Unconditional Love

God is teaching me A LOT about unconditional love these days.  When you have a child that is choosing to not act as your child, you learn a lot about loving someone who isn't loving you back.  Note, I didn't say "adopted child", because as I have found out from some friends, there are biological kids who act this way as well.

One thing I have discovered is that expectations play a lot in my "satisfaction" with this relationship.  When I expect this child to reciprocate love, I quickly feel unfulfilled.  However, this isn't true unconditional love. Unconditional love expects N-O-T-H-I-N-G in return - and that's hard.

It's hard to pour your life, your love and your soul into someone and get nothing in return.

One of the books I am reading about these issues compares the parent/child interaction to the spousal relationship.  While this comparison isn't valid across the board, in the particular way he makes it, it is valid.  One thing I have realized by thinking about the parent/child relationship in this manner is this:  I cannot MAKE my child love me - it is HIS choice.  And he may NEVER choose to love me.  That is a hard realization.  But, if I don't accept this reality, my relationship with him may always be rocky.

A friend posted a link to this series on her FB page and I started listening it to it today.  It is CHALLENGING to watch this, as it reveals God's high standard for us.  I realize how short I fall of His standard and know that I need to work on this with his help.

Here is the link to the entire series:http://www.gethope.net/love-different

Adopting Older Boys - Attachment - Physical Needs Part 1

Wow, this is where it gets hard. So many resources on attachment are geared toward babies and toddlers.  It is hard to find information on attachment for older children.  You would think this information exists as so many US foster children are adopted at older ages, but I haven't found any so far.  If you know where there are good attachment resources for older kids, please leave me a comment.

That being said, I will add a HUGE disclaimer.  I am NOT an expert.  I am just a mom who has adopted two older boys.  And even then, we have only been on this journey for a short time (two months).  But here are a few things I think I am figuring out.

Attachment is about meeting needs.  When a child is an infant/toddler, we tend to focus mostly on physical needs:  feeding, clothing, changing, cuddling, etc.  It is easy to forget that there are also emotional needs being met for these kids too.    We can meet our older adopted kids physical needs - it just looks different than for a baby/toddler.  The next two posts will be about meeting physical needs and then I'll post about meeting emotional needs.

PHYSICAL NEEDS

Food
In our family, we teach our kids at a fairly young age to be somewhat independent (with 6 kids you don't have much choice!)  So, our kids fix their own breakfast and their own lunch.  We do make their dinner and always (ok 95% of the time) have dinner together as a family. 

We did initially start out making the boys' their breakfast and their lunch, but fairly quickly showed them how they can take on those tasks. (Nothing complicated - cereal or noodles in the microwave; and yes, they actually LIKE cereal!)   This is how WE decided to do it because it is how it works for OUR family.  You may find that it works differently for your family.  Besides, they were watching our other children do for themselves and you could tell that it was a little odd for them to let us do it for them.  We do help if they need it and we will still fix something for them (or our other kids) on occasion. 

We also make sure there is food visible at all times.  We have a large fruit bowl that sits on our counter.  So far, we have gone grocery shopping with ALL 6 kids and let the boys pick out items that they want/like.  The fruit goes in the fruit bowl on the counter so it is readily available if they want it.

Owies/Boo-boos
Also, on the physical needs front, we do take care of "owies", "boo-boos", etc as they occur.  We have already had occasion to do that for both boys :-)  And we make a BIG deal of it.  Both of them have scraped elbows and knees.  Neither of them came to us to show us the owie; but how many typical 10 or 14 yr old boys would?  In most cases, we were with them and saw it happen; in one case, one of our other children came and told us.  We made a big deal of taking them in the house, rinsing off the scrape, spraying bactine, finding a band-aid, putting on the band-aid, giving kisses, and hugs and then sending them back to play. 

Even some of the smaller owies (like banging their head into a bookshelf in Barnes & Noble) I make a big deal of by asking them if they are ok and giving them a hug (even if just a quick one from the side).

Since this post is getting long, I think I'll post about Touch and Eye Contact in a part 2.