Having a child is super fun, and generally a pregnancy makes it all right with attachment, but what about when you adopt a child? Is there attachment issues in adoption and what can you do about them? This blog will give you information.
When a child is adopted (internationally) there are several issues the child faces. Not only does the child lose familiar caregivers. The child also loses a familiar place and even a familiar language. Throughout several stages of life, a person who is adopted may suffer from a sense of loss, despite a possibly fine bond with the adoptive family or parents.
It is then important for adoptive parents to give the child space to grieve this loss, and at the same time it is important to use techniques that help the child bond with the new family. It is especially important to be able to be flexible in your parenting style so that the adoptive child feels safe and can bond well with you. This means that at first you interfere a lot with the child and are close to the child, and let this go more and more, until your child is independent, so to speak[1].
Adoption attachment
The mother also attaches to the baby during adoption. A mother begins to attach to her adopted child when she receives a picture of the baby and some kind of description of what she is going to be a mother to. Eventually this transforms in the mother to the feeling of a child as an independent but connected individual[2].
Fathers also influence attachment in adoption (source 1).
In general, adopted children can bond well with adoptive parents. If this does not work well, there may be more to it, such as some trauma. As a parent, it is important to be aware of your child's history before adoption so that you can take that into account in the way you raise them.
Even the problems the mother may have had during pregnancy, such as substance abuse, alcohol abuse or being treated poorly by her environment can make it difficult for the child to bond with the adoptive family. Researchers even indicate that adoptive children may have chaotic attachment styles. That style of attachment, then, cannot really be pigeonholed into a box of different types of attachment.
What is especially important in attachment, whether from your own biological child or your adopted child, is the feeling that the caregiver will protect the child. This is the feeling that your child should receive from you.
Research also shows that the hormones released during pregnancy, childbirth and the period afterward are not all determining factors in parent-child bonding. What does determine is routine nurturing and regular social interaction. Then you become the child's psychological parent (source 1).
The self-confidence you have as a mother also affects your child's attachment. Are you confident in your motherhood? Then bonding tends to be good, too. Are you insecure about your motherhood? Then your child may also suffer from insecure attachment (source 1).
With adoptive parents, it is important for attachment that you feel that the child is yours, that you have a right to the child, so to speak, and that the environment also feels that the adopted child is "your" child to have a good attachment. In doing so, it is important that the adoptee accepts the loss of previous caregivers as a significant loss and sees the new adoptive parents as "permanent" parents (source 1).
In addition, good communication between you and your partner (the other adoptive parent) is also important to improve the chances of a successful attachment. Also, there is no harm in asking for help when you feel it is needed. This improves the chances of a successful attachment with your adopted child as well (source 1).
What is interesting is that in successful attachment, the adoptive father is more often a self-employed person or someone working in upper management. The mother's level of education, work and even stress does not affect attachment. Thereby, the probability of success is also higher if you have been in a relationship with the other adoptive parent for a long time.
Rest assured if you adopt an older child, aged between four and seven, even then you can still get a good bonding experience. It just often takes a little longer and builds up gradually. This also goes best with mothers who have a secure attachment style[3].
Influence of adoption attachment later in life
The older a child is at the time of adoption, the more difficult it is to get a good attachment (but not impossible), as the child will have had to say goodbye to people caring for him/her more than once, for example (source 1).
If the child has then also experienced abuse, this can make attachment more problematic.
Later in life, adults who were once adopted may suffer more from insecurity and they may suffer more from loneliness than people who were not adopted. If there are problems in your relationship, they can also make you more insecure about your bonding with your partner in the short term if you have ever been adopted[4].
How hypnosis can help adoptive parents
Hypnotherapy can help adoptive parents and children with emotional problems[5]. For example, as adoptive parents, you may try just too hard or worry just too much, becoming clumsy when trying to solve your child's problems.
Hypnosis can then help you deal with those feelings, which in turn can indirectly have positive effects on your adopted child.
Indications that self-confidence in motherhood, for example, has an effect on bonding with your adopted child can immediately give a good start on where the focus of hypnotherapy can go, which is to build feelings of self-confidence about being a mother of an adopted child.
In addition, you can also get a form of attachment therapy in which you go through the journey from seeing the picture to the moment in the therapy chair again in your mind, so to speak, but with all kinds of positive feelings. Things that went wrong you can then visualize as if they did go right. This can also help you strengthen the bond with your child.
How hypnosis can help adoptive children
In hypnosis, metaphors are often used to make certain things clear. A story about something or someone else being adopted by a loving family can make a child more open to feeling connected to the new adoptive family.
Another metaphor might be, for example, a child sticking all kinds of strings together. Those strings can represent life and the interrupted lifeline in terms of family, but by connecting it together it is still one story and the child can use the string as a kind of metaphor to gain more confidence in the adoptive parents.
How hypnosis can help adopted adults
Finding out later in life that you are adopted can cause a shock to your self-esteem, self-confidence and trust in your fellow man, even many years later. Even then, hypnosis can help you deal with this in a healthy way and be less bothered by it.
With an international adoption - where you may also look very different from your parents - you may also have problems with your self-esteem and social relationships, because your parents may not have been able to overlook problems that come from your different appearance and could not help you properly with them (source 5).
Whether adopted or not, ultimately everyone is their own individual and is responsible for their own lives. By focusing on your own choices and on the future, you can let go of how your past went and that you did not grow up with your biological parents, but with your adoptive parents.
This is something hypnosis can help with, among other things. For example, you can update the story you have about yourself in your head with hypnotherapy so that it is a story that makes you happier.
Want to learn more about how hypnosis works? Then come to the free online master class.
Or register for one of our seminars or trainings.
Sources:
