"Relationship Not Behavior" Advice

This seems like such a good piece of advice for older child adoption. I really encourage everyone to read the whole post if you haven't run across it already.

When I was a college administrator responsible for discipline I learned the concept, "Get them to respect you first, and later worry about them liking you." I took this principal into adoption and parenting and it ABSOLUTELY DID NOT WORK. Some of the kids never really came to love me as their mom and respect never came either.

Focus that first year on getting the kid to fall in love with you. If you do, you can worry about behavior. I'm not saying to ignore rule violations, but under-react. Keep the focus on the child, on attachment, on learning to understand your child and years down the road you'll be much farther ahead than those who started tackling behavior the day the kids moved in.

When it comes to Sunny's first year, I think we did some things right on purpose, and other things right purely on accident. But mostly, we were just lucky. Sunny attached to us quickly and strongly. His attachment issues are centered around separation and anxiety... not trust and physical closeness. He loves hugs and kisses and tickling and wrestling. He cares deeply about what we think of him. He draws pictures of us together as a happy family, and spontaneously writes notes that say things like "I LOVE YOU MOM AND I HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD DAY".

I read a lot of blogs by parents who have adopted older children who have not attached so easily. I feel so bad for them (the parents and the kids). It would be such a hard road. I even feel bad writing this post because I don't want to rub it in their faces. But I think this issue sometimes falls under the banner of blog negativity syndrome (people blogging about when things go wrong, but not bothering to blog when things go right) so I just want to add another data point with this post. Sometimes children with a history of inconsistent caregiving in the early years DO NOT have issues with physical closeness and showing affection.

The hard part for us, of course, is dealing with Sunny's fits and rages. When he's trying to bash me in the face, it drains my emotional reservoir very rapidly. But in between fits, it fills up quickly, because he's so loving. If this were not the case, I'd probably be a semi-zombie by now.

We're also lucky that we have such a good relationship with his foster mom, that his foster mom is brilliant, and that his foster mom was Sunny's only placement for almost four years. That made understanding his personality and needs a lot easier as a learning process.

In the above post, I don't think that Claudia is saying that you should let the child do whatever they want, and bribe them, in order to manipulate love. That doesn't work. We started off with pretty strict rules for Sunny, and he still has most of them: for example, I don't know many kids his age who are only allowed to play video games for 15-45 minutes a week. But the rules were a natural continuation of rules he already had in his foster mom's home. I just agree with her totally, based on our experience with Sunny's first year, that the first priority is understanding what behavior can be changed, and what behavior you should just learn to live with somehow because trying to change it is going to make everyone miserable.

I thought we could have family reading nights together. I thought I could help him with his homework. I thought I could easily teach him how to play by himself. I thought we could transition him into waking himself up at night to go to the bathroom. I've had to abandon all these expectations, at least for the short term.

Again, looking back on our first year, I think we're very lucky. I always like to expect the worst, so that I'm pleasantly surprised when the worst doesn't quite happen.