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Judy Schwartz Adoption social worker, New York/ NewJersey State Licensed Master Social Worker offering infertility counseling in preparation for the adoption journey: |
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Prepare For Baby Shock |
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Let Others Do the Work: Instead of overwhelming your new child with a large welcoming committee at the airport, have a smaller welcome home party pre-planned for when your baby is more secure. Let others do the work of entertaining for you while you remain totally available to your child while visitors are there. Let friends and family know in advance that you are not allowing others to hold / care for your baby until he/she is securely attached to you. A letter to friends and family explaining an adopted baby’s attachment needs and your deep appreciation for their love and support is an enlightening, team-building tool to send out as you leave on your adoption trip Take Care of You: Don’t feel guilty about doing what any new bio-parent would do-- when you are tired, nap, take your phone off the hook, and don’t answer the door. Refuse to feel guilty about cutting back on previous activities, volunteerism, or career. If you are in a financial position to do so, give yourself permission to quit your job. Nothing you will ever do will be as important as nurturing this child. Take Control of Visitors: Limit them to one or two at a time, and schedule them at your convenience. Take the initiative and invite a friend to visit when it’s good for you, don’t go crazy alone. If you need adult interaction, pick up the phone, and make a parent/child play-date with another understanding parent. Strategize: If you have a partner, plan who is going to do which duties (child / house/ employment) and when, and how to give each other breaks. Review your agreements and allow for change! Talk about fatigue, and about taking care of each other. Discuss sex with your partner communicate your needs (both your interest or dis-interest) in a loving and undemanding fashion. Stress, depression and a high-need baby can strain any relationship. If you can afford it, get housecleaning or yard help. Simplify your life so you can devote your unstressed attention to your baby and partner.
Shift Your Focus: Re-define your family and include your baby in all of your outings. Only accept invitations that welcome your new child. Remember, this won’t last forever, and it’s important to your family. Gear yourself to your baby’s emotional and physical requirements and remain flexible to avoid disappointment and irritation (or as one wise Dad put it, Rule # 1 of Parenting is: Your Plans Don’t Matter! Give Yourself a Break: If you are adopting an older child, attachment professionals seriously advise keeping him/her out of school for a couple of months in order to construct a parent-child relationship without replicating the institutional structure. Investigate temporary homeschooling and connect with other local homeschooler parents for advice, resource-pooling, and social interaction. Expect challenges and frustration and be prepared to enlist support: clue other playgroup moms into behaviors you are working on, and how they can help. Find a translator. Schedule an appointment with an attachment therapist to aid transition. Adopting an older child can be an intense experience; make a plan for your child that includes time alone for you. Everyone needs to recharge.
Expect the Unexpected: Realize that parenting a baby or child that is coming to you from an orphanage or foster care will present you with issues that you aren’t going to find covered in Dr. Spock or in What to Expect the First Twelve Months. If your parenting style is not effective on your post-institutional child, then you need to adapt it to what works! Most of us were not taught pre-adoption, about our child’s deep need for control, or clingy, anxious attachment, or what to do about lingering orphanage behaviors. Parenting a new child with adoption issues can be exhausting, overwhelming and bewildering. It is extremely depressing to feel like you are a failure at parenthood, but you are NOT! You may simply be working off the parenting role model you were raised with, and it doesn’t necessarily work with our post-institutional kids. Pick up Foster Cline’s Parenting with Love & Logic series (he also has tapes for Toddler parenting), read The Out-of-Sync Child by Carol Kranowitz, and Dr. Sear’s Parenting the Fussy Baby and the High-Need Child: Everything You Need to Know from Birth to Age Five. Prepare to facilitate parent-child attachment by reading Attaching in Adoption by Deborah Gray and Holding Time by Dr. Martha Welch. Understand where your child is emotionally, rather than chronologically, and you will better understand his/her behaviors and how to deal with them. Play, Play, Play! Look forward to a parent-child class like Gymboree or Kindermusik, when your child is ready to enjoy it with you. Active play will help lower frustration levels for both of you, and conversation with other adults on a regular basis is a necessity. Don’t expect your post-institutional child to behave/react like the other children initially, and don’t compare her milestones with those of non-adoptees. Teach him/her to be a kid ”include your spouse and make a point to have family fun together on a regular basis. |
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