Six Strategies for Building Attachment

Our agency, MLJ Adoptions, published a good, short blog post recently called, "Six Strategies for Building Attachment" that is worth reading if you haven't read anything on attachment. It is pretty basic, but basics are good!

Isaiah Munanga Taylor Lee

Since I was not able to post our referral pictures or any pictures we received of the kids before they came home, I've been meaning to post them for some time. Today I'm posting Isaiah's. I have experienced God's grace just going back and looking at these pictures and remembering what He has done in Isaiah's life in a short three months to begin to restore his heart and bring LIFE into his little body.

I haven't looked at these first referral pictures (October 2010) in awhile. Now that I know Isaiah well, it  nearly wrenched my insides to see them and see how incredibly sad, scared and hurting my little boy was. 

Here are the second set of pictures we got in November 2010.

 December 2010. He is swimming in the 2T clothes we sent him.

July 2011. His first and only smile (out of all the pictures while he was in foster care). I will never forget how my heart swelled inside of me when I saw these pictures of him smiling.

July 2011 in some other clothes we sent him.

September 2011. Looking more like the boy I know.

October 28, 2011 at the airport right after he arrived.

A few weeks later.

One of my favorite recent pictures of my little man.

And just for comparison sake:

Praise. The. Lord. Thank you, Jesus, for bringing life and healing and love to Isaiah's life!

Just in the last week or so, I've noticed a big increase in Isaiah's confidence, which I am praising God for. Last Friday, when I was having a very hard day with one of the girls, Isaiah - for the first time - used really good words to ask me something he needed or wanted . . . which is major progress. He said, "mom, outside please?" and then later, "help please, mom." Seems like such a minor thing, but knowing how much he struggled to know he could use his words to get his needs met, much less use the words, makes this a huge victory. His English is growing leaps and bounds now, too.

There is still much healing to be done in his life, but God is doing it! What a privilege to get to be part of God's restoration of his life. I can't wait to see all that Isaiah will be when God is finished healing him.

February 6, 2012

I need to just let the current date be the title of my posts. I am terrible at coming up with titles for my posts.

Jason and I spent a glorious SEVEN hours together - without any kids and away from Ames - this past Saturday. We had fun shopping together, eating together and talking a lot about a game plan for our lives to survive this next stage of parenting kids from hard places. We agreed that that transition phase of adopting three kids is over. (It has been three months, so that is about right.)

We have now moved on to the next stage . . . attachment and healing. Not that attachment wasn't part of the first three months, but now it is more central. I learned in Attaching in Adoption that kids spend the first chunk of time with a new family figuring out if the parents are safe enough and worth attaching to.

A big task that needed accomplished in our world was a better schedule that incorporated things like making sure everyone's teeth get brushed twice a day to making sure we get good nurturing/attachment activities in with the kids each day. I wrote out today's schedule on the whiteboard and went over it this morning with the girls. Wasn't a hit with them, but we carried on. Things went fine the first part of the morning. At one point one of the girls was doing English on the computer, another was copying/writing things she wrote down from the message at church yesterday and the boys were playing. Yay! But, it didn't last long. After snack time, one of the girls had a hard time saying, "okay, mom," and by the end of switching English/writing for the girls, both were sobbing in different places in the house. At that point neither had disobeyed. It was just so hard for them to have to do what I had told them to do. My CA friend has been warning me about seeing "crazy" behavior and I feel like I got a glimpse of it this morning. Fortunately, after lunch time, my girls were "back" and things went better.

Sidenote: Two cool things happened at church this past Sunday. First, I have been looking forward to the girls seeing baptisms because we talked about that a few times in the past. Many people got baptized at the service we were at. The last person to get baptized was a young woman (probably college-aged) from Zimbabwe. I have no idea what the girls thought about that or if it even registered as some sort of similarity to them, but I thought it was a gift from God for our girls to see her (someone like them) get baptized. Second, Troy was sharing how to share the gospel and at one point he said, "Does anyone know what Romans 6:23 says?" Claire said, "yeah." I have taught the kids all of two verses (going on three) and that happened to be one of them. Very fun that the girls knew that one!

Thankfully, I was able to talk to my CA friend on the phone this afternoon for some much needed advice. I'm still processing the things she told me. The gist of it was to parent in a way the keeps the crazy, distracting behavior at bay so that I can do the healing/nurturing things: gentle eye contact, lots of touch, movement/rocking, etc. I/we definitely need to do more of this with the girls on a regular basis, so I'm feeling quite challenged to figure out how to do this. She encouraged me to keep the girls close to me, like how you keep a four year old close to you, being in charge of the activities they do, etc. Letting the girls play so much on their own was good for the adjustment phase, but I have sensed that they need less of this to develop more attachment to me. So, we need to pray and ask God to help us know what this should look like.

I was scanning my a gmail file I have called, "Adoption Tips After the Kids Come Home," today and came across a helpful article. It is called, Feel As Bad As Me . . . The Meaning of Fury in Adopted Children. It is pretty blunt and I'm not sure I personally agree with his recommendation at the very end. But, it is very good otherwise and very applicable right now. Here is a brief excerpt:

Since I believe that all behavior has meaning, the question is: what is the meaning of their attacks in response to our love and care giving?

One reason, I believe, is that our love and care goes against a core belief that developed in our adopted children prenatally through the age of three. In response to neglect or abuse, they came to believe that they are bad, unlovable people who don’t deserve our tender, loving care. This part of them, the “Hurt Part,” believes they are not worthy of something so wonderful . . . 

Also, the Hurt Part of them that tricks them into believing they are bad and unlovable (whom I’m recently fond of calling “The Trickster”) has also been a “friend” of theirs, a companion that may have been around for a long time. This “friend” truly saved them and helped them survive when their needs were not being met. Yet those same survival skills are now harming their ability to move forward, heal and connect. 


This very much describes one of our daughters. I knew it when I read it. But, just a half hour ago I was sitting with the girls on their bed, talking. We were talking about when they will go to school and I told them (like I have a number of times) that for right now we are all learning how to be a family and they are learning how to obey mom and dad. That got one of the girls to sit right up with unpleasant feelings. She then said, "mom and dad no like me." She went on to say she asked for pretzels and I said no. (Oranges and almonds were what we were having for snack today. She wanted pretzels and I said we were having almonds.) When I heard the words come out of her mouth that we didn't like her, my thoughts raced right to this article. It describes exactly what is going on inside of her.

Tons and tons of nurture (to make up for what she didn't get as an infant and child) is needed to help rewire her brain so she can know that she is, indeed, lovable and worthy of our love. Praise God that He made our bodies in a way that her brain can be rewired. And His power that raised Christ from the dead (1 Cor 6:14) is available to heal and restore her heart.

Please pray for us as we figure out how to cooperate with God to make this happen for her.