1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,000 Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We're the Nelsons. I'm Shaun. 2 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:11,000 And I'm Lanette. And we are excited to be back with more episodes for our celebration of National Adoption Month. 3 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:16,000 Yeah, we hope that the things that we share this month, typically about three episodes a week, 4 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:23,000 will help you in your observation of and recognition of National Adoption Month. 5 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:30,000 Yeah, we're really grateful for the opportunity to be sharing different perspectives and opinions 6 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:36,000 and always looking for that chance to learn. It's really one of our big themes here to listen and learn, 7 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:40,000 especially listen and learn from adoptees, but also from birth parents. 8 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:45,000 There's always something new that we can learn to help us do better going forward. 9 00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:48,000 Yeah, so this month we're putting out several episodes a week. 10 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:55,000 You'll hear episodes conducted by us or by Alicia Gallacher, who's our Director of Communications. 11 00:00:55,000 --> 00:01:02,000 And again, we just hope to kind of flood the podcast sphere with adoption content for this month. 12 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:05,000 Also, we're getting really close to 100 episodes, which is super exciting. 13 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:08,000 So this is helping with that too. Little side perk. 14 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:09,000 Perfect. 15 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:14,000 So we hope you enjoy this episode. And at the end, we'll chat just a little bit about our newsletter. 16 00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:17,000 If you are not subscribed to our newsletter, I'll ask you right now to go ahead and look it up. 17 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:21,000 If you're interested in getting more adoption related content in your inbox. 18 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:27,000 So go on over to openadoptionproject.org and click on newsletter to sign up. 19 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:39,000 Hey there. So today we are really excited to hear a little bit more from an adoptee, Sarah Odacio. 20 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:44,000 She shared with us on our Instagram last week during our adoptee takeover. 21 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:49,000 And she talked about adoption and ruptured attachments. 22 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:54,000 And we had a lot of questions and thoughts as she talked. 23 00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:57,000 And it was really impactful for us. 24 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:04,000 And so we did some research afterward and thought we'd do an episode where we talk about attachment and adoption. 25 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:09,000 So we're going to hear from Sarah and we're going to talk a little bit more about it. 26 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:21,000 I want to share a perspective that I've had as I've thought and pondered the different ways that I had sabotaging behavior towards my mom as a kid and into my teen years. 27 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:31,000 I definitely had sabotaging behaviors and not accepting her care and attention and love to me. 28 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:39,000 And I do believe those were feelings of grief and anger that I had towards the ruptured attachment of my first mom. 29 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:47,000 Those feelings were being transferred onto my mom who was in that caregiving, nurturing role. 30 00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:51,000 And I think that's probably not the only my part. 31 00:02:51,000 --> 00:03:05,000 And my case probably isn't the only case of a similar situation where the people that are caring for us now get the result of our broken trust from people that we don't even have contact with now. 32 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:09,000 At least for my situation, I don't have contact with birth mom. 33 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:21,000 But my mom and my family and my close relationships get the result of the struggles that I have of having that broken trust from my first family. 34 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:29,000 I always love talking to Sarah. She's really fun to talk to and she works with people as a counselor. 35 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:35,000 She helps adoptees especially to work through different traumas and grief. 36 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:51,000 And she's just so wise. So I loved hearing her talk about how ruptured attachment impacted her relationship, especially with her adopted mother and the challenges that that presented in her life. 37 00:03:51,000 --> 00:04:06,000 And it really got me thinking about how my own relationships might look, what my own attachment style might be and how I can help those in my life with their attachments as well. 38 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:14,000 And so I started doing some research and reading on this and found some work by Dr. Bruce D. Perry. 39 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:23,000 Now we talked about one of his books really recently. He and Oprah wrote the book What Happened to You Together and it's an excellent book. 40 00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:33,000 So definitely recommend that book. But before that book even came out, he did lots of research looking at children and their attachment experiences. 41 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:40,000 And so he has an article. It's called Maltreated Children Experience Brain Development and the Next Generation. 42 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:51,000 And he really dove into this subject there. First of all, when we're talking about bonding with children and bonding with anyone really the word bonded. 