Attachment Dance - Weekend Wisdom

Question: For three months now, we’ve been fostering our 17-year-old son, with the intention of adopting. My question is regarding attachment. How can you tell if the child is setting up boundaries or testing you to see how hard you’ll pursue/run after them?

Resources:

• Creating and Cultivating Attachment (Resource page)
• Helping a Child Heal from Trauma (Resource page)
• Transitioning a Child to Your Home (Resource page)

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Hello, and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. I'm Tracy Whitney, and I'm excited about this
opportunity to answer your questions. After all, that's what Weekend Wisdom is all
about. You send your questions about adoption, foster care, or relative caregiving,
and we comb through our resources to find an answer that will strengthen your
family. Before I get into today's question, let me introduce myself. I've been with
Creating a Family for nine years now, writing articles and creating content for
online education resources, and for our interactive support group curriculums. I've
also led a variety of those groups for post -adoptive families, and now for kinship
caregivers. I moderate the Facebook group hosted by Creating a Family, and would love
to see you join us over there. You can find us at facebook .com /groups
/creatingafamily. I'm also a mom to six kids, from 30 down to 13.
So, today's question about raising teens is familiar territory for me. A listener
from Lewiston, PA wrote, "Hi there. For three months now, we've been fostering our
17 -year -old son with the intention to adopt. My question is regarding attachment.
How can you tell if the child is setting up boundaries or testing you to see how
hard you'll run or pursue them?" Isn't the push -pull of these teen years so
confusing. It sounds like you've only known this young man for a short time and I'm
sure there are so many things you don't understand about him yet. Can you imagine
how confusing and even scary it is for him right now too? Your question reminds me
that we often hear about attachment described as a dance. If you can get a picture
in your head of a pair of trained ballroom dancers right now, it'll help you
understand my metaphor and where I'm going. So in any choreographed dance, the pair
of dancers move around the floor together and apart. They move toward each other,
they separate, and sometimes one partner is pursuing the other, and sometimes they
switch it up. The genre of the music, the steps required in the competition
guidelines if they're in a competition, and the individual style of the dancers are
just some of the factors that come together to create the final dance number. When
partners are new to each other, they step on each other's toes, one partner might
fall, they might both fall together, they might trip each other. Dance moves can get
off rhythm and the cues that they are trying to give each other, both visually and
in the music, can get missed. So the longer a couple dances together, the fewer
missed steps are made. Their toes are spared. They follow each other through these
intricate steps of coming together and moving apart with fewer mistakes. They interact
more gracefully, and their movements are more fluid after years of practicing
together. So the metaphor is that creating attachment with our kids is a lot like
that. In the early days of meeting your son just three months ago, both of you
were probably pretty unsure of how to connect with each other. As the adult, you
likely led the way in creating those initial steps of connection by welcoming him,
showing him that he's in a safe place, that you are safe adults, and that you are
trustworthy and you'll be present with him. You probably received in your training
before you welcomed him to your home some pretty good information about trauma in
general. And then when you reviewed his case file, you probably got more specific
information about his trauma, and then you used that information to move toward him
in gentle careful steps. I'm guessing that you probably saw glimmers of attachment
forming between the two of you as he started stepping toward you, and then your
dance routine began. So I wanna pause for a minute here and acknowledge that if you
are moving towards adoption with this 17 -year -old young man and he's an active
participant in that process of pursuing adoption, it sounds like you're probably
getting the foundational steps of this attachment dance right so far. It's excellent
that you're actually framing your questions about his boundaries and his actions
through the lens of attachment. These tween and teen years are really challenging for
our kids who have experienced loss, neglect, and other trauma. So this 17 -year -old
came to you only three months ago. It's pretty safe to assume that in those 17
years, he experienced some pretty significant losses and experienced some pretty
significant trauma on the way to being placed in your home. It could be that
sometimes your attachment dance feels a little too vulnerable or unfamiliar to him,
and that might be why you're feeling that push -pull. Another reason that you're
probably feeling the push -pull is that that push -pull is typical of the teen years.
They are naturally wired when they're in adolescence to pursue independence.
However, this young man is also in need of the closeness that he may not have
experienced as a young child. He probably feels those two needs kind of tugging at
him inside and he's feeling confused by it. Honestly, I'm not even sure if you need
to solve the question of whether or not he's putting up boundaries or testing your
commitment to him. I think it might actually be more valuable to assume that the
conflict he's expressing is how he's working out his side of the attachment dance.
So your job is to just keep proving yourself faithful in that attachment dance. Be
trustworthy, be safe, be present. He needs to know that when he's spinning out on
that dance floor, feeling out of control, you're going to be right there at the
center starting point, ready to reground and start over again. He needs to feel safe
enough to dance close to you without any shame or embarrassment for his need, but
he also needs to feel strong enough and secure enough to step out and try a new
dance move, maybe several steps away from you. As you work out this dance with him,
your job is to keep assuring him that both of his needs, independence, and closeness
are valuable, normal, and acceptable. When he missteps, as we all do,
face it together and talk about how to get back into your regular rhythm of
attachment again. Ask him what's working about this attachment dance. Ask him what
needs to be tweaked or improved. At his age, the skill of finding his voice and
using it to express his needs well is vital, but it might be an underdeveloped
skill still. So you can build him up and give him grace and space to find what
works for him. Here are a few practical tips to help you put feet on the metaphor,
pun fully intended. These are things that we've tried with our teenagers, both those
who've experienced trauma and those who have not yet experienced significant life
trauma. And we've just found them to be helpful in keeping that attachment dance
going. Number one, check in with each other regularly. Even if he has nothing to
talk about at this time, your consistency will tell him that you are with him and
you are ready to talk whenever he's got something on his mind. If he isn't ready
to talk yet, try leaving him little notes or sending him texts that tell him that
you are there and you are ready. Number two, try to have fun together. Find things
that you both enjoy or that he enjoys and you can learn about. there's nothing like
laughter to glue you all together and build a stronger attachment between you. Number
three, assure him and keep assuring him that no mistake is unsolvable.
Kids mess up, adults mess up. There's nothing that we cannot solve when we are
committed to solving it together as a family. Number four, try to make observations,
not accusations. Teens are notoriously hypersensitive to adult criticism.
So you can avoid this by using non -judgmental statements of observation such as I
noticed or I wonder to get the conversation started. Hey,
I noticed when you left for school this morning that you seemed really agitated.
Wanna talk about it? And then just leave it there and let him pick up the
conversation from there if and when he's ready. Number five, consistently enforce just
a few basic rules. Keep them simple and keep them steady. You should focus on the
things that matter most to you and your partner if you have one. What is the
identity of your family, who you are and be willing to flex with the other things.
Number six, consistently communicate your family values. Since he's only been in your
family for this very short time, don't assume that he knows the values. Talk about
them explicitly in family meetings or around the dinner table. Maybe have a
brainstorming session to create two or three simple sentences of who you are and
what you value and include his voice in that conversation. And number seven,
no matter but just keep dancing. No matter how old he is, make sure he knows he's
always welcome to keep working out the attachment dance going on between you. He can
experiment with new ways to connect with you, and you'll keep trying to build
relationship and connection with him, and the dance will continue throughout your life
together. Thanks for listening. I so appreciate your time. We always of any of your
questions that you may want to be considered for weekend wisdom, you can email us
at info @creatingafamily .org to have your questions answered or considered for an
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families so that we can keep strengthening adoptive, foster, and kinship families.
Have a great day!