TAPLINK

Support for
Pennsylvania
Adoptive & Foster Families

Taproot issue 39 - February 2001

Toddler Adoptions

Prospective parents considering adopting a toddler should be prepared for a complicated set of issues not inherent in adoptions of younger children. While toddlers need maintenance and care as much as infants, cognitive skills are more developed and emotional needs are more complex.

When a toddler is adopted, the child’s worst fears of abandonment are realized when trusted caretakers disappear and the familiar environment vanishes. Despite the fact that the adoptive home may be a dramatic improvement over the pre-adoptive situation, the toddler thrives on structure and familiarity and feels keenly its unexplained interruption. For some, like my daughter Tessa whom I adopted a eighteen months, this may be the second such abandonment they face in their young lives.

Toddlers grieve as deeply as adults, says Mary Hopkins-Best, in her book Toddler Adoption: A Weaver’s Craft. They often exhibit the same kind of grief behavior, including unexplained crying, lethargy, poor appetite, infantile behaviors, anger, and depression. But these signs can be missed because they pattern other toddler behaviors. But she points out that a grieving child cries differently than a toddler who is angry or frightened. When grieving, the child’s body is typically limp or curled into a ball and there are lots of tears, as opposed to a range of fear crying indicated by a tense body and few tears. For the first three weeks after placement, Tessa cried or moaned without apparent reason for hours a day. Alternately, she appeared angry and would vigorously shred tissues for hours on end.

It is important to recognize the indicators of grief so parents can support their toddler and help them through the grieving process. Enacting transitional strategies upon placement, say Hopkins-Best. Asking for a significant article of clothing a blanket or other mementoes from the orphanage or foster home will help the child feel a bit of continuity. Taking pictures of the previous caretakers and bringing them out periodically will help the child feel in touch with those who are familiar to her. Even something as simple as letting the child have a good cry while holding her or stroking her back, will help her to work through it.

Another coping strategy is to provide consistent support. Parents may be alarmed when a child withdraws emotionally, but it is critical that they not react by withdrawing as well. Gentle and persistent efforts to connect with the child will convince the toddler that it is safe to bond again. In addition parents should prepare for some regressive behavior. But accommodating a child’s need for being fed or comforted in a manner usually reserved for infants provides a wonderful opportunity to develop attachment. While sleeping in a parent’s bed or coddling a child’s fear of the dark is frowned upon in our society, it is often the ticket to easing a toddler’s adjustment to a new situation. Had I not slept in Tessa’s room for the first few weeks, none of us would have gotten any sleep. My motto became: comfort now and discipline later.

There is no reason to believe that toddlers on the whole can’t develop strong and healthy attachments to their parents. With the bumpy initial period behind us, I have started to think of Tessa as just my daughter, not my newly adopted daughter. She is rapidly catching up in development and certainly appears to have developed strong, healthy bonds with our extended family and us. While she has become a happy and healthy toddler, it would have been a lot easier on all of us had I read Toddler Adoption before I left for China.

COAC Reports/ Sep., Oct., 2000