43 00:04:51,000 --> 00:05:03,000 It's like insinuating of what he says is emotional glue. It's the idea or the concept that we are bonded by love. 44 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:11,000 So each individual's ability to form and maintain relationships using this kind of emotional glue is going to be different. 45 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:20,000 Some people are going to be able to more naturally form attachments and express love while for others it might be more challenging. 46 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:27,000 It might look different. And so there's a capacity and a desire to form these emotional relationships. 47 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:37,000 But what that looks like and the ability to do that, it's related to the organization and the functioning of different parts of the human brain. 48 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:49,000 So Dr. Perry talks about how attachment in early childhood is basically this special bond with a primary caregiver and an infant. 49 00:05:49,000 --> 00:06:03,000 And how this attachment bond has a few key elements. So he talks about three. One is that the attachment bond is an enduring emotional relationship with a specific person. 50 00:06:03,000 --> 00:06:15,000 Second, the relationship brings comfort. It brings safety. Third, loss or threat of loss of that person evokes intense distress. 51 00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:29,000 So basically this relationship is like a close bond. It's like maternal child relationships is really the typical relationship you'd see that fits this definition. 52 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:35,000 And so Dr. Perry talks about how there's a solid and healthy attachment with a primary caregiver. 53 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:48,000 And when you have that quality relationship, there's a high probability that that child is going to grow up and be able to have healthy relationships with other people. 54 00:06:48,000 --> 00:07:04,000 Whereas if you have a child who has a poor relationship or poor attachment to their primary caregiver, then there's an association with having emotional problems, behavioral problems later in life and having more trouble with attachment with others. 55 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:11,000 One thing that I read in his work that was really interesting to me, this surprised me honestly. 56 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:19,000 He said that there is a biological capacity to bond and form attachments. It is absolutely, he said. 57 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:29,000 I think he said most certainly this is genetically determined. So there's a genetic like predisposition right for potential bonding and attachment. 58 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:41,000 But there's like a but there too right. It's going to depend on nurture right. This is a little evocative to me of the nature versus nurture discussion. 59 00:07:41,000 --> 00:08:04,000 So there's genetic potential for bonding and attachment, but it really comes down to the quantity of bonding and like time or the patterns of early life experiences that show what that potential becomes over time in a person. 60 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:12,000 So what a child needs is predictable, responsive and nurturing caregiving. 61 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:26,000 And so with that, an infant is going to be able to have normal bonding and attachment and without it that might not be realized for that person as they grow up, especially. 62 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:50,000 So a few specific explanations of what we're really talking about here. Dr. Perry says that this is really like being responsive if the baby's crying, nurturing and rocking, holding the baby, singing to them, feeding them, locking eyes, having eye contact. 63 00:08:50,000 --> 00:09:02,000 Those are really the nurturing behaviors that he's talking about. And so he says quantity really does matter. In fact, it's crucial to bonding in childhood. 64 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:09,000 So spending lots of time together is so important in developing these secure attachments. 65 00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:25,000 He also says that face to face interactions, eye contact, physical proximity, touch and other primary sensory experiences are so key and relevant in determining a secure bond. 66 00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:39,000 So all of this to say scientists believe that the most important factor in creating attachment is having positive physical contact like hugging, holding, rocking the baby. 67 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:47,000 So the most important relationship in a child's life is the attachment to his or her primary caregiver. 68 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:59,000 And generally, traditionally, that's usually the mother. So healthy attachments to this primary caregiver are built by repetitive bonding experiences during infancy. 69 00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:04,000 And this provides a solid foundation for future healthy relationships. 70 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:17,000 So that's a lot, right? That's a lot of information. But in adoption, we don't always have time with the children who become ours in their infancy. 71 00:10:17,000 --> 00:10:27,000 We don't always have control over what bonding looked like before they came to our home. And so it's, I think, really important to understand all of that groundwork. 72 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:39,000 And in contrast, if we're having trouble bonding and attaching, it can lead to a more fragile biological and emotional foundation for that child in their future relationships. 73 00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:48,000 And so doing our best to help heal any ruptures or any struggles in attachment is really so key, so vital. 74 00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:55,000 So one question that seems to be commonly asked is whether attachment problems are always from abuse. 75 00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:09,000 And Dr. Perry says no. He says that actually the majority of attachment problems are actually due to parents not even knowing or understanding what is developmentally needed for a child. 