(This is a companion to my bonding-with-a-toddler post, which unfortunately disappeared. I started out talking about the way we usually think about bonding, which is with a newborn, and all the physiological processes that help mothers and babies feel connected for life. Our bodies help this along, from the love-hormones released during birth and breastfeeding, to the surge in scary-hormones a new mother feels whenever she hears a baby cry, which helps force her to fill the baby's cycle of need: need (hunger, pain, fear) --> cry --> attention --> solution of problem --> trust and attachment. With adopted children, we don't have this hormonal dance to help us through this crucial time. And, we are dealing with a child who already has their own attachment difficulties to work through. When talking about bonding with a toddler, I was focused more on in some ways re-creating the infant attachment cycle. This time, I am talking more about that second part.)
I could be totally missing the boat on this one. I could be cruel and heartless and failing to supply what my daughter needs. I could be over-thinking and mis-reading her signs. But I feel like what my older child needs at this point isn't really actually love and attachment.
It's safety.
In the first few weeks we knew each other, Hibiscus glommed onto me like I was a long-lost relative and not actually a total stranger. She intellectually was able to understand, at least in some way, that she had lost her family and she had a chance to have a new family, and she wanted that family like anything. She wanted to be touched and she wanted to wear all my things and she wanted me to look at her and praise her and she wanted to establish herself as an equal to my current child.
And then that was enough. It was as though her immediate need for love and acceptance was full, was good enough. She figured out that new-mom is a nice person, she gives snuggles, she sees Hibiscus and smiles at her, and that's what she needed to know. Our relationship-building is basically in that same spot it was a month or two ago.
Now, don't get me wrong: I still touch her and give her hugs and kisses, and she still asks for them, and if there were no other children around I think she would love to sit on my lap half the day. But that doesn't feel like it is the focus of our relationship, nor does it feel like it is moving forward (like it is for Buttercup, who is obviously still amazed by the touches and snuggles and changing in her trust and dependence on me). That might be partly because Hibiscus had more success, at some point in her life, in having an attached relationship with a parent and is able to emotionally step back into that role, instead of create it almost from scratch. Or it could be because, in those six years, she has built up other needs that are even more overwhelming than perfecting a loving-parent relationship. I'm good enough, and she can move on to those.
For instance, a healthy focus is that by age six, children are starting to become more peer-focused than parent-focused. So she has spent energy developing relationships with the neighbor children and now with children at school, and she has put a great deal of energy into her relationship with Emerson. It is worthwhile for her to put her charm and laughter into those friendships, because peer acceptance is developmentally important for six-year-olds.
Then, there are the other things that she missed on her way to becoming a six-year-old, that she needs to go back and fill up.
I think her world has been chaotic and random, and in that random-ness have been a lot of bad things for Hibiscus. She has gradually and in different disasters lost each of her parents and most of the rest of her family, and I think in the meanwhile have been a lot of small and large crisis that weigh heavily on a small child. Also, young children think that the world revolves around them and that they therefore cause everything that happens in their world. We hear this analogy often with children of divorce, that they believe that they caused their parents to split; but also, abused children believe they caused their parents to abuse them, abandoned children believe they caused their parents to abandon them, and so forth.
So at some point, Hibiscus probably thought something like this: "I hit my sister even though I shouldn't, and then Daddy had to go to the hospital and we didn't have any food for a week." A shy or fearful child might immediately become afraid of ever hitting her sister again and cry if she accidentally bumped her; a dynamic and curious child like Hibiscus is more likely to recover and try hitting her sister again and again, to find out if that was really the problem... and if it was, to just get the worst over with quickly. A personality like Hibiscus's would rather throw the other shoe into the distance rather than waiting for it to drop.
So right now, in our family, it seems to me, that before Hibiscus is ready to go any deeper into an emotional relationship, she needs to test if her environment is safe. She needs to see if I can really protect her. She needs to know that the same result happens every single time. She needs to know that what I say is true. She needs to know if the rules are inviolable or if they change. She needs to know my limits -- or rather, she needs to know my limits are limitless. She needs to know how to make me angry enough to beat her, like everyone else in her life has done. And most of all, she needs to figure out her own power. Can she make me send her away? Can she make me stop loving her? Can she ruin this family, too?
Because she's had to be very grown up, and she wants to be very grown up, but inside she's a very little girl.
And she knows that if she's in control, then she isn't safe. So she needs to know.
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