Bonding and Attachment revisited

I've gotten a few emails from sweet families in their first adoption experience.   Naturally, they are wanting to be prepared for the child's arrival and hope to initiate good bonding right off the bat.  I wrote about toddler adoption and attachment last year.  Click HERE if you'd like to read it.

The funny thing with attachment and bonding is that it seems to cycle.  Maybe that isn't everyone's experience.  I feel like I've gone through different stages at various times.  My kids seem to go through various attachment stages too.  Many factors can affect the attachment cycle.  What concerns me is the movie/tv version of adoption.  Either the adoption experience is highly magical and everyone is falling in love and crying like crazy because they are so happy.  Or, Hollywood loves to show the negative and sensationalized adoptions that do not go well.  I want new adoptive families to cut themselves some slack.  This miraculous experiences isn't always violins playing in the background and hearts floating.  Sometimes you "fake it till you make it."  A traumatized child and an exhausted parent do not always feel instantly in love.  But, that's the thing about love--it isn't a feeling.  Love is a daily choice and decision. 

Our adoption agency is excellent at preparing families for the changes their family will likely go through.  If you'd like some good resources, click DILLON to see books, articles, webinars, classes and such.  Read lots of adoption books(my favorite is The Connected Child and Are Those Kids Yours).  Don't get overly caught up in leftist, humanistic junk, but do glean the insight and tips.  And, most of all, remember that our God is a God of healing and restoration.  Begin praying now for your soon to be child's heart to be bonded to yours.  For you family to remove barriers to attachment.  For Jesus to soothe the child's trauma that he/she has experienced in being disrupted from parents, in abuse, in institutional living.  He delights in giving a crown of joy in place of sorrows, in replacing beauty for ashes!