Galaxy of Adoption
Cornerstones for Therapeutic Parenting: Attachment, Attunement and Acceptance
Attachment, attunement and acceptance are the cornerstones of building a relationship with a child or youth in adoption and the base concepts of therapeutic parenting in adoption.
Attunement
Adopted children and youth need to feel listened to and understood, even when their thoughts, feelings and experiences might be different than what you expect or hard to understand. When a child or youth feels that someone hears what they are saying and knows how to properly understand how they feel, it is at the core of building safe and connected relationships.
For Attunement… An attuned approach means that a family listens to each other and works to understand each other before responding or problem solving or taking action. This approach might be different from parenting approaches you are familiar with or the way you were parented.
Acceptance
An early experience of loss can cause confusion and uncertainty. If loss occur many times with multiple caregivers and different homes these feelings can increase. Children and youth are often confused about the “story” of their lives, why it is all happening and may even feel something is wrong with them. These kinds of confusions affect a child or youth’s ability to feel strong and solid about who they are. When their identify is fragile, children and youth need to experience the basics of love and acceptance for who they are, not what they do or able to accomplish or achieve. This is the difference between unconditional acceptance and conditional acceptance.
For Acceptance… Acceptance begins with understanding what being open hearted means.
Open heartedness means thinking about what is important to a child or youth, including their connections with their birth families, and accepting it. This is important because many adopted children and youth have mixed feelings about their history and birth families and this impacts how they feel about themselves. Adoptive parents who are able to identify their own feelings and talk about them are modeling what being open hearted means and can help children learn to be open hearted too. This is really important for them in learning how to accept all of themselves and feel good about who they are.
Unconditional acceptance means that a parent is able to accept and love all of who a child or youth is. That does not mean agreeing with or excusing some ways that a child or youth might behave. It does mean being able to not be judgemental or give messages that there is something wrong with a child or youth. Children and youth who have loss or trauma in their history cannot always tell the difference between hearing “What you are doing right now is wrong” and “You as a person are wrong”. Unconditional acceptance shows the child or youth that they are loved and accepted regardless of what they do.
Are there people in your life that you accept and love unconditionally?
Learning and applying the cornerstones requires the combination of learning with your mind and being open with your heart.
Resources and Supports to Learn More:
Adoption is a lifelong journey for all members of the adoption Galaxy. It may help to learn about, the significance of sibling relationships, therapeutic parenting, being open-hearted and the impact of adverse childhood experiences. You can find information about these and other topics on how adoption impacts everyone’s journey through the ACO’s training and education section of website. It is a great way to start.
Adoptive parents have told us that meeting with other adoptive parents can help them create a community of people who understand their experience. You may want to do this by contacting Adopt4Life.
Further Reading:
Where can I learn more about attachment?
- Parenting from the Inside Out
by Daniel J. Siegel & Mary Harzell - Attachment Focused Parenting
by Daniel A. Hughes - Hold on to your Kids
by Dr. Gabor Mate and Gordon Neufield - Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today’s Parents
by Deborah Gray - Becoming a Family: Promoting Healthy Attachments with Your Adopted Child
by Lark Eshleman - Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love
by Robert Karen - The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family
by Karyn Purvis, David Cross and Wendy Lyons Sunshine - The Invisible String
by Patricia Karst
Where can I learn more about attunement?
- Attachment Focused Parenting
by Daniel A. Hughes - Hold on to your Kids
by Dr. Gabor Mate and Gordon Neufield - Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
by Daniel Goleman - Wounded Children, Healing Homes: How Traumatized Children Impact Adoptive and Foster Families
by Jayne Schooler, Betsy Keefer Smalley and Timothy Callahan, PsyD - I Love You Rituals
by Rebecca Anne (Becky) Bailey - Playful Parenting
by Lawrence J. Cohen, PhD
Books to read with your child:
- If I Were the Wind
by Lezlie Evans - You Are My I Love You
by Maryann Cusimano - The Invisible String
by Patrice Karst - I Love You, Stinky Face
by Lisa McCourt
Where can I learn more about acceptance?
- The Wisdom of Trauma, a film with Dr. Gabor Mate
Videos / CDs
- The Hope-Filled Parent: Meditations for foster and adoptive parents of children who have been harmed
by Michael Trout