Attachment Tricks

Parenting kids with attachment disorder often means doing the opposite of what's intuitive.  But it also means working some tricks to heal them.  Kids with attachment disorder are simple to heal (simple is NOT the same as easy).  They just need huge amounts of:

• eye contact
• smiles
• touch
• rocking
• sucking sweet milk

They need to redo their first year of life.  It's simple, but this time they'll often do it kicking and screaming while you're trying to smile with eye contact.  We have learned a few tricks along the way.

• Following.  For kids with attachment disorder keeping their eye on a parent isn't natural or habitual.  Following helps.  The child always walks beside or behind so they consistently have a parent in view.
• Practice "Yes, Mama" or "Yes, Daddy" with a smile.  Every time we ask them to do something, we elicit a, "Yes, Mama" said with a smile and then smile back.  That gives about 100 smiles a day and begins reciprocity.
• Crawling.  Our kids are always in the room with us, but we have things to get done, so the kids come along.  Crawling does two things.  First, I've read that if kids miss crawling in their baby years, it can cause troubles down the road, so it covers that base.  Second, it keeps their little hands busy so it's not so easy to reach out and grab everything.  By the way, proper crawling technique calls for having little hands open, not crawling on fists which can hide stuff.
• Criss-cross, hands on your knees.  This is a posture our kids sit in a LOT.  There is something about this posture that is very calming for all the kids (this is the meditative posture of many traditions).  Keeping hands on the knees means that Mama can see what those little hands are up to at all times.
• Holding.  Our kids need to redo their first year with us and the first year with my bio kids included lots and lots of holding.  Our adopted kids aren't always enthusiastic for holding, but we can tell it has made a huge difference over time.  Sometimes we hold like a big kid and sometimes we hold like a baby.
• Mine for "good job" opportunities.  When they're naughty and finally get through a time out (which is always within 5 feet of us), we don't end with a little reminder of how naughty they were.  We use it as an opportunity for praise and smiles.  "Good job minding in break.  Why were you in break?"  When they tell us, we say, "good job remembering!"  And that's it.

What are the tricks you've learned?