76 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:17,000 He says that many parents have not been educated about how important these experiences are, especially in the first three years of life for a child. 77 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:30,000 And so without that knowledge, knowledge is power, right? You can't be doing these things if it's not intentional or it's going to be harder to do things if it's not intentional. 78 00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:41,000 And so his directive for us is to have public education and policy support in these areas so that we can improve. 79 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:52,000 And what I thought of when I heard that was that this should really be part of adoption curriculum for adoptive parents to really understand better on a deeper level. 80 00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:58,000 I don't feel like it's something that Shaun and I really understood on a deep level when we were adopting. 81 00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:08,000 I think it would be really helpful information to have, especially knowing that there are genetic differences and predispositions to ease of bonding. 82 00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:17,000 I think that's so key and bonding is naturally going to be more challenging in some of these different adoption situations. 83 00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:34,000 And so I think that's a really great initiative for us to take on to try to really help inform others about the importance of secure attachment and understanding it before we go into an adoption situation. 84 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:45,000 All right. And so currently it's estimated that one in three people has some kind of attachment disorder, right? 85 00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:48,000 One in three people. Isn't that crazy? That's a ton of people. 86 00:12:48,000 --> 00:13:01,000 And so like thirty three point three three three percent of the population is estimated to have either avoidant, ambivalent or resistant attachments with their primary caregiver. 87 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:09,000 And so just a really quick kind of overlook at what these different attachment classifications are. 88 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:12,000 So you could have secure attachment, right? 89 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:19,000 If a child is securely attached, they're going to be upset when their primary caregiver leaves the room. 90 00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:23,000 They're going to warmly like welcome them back when they come back to the room. 91 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:30,000 They seek their comfort, but they're also willing to explore while their caregivers in the room. 92 00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:34,000 They're not just like attached at the hip like they feel comfortable and confident exploring. 93 00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:37,000 So that's what a secure attachment looks like. 94 00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:49,000 And one year old children generally from studies, it looks like about 60 to 70 percent of one year olds have this secure attachment to their primary caregiver. 95 00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:57,000 So insecure avoidant attachment is when the child will ignore their caregiver when they're present. 96 00:13:57,000 --> 00:14:07,000 They don't seem very distressed if there's separation and they don't really respond when the caregiver returns to the room. 97 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:10,000 In fact, they might even like avoid them, like turn away from them. 98 00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:17,000 And so that's about 15 to 20 percent of one year olds display that whereas insecure resistant attachment. 99 00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:24,000 It means that the child would have very little exploration while their caretakers in the room. 100 00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:26,000 They just want to like stay close to them. 101 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:29,000 They're really distressed if caretaker leaves the room. 102 00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:35,000 And then when they return, they're like upset and angry or ambivalent. 103 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:39,000 And so that's about 10 to 15 percent of one year old to have been studied. 104 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:48,000 And then the fourth type is insecure, disorganized or insecure, disoriented attachment. 105 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:54,000 And so in this attachment style, you'll see confusion about whether they should approach or avoid their caregiver. 106 00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:57,000 They're going to be most distressed by separation. 107 00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:02,000 And then upon return of a caretaker, they're confused, maybe dazed. 108 00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:07,000 It's kind of like all over the place. 109 00:15:07,000 --> 00:15:11,000 And so you'll see that in about five to 10 percent of one year olds. 110 00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:16,000 So that's a little overlook of what these different attachments look like. 111 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:23,000 And so one in three people has one of those insecure attachments. 112 00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:26,000 Which is a lot of people. Right. 113 00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:28,000 I was so shocked by this. 114 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:41,000 I feel like this really is something that we need a lot more education and public policy regarding to help increase secure attachments. 115 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:44,000 So with all of this information, what do we do with this? 116 00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:45,000 Right. 117 00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:51,000 Something that I really appreciated from one of the resources that I found as I was reading about attachment. 118 00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:53,000 We will include this in the show notes. 