I love music. I can’t play any instruments, I can sing loud, but not really good, and my dance skills are what my wife describes as “embarrassing.” I like to listen to music at the end of the day when we are cooking dinner or washing dishes. Some nights we even get wild and have a family dance party in the kitchen. We turn on some song that we all love up really loud, shake every part of our bodies and spin each other around like we are on one of those dance shows. The other night I saw my 9-year-old son take my 5-year-old daughter’s hand, put his other hand on her back and dipped her like he had done that move a hundred times already. They both laughed and hugged each other. I remember feeling grateful that they were so connected. Even though they have only been living together for a year now, they sometimes seem more in tune with each other than my wife and I do.
I think kids just get it better than we do…way better. They don’t seem to analyze relationships like we do. In fact, they don’t analyze relationships at all. Our daughter thinks, “There’s a new boy in our house, he’s fun to play with, my mommy and daddy say he’s going to be my brother, I like him, okay, this is going to be great”. Unfortunately, I don’t love that freely. It’s hard when you know every detail about your kids – all of their character flaws, past hurts, massive meltdowns, and ways they have disobeyed you in the past. Instead of attachment being an intimate dance with my kids, it turns into a battle. It’s that our job as parents? To love them through all of that stuff?
My wife and I have four kids. One was born to us, and the other three we adopted after fostering them first. We brought home our second daughter (who was then our foster daughter) on our biological daughter’s third birthday. What a birthday present, right?!? We fostered her for about 7 months before we adopted her. Then about 6 months after we adopted her, we got a call to foster another girl who had just been born a month earlier. As we cared for her, we learned she had an older brother. We ended up adopting both of them this past summer. We call them our “book ends” because she is our youngest child and he is our oldest child. We went from 2 children to 4 children in a matter of 7 months. We not only had to attach to a newborn, but also a 9-year-old too, and make sure we weren’t neglecting our other kids either. During this time our family was experiencing some other transitions. I had stepped down from my job of ten years to stay at home with our now 4 kids while my wife went to nursing school. It was really hard to keep up with life, but we knew all of these things were meant to happen at this time.
So a year ago, when so much change had happened, I had 2 new children, one that was crawling, one that was starved for attention and connection, one entering Pre-K, and one hot mess express – ALL needing to be attached to me and my wife. I was feeling like I had to do it all and be everything to all my kids all the time. And that lasted for approximately 2 weeks. Then came the frustration that I wasn’t good enough or strong enough to do all of that. I became closed off to my children, seeking escape, and it left a bigger gap between us. Anger came welling up in me like never before. I felt stuck in a battle that I didn’t want to be in. I was realizing faster and faster that we were not connecting and I was not providing the care that my son needed.
He was anxious, but I couldn’t see it.
He was scared, but I couldn’t see it.
He was ashamed, but I couldn’t see it.
All I could see was a boy who was defying me, I didn’t see a son that was hurting. And who wouldn’t be after being taken from the only life you had ever known, placed in a group home with all kinds of new people, who weren’t even aloud to give him a hug, and finally landing in a home with all kinds of other changes? We had many long talks, many arguments, and many “go to your rooms” and I’m not proud of it- I was doing the exact opposite of all that we learned in our foster care classes and what we had read about adoption and attachment. I was weary from the battle and didn’t know what to do.
I remember one of our counseling sessions where I was able to explain to him what was happening with us using hot wheel cars, of all things. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I could tell I began speaking his language, and I came out of that meeting with the realization that I wanted him to do what I said, and he wanted to do what he wanted to and we needed a way to meet in the middle. I also began to put myself in his shoes. He didn’t grow up with a dad, and the only male figures he came into contact with were either hurting him or someone he loved, telling him what to do, or disciplining him. He grew up with two women, his mom and his grandmother. If his grandmother was not around and his mom was not able to care for him, he had to do everything himself. So the very thought of a man telling him what to do probably did not sit well with him. Very few men, including his awesome case worker, actually genuinely loved him, just for being him. I realized that day after our counseling session, that I needed to start there. He is my son, and I love him, no matter what. I don’t believe attachment can happen without that truth happening first.
So we doubled down on our attachment rituals. We bathed him, massaged him, played games together, we did everything we could to show up, and show him we love him and that we were going to be there for him. To help him realize that he didn’t have to do it all on his own, like he had grown up doing, that he could depend on us, that he could trust us. Sue Johnson, in her book “Hold Me Tight” would describe these types of intimate acts of connection and attachment a “dance”. I read this book a couple years back primarily for my marriage, but gleaned so much in the way of attachment to my children. I didn’t want my relationship with my son, or any of my kids to be a battle, I wanted it to be a dance.
I have a saying in our house – “Practice Makes Progress”. We can’t progress in anything in life until we jump in and just start practicing what we know to be right. We are not perfect parents by any means, I am not a perfect father to my kids, but as I reflect on the last year, I can say that I have seen a progression in the right direction. The direction where we want to be going, a place where all of our kids have a secure and healthy attachment to us, so that they can be who they were meant to be and can create other healthy relationships in their own lives. Now when I take my daughter’s hands to dip them, or teach my son one of my signature dance moves, I will be reminded of the glorious dance that I get to dance with each of my children and my wife. We are not there yet, but I am hopeful that each victory, and each struggle will help us draw closer and closer together as a family…forever.
Written by Shaun Lafferty
Shaun is an adoption and foster care advocate living in Jacksonville, FL with his wife, Hailey, and 4 kids. He is a stay at home dad who can only do what he does because of his faith, friends, family, and iced coffee. He believes that loving your neighbor can change the world and longs for the day when we can say that the orphan crisis is over.
You can follow him on instagram here.
Annakay Hines“Practice makes progress!” I love it!