The brains of children who are cared for by many people develop differently from those who are nurtured by a limited number, writes SHEILA WAYMAN.
FROM THE moment an adoptive parent embraces a new child, the key challenge is to develop the special bond that will attach them to each other for life.
For birth children it usually happens naturally; in the case of adopted children, previous care experience dictates how difficult it will be to build that parent-child relationship. He or she may have been deprived of intimate nurturing in early life and so have neither the experience nor the skill to bond with the new parents.
“Institutionalisation is almost a guarantee that a child’s early attachment skills and experiences are missing,” says US adoption counsellor Holly van Gulden.
She can spot a child with attachment problems from across the other side of the park. It’s the one who appears as friendly as anything with everybody, happily running up to talk to strangers without as much as a glance back at the parent
This “indiscriminate affection”, which can in a three or four year old appear to carers as being merely outgoing, is symptomatic of a child with problems.
Such behaviour looks very friendly, says van Gulden, but it can interfere with the child-parent bond. “In later life it will mean difficulty holding a relationship, difficulty in depending on family as a young adult or adult, severe acting out behaviour or, for others, internalising behaviour – it’s never good.”
She was in Dublin last weekend to lead a post-adoption workshop organised by Barnardos on the best ways to enhance the parent-child relationship.
Co-director of the Adoptive Family Counselling Centre in Minneapolis, van Gulden trains professionals and parents around the world, and is co-author of books such as The Dance of Attachmentand Real Parents, Real Children: Parenting the Adopted Child.
Even if children have come from very good care with foster parents, they have to be able to transfer that sense of security from one set of parents to another. “Usually parents are able to trigger the memory of the previous caregiver. They may not necessarily smell like them, but can trigger the feeling of it,” she says. The attachment then builds much faster.
Research in recent years has shown that the brains of children who are cared for by many people develop differently from those who are nurtured by a limited number. But the plasticity of the brain means “we can rebuild the missing skills; it isn’t that the brain is damaged,” she explains.
“Pathways between parts of the brain are very weak without attachment and we need to go back and give them those kinds of experiences between a parent and a child that they didn’t get before.”
Van Gulden advocates that adoptive parents initially do what is called “funnelling” with a new child. This means limiting to about four the number of people who can hold, kiss, feed the child, “so the child begins to get that experience from the parent, especially if they have been in an institution because there they have had multiple carer givers and they develop the capacity to turn to a new adult figure, the next person to feed them.”
She recommends that parents identify a couple of key support people who will be allowed to show physical affection, with permission – “you can go hug grandpa but come to mummy and hug first”.
Family and friends who have supported a couple through the long adoption process can be offended if they are kept at arm’s length when the child finally arrives. So van Gulden provides sample letters that adoptive parents can hand out explaining why they’re doing this and asking for support and understanding.
“Grandparents don’t like me much,” admits van Gulden, now a grandparent herself. Her teaching draws on first-hand experience of adoption as well as her academic learning. She grew up with adopted siblings and went on to raise two adopted children, along with her birth son.
She experienced lots of attachment problems with her youngest child, who had come to them from India when she was four months old and was very ill for months after that.
Van Gulden challenged her professor and colleagues to tell her how she could recreate the early stages of attachment for her daughter. “They were very intrigued by the idea and supported me and came up with a treatment plan.”
As a result, she pioneered a clinical programme of attachment development. Initially, because the baby girl was in pain, they were trying to minimise her rejection of human touch, such as by having warm baths together, which had one unforeseen consequence.
“I am a chilly woman and I was seen bouncing around my living room with a screaming child in my arms by new neighbours who called child protection!”
She advocates three to six months of “funnelling”, and then, if the child is not running up to other people any more, or if the ones who never did are now turning to look at mum or dad when a new person arrives, the parents can “open the funnel”, and include four more people in the caring group.
“If it is too much, the child will revert to running up to people, or not turning to the parent when a stranger approaches.” Successful funnelling will make a huge difference, she says, to the child’s capacity to feel he or she belongs to the parents.
It’s essential that adoptive parents know how to build attachment from day one. “The tragedy is when I train there will be some people in the audience who have already got their children and they will probably tear up or get all defensive and tell me they’re just friendly. I have to gently but firmly say ‘can you try this anyway’.”
There are two capacities of attachment that have to be taught: one is permanence, that develops from birth to two and a half; and the other is constancy, which develops from three to five. “They are crucially important. If you don’t have permanence or constancy, you might be able to be intimate but you can’t hold the feeling of the attachment when you move away from your parent.
“Permanence is the capacity to take for granted that your parents continue to exist when you’re not in contact with them,” she explains. “Constancy is the capacity to take it for granted that if mum is mad at you, or you think mum is mad at you, or you are mad at her, that she still loves you.”
It’s never too late to build the attachment, she maintains. “The oldest client I ever worked with rebuilding those capacities was 67. The old belief used to be once the child was four, you couldn’t fix it. From research we now know that not to be true. It’s exciting, it’s wonderful, but it’s not always easy.”
- The Barnardos post-adoption service, which was extended just over a year ago to support families with children adopted from abroad, offers a confidential helpline and e-mail advice service to families around the State. Funding from the HSE Eastern region enables it to run individual counselling in the Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow area, as well as occasional workshops.
The confidential helpline on 01-4546388 operates on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10am-2pm.
E-mail advice service: adoption@barnardos.ie. See also barnardos.ie or tel: 01-4530355