As a parent, have you ever stopped to think about how much of the positive interactions you have with your child are due to the history of loving feelings you have with your child that stabilize your actions and hold you through the hard behaviors? A person could call this positive history, the backbone of the feeling of patience that helps the parent love the child through the childishness. This history begins when the baby is in the womb and only gets stronger with all of the cuddles and coos through babyhood, the cuteness through the toddler years and so on. It is the foundation of attachment. What if this history of attachment and love are not there on the parent's side? The child just plopps into your life with all of their childishness and none of their babyhood? Step parents understand this. Foster parents understand this. And so do adoptive parents. And I am feeling it now.
These kids are just kids. The more English they learn the more I see the differentiation of the "normal" age appropriate developmental issues and the non-age appropriate developmental issues. Daily I dig in, take a deep breath, and ask God for his backbone of patience as the stabilizing bond develops. The bond is developing, although much slower than I want.
