you bring.

Ø  Sitting a child next to you rather than on your lap.

Ø  Affirming a need and stating that their adult would be happy to meet it.  “Wow! You drank all your water. Nicely done. I know Mommy would love to get you more if you're still thirsty.”

Ø  Consistently and visibly acknowledging parents as authority.  “You want to go outside? What does Daddy say about that?”

Ø  The best thing to do is check in with parents privately for guidance.

I wish I had known this before. When I loved other people’s foster and adopted kids, I didn’t know.  I learned the most by watching an informed friend relate to my daughters with astounding love and astonishing wisdom.  I hadn’t even noticed what she was doing until she mentioned it when she checked in with me.  She had never given them food or drink, never helped with a shoe or jacket!  She managed to use exceeding grace in directing them my way for everything. These subtle nudges underscored for my kids appropriate ways to relate to us as parents and to other trusted-but-secondary adults in their lives.