Quotes from Deborah D. Gray

As a group, attachment-challenged children need to be looked at differently. This is a group of children who have experiences and fears of being separated from parent figures. Until they can rebuild some of their emotional security, their time in child-care must be restricted.

Unless challenges stand in the way, children naturally respond to trustworthy, nurturing, and sensitive parents by forming a trusting and secure relationship.

Children adopted as infants have been shown to enjoy higher than average rates of secure attachment with their parents. Adopted children may also feel a bond with their birthparents, although they may never have formed an attachment with them. Their shared biologic and emotional connection with birthparents creates a bond.

The rule of thumb is that, when first placed, children will relate to new parents in much the same way that they related to former parents or orphanage workers. Without intervention, often this relationship style persists. Parents who are aware of both their own and their children's challenges in forming trust relationships and emotional modulation are in the best position to develop strategies to strengthen their families and to meet the challenges.

Parents must understand that their children are not inferior for having to work through additional tasks during childhood. In comparison to most of their peers, such children will be working harder to enjoy stability and happiness in life. Parents will be working alongside their children toward the same end.

Children who have been moved need reassurance about the permanent nature of families. In many cases they have specific worries troubling them. Blanket reassurances do not reassure.

All development is sequential and adaptive. Physical development unfolds in an orderly progression. Children first creep, then crawl, walk, run and hang from their knees or do cartwheels. Similarly, emotional growth unfolds sequentially and in stages.

Events that cause out-of-home placement often occur during the toddler or preschool years. At that age it is normal for children to believe that they are the cause of life's events. Children's egocentricity, which is a normal part of personality development, results in excessive feelings of responsibility. Children are shamed by the meaning that they derive from maltreatment or loss—that it was something that emanated from them.

Ultimately, to promote attachment, a great deal of control has to be taken from children.

Children do push away in order to establish themselves as autonomous in this phase. However, typically they do not push far. They still want closeness, lap-sitting, singing games, and stories. They are continuing to learn more about their parents and themselves and are building relationships—not building a wall.

When parents and children enter shared helplessness, children make no progress. Instead, they experience their parents as helpless peers. Parents who tell children that they are safe, and that ways to continue to help them will be pursued, are beacons of reassurance to children.

Some children benefit from an extra hour of sleep when they are going through regressions. Often they need more rest time to help them to cope better. After finding that an earlier bedtime works over a few cycles, children will often volunteer that they need an earlier bedtime when they are going through hard times.

When children are regressing, increase nurture. Usually the fighting or distancing is caused by fear. Parents can help the agitated child to slow down, accept comfort, talk about feelings, or improve his physical state. Gradually, children learn to seek out parents when they are hurting.

Children who are permanently separated from their parents face a mourning process that is similar to children's reactions to a parent's death. In fact, the parents, with their connection and resources and care, are permanently lost to children. The literature that describes children's reactions to a loss of the parent through death is quite relevant to the population of later-placed adopted children, or children in the foster care system who have lost attachment figures.

Practice Compliance Children can be given five-minute sessions in which they do things that their parents ask them to do. This time is structured, fun, and filled with praise. It resembles the "Simon Says" game. Children do what parents say, and get lots of attention. This game starts to redefine what it means when parents are in charge. Instead of feeling like they are losing, children find that it feels silly, non-threatening, and fun. This starts to redefine control.

Parents with the most challenging children need support. If the parents get too tired to provide nurture, children cannot do well. Parents have to go through a mental shift, recognizing that supporting people with special needs is a priority in society. It is appropriate and necessary to get support for the family when members have special needs.

Healthy families master the knack of keeping the accent on the positive. Although the family alters after a challenging placement, they work through grief, re-balance, add resources, and find new ways to make life good. Their identity is not wrapped around a child's trauma or limitations. Instead, they find ways to accommodate special needs, without the special needs becoming the focal point of life.

Role-playing situations work well for many parents. After deprivation or prenatal exposure to substance, many children have verbal instruction as their weakest learning area, but many have role playing as their strongest.

Spend time with people who help dream for a good future for all of the members of the family.