I remember when our three children first came home. Not only were we trying to survive some pretty chaotic moods and behaviours as we adjusted to living together, but it also felt like the race to attach was on. During our AEP (Adoption Education Program), we had heard about how most kids coming from foster care would struggle with attachment issues. We listened intently to all the suggestions for how we could create bonds with our children. I took notes with all kinds of ideas of how I could make sure our kids would attach to us.
Once our kids were placed, I worried daily what would happen if our kids didn’t attach to us. I planned all kinds of fun outings to create family bonding, which often went sideways as we didn’t know our kids well enough yet to predict their triggers! I worried that they wouldn’t attach to us as well as their foster parents. I was anxious if my kids seemed to warm up to new people too much. If I didn’t handle a situation well, I worried it would affect how our kids attached. I felt so much pressure. So I kept on trying to make attachment happen.
Six years later, I know that attachment is a thousand little moments that happen along the way. Attachment often happens when you aren’t looking.
Attachment is when you get up with your kids when they are sick in the middle of the night and joke that you are “Puke Patrol” instead of “Paw Patrol”. Attachment is a thousand bedtime hugs, kisses and tickles. It’s when your teenager comes home late at night and tells you about his day sitting on the end of your bed. It’s finally figuring out their favourite meals or creating your family signature dessert (ours is “Wagler Mud Pie”). It’s going sledding with the neighbours when you get your first snow day. It’s family movie night when you laugh at the same scene. It’s that time you broke the tent trailer (yup, that happened). It’s all the times you show up to pick them up after school or daycare every day. It’s when they let you hold them close after bandaging up their scraped knees. It’s audiobooks in the car (we like How to Train your Dragon) or singing along to a favourite song. It’s campfires and s’mores in the summer and forts in the living room in the fall.
Attachment is a thousand little moments good and bad, that weave together to form a family. It is the everyday moments that happen all the time when you are there, day after long day, for your kids.
So, if you are a new family and feeling the pressure to attach, it’s okay to relax. There is so much going on! Your moments will happen… maybe even when you least expect them. Just keep showing up. When they do happen, celebrate them, no matter how small they may seem.
If you’ve been a family for a while now, stop for a minute and look back on your thousand little moments. There have been some highs and lows, haven’t there? But you haven’t given up. Be thankful for how far you’ve come. You are doing an amazing job.