119 00:15:53,000 --> 00:15:56,000 But there's a website called child trauma dot org. 120 00:15:56,000 --> 00:16:06,000 And there were eight different tips of what we can do to help nurture these children after all of this information from Dr. 121 00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:08,000 Perry. 122 00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:15,000 So number one, we can try to understand the behavior before punishment or consequences. 123 00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:35,000 So if you have a child who's behaving in a way that's frustrating and isn't really making sense, let's try to understand what this behavior means, where it's coming from, what's going on before we say, hey, time out, go to your room or, you know, have some kind of punishment bestowed. 124 00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:49,000 That's not going to help if we have a knee jerk reaction of anger or sending them away. Instead, we want to try to understand what's really going on, get to the root of what's happened. 125 00:16:49,000 --> 00:16:54,000 Number two, we want to help these children. 126 00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:58,000 We want to parent these children based on their emotional age. 127 00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:04,000 Number three, we need to be consistent and predictable and repetitive. 128 00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:06,000 Consistent, predictable and repetitive. 129 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:08,000 I really like that. 130 00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:12,000 That's a lot to wrap your head around, or at least it was for me. 131 00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:29,000 But consistent parenting will help promote secure attachments and creating an environment where it's not this volatile, hostile environment is going to make it feel less secure to a child. 132 00:17:29,000 --> 00:17:37,000 So if you want to help nurture your children and help them develop some more secure attachments, you want to be consistent. 133 00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:38,000 All right. 134 00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:43,000 Number four, we need to model and teach appropriate social behaviors. 135 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:57,000 So a lot of children who have insecure attachments, they might end up being very huggy or affectionate with all kinds of people and seem to have like no fear of other people. 136 00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:03,000 And while it might look like that means they have secure attachment, it actually really doesn't. 137 00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:06,000 It means it's an insecure attachment. 138 00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:17,000 And so it's really important to model and teach children that it's really not OK to go hug the stranger at the grocery store or sit on a man's lap that you don't know. 139 00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:24,000 These really aren't good behaviors, but you want to teach them and model that in a way that's not going to make them feel ashamed. 140 00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:35,000 Like you want to do it in a natural way that helps them to learn, but gently so you can read more about this on child trauma.org. 141 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:38,000 But that's a really important one. 142 00:18:38,000 --> 00:18:44,000 Number five, we need to listen to and talk with these children, which isn't a huge key, right? 143 00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:47,000 We always want to be listening to children to help them. 144 00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:51,000 Number six, we need to have realistic expectations. 145 00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:57,000 Number seven, seven, be patient with children's progress and with yourself. 146 00:18:57,000 --> 00:19:01,000 And number eight, take care of yourself, too. 147 00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:10,000 I thought that was a great list of some takeaways for what we can do as we go about these potentially challenging. 148 00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:24,000 Situations of helping children to work through ruptured attachments, helping children to hopefully develop more secure attachments and feel that safety with us. 149 00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:26,000 So hopefully this is some helpful information. 150 00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:30,000 And I really do encourage you to look up more from Dr. Perry. 151 00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:32,000 He is so helpful. 152 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:34,000 I really loved his book. 153 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:39,000 What happened to you and highly recommend that to you and really appreciate you being here and learning with us. 154 00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:45,000 About ruptured attachments and what different attachment styles look like. 155 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:50,000 So a big thanks to Sarah for helping us to think more about this subject. 156 00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:58,000 It was so helpful to hear her personal experiences with it and for us to do a deep dive and to keep learning about it. 157 00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:00,000 So big thank you to Sarah. 158 00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:03,000 We encourage you to continue to keep learning, too. 159 00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:08,000 Thank you so much for listening to this episode. 160 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:10,000 The Open Adoption Project. 161 00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:18,000 Yeah, we're so grateful to be able to share a lot of content this month, November 2023 for National Adoption Month. 162 00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:19,000 Yeah. 163 00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:22,000 So we just would love to remind you to subscribe to our newsletter. 164 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:30,000 If you have not done that yet, you can go to open adoption project dot org and click on newsletter and there's a subscription form right there. 165 00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:31,000 Yeah. 166 00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:32,000 Fill up. 167 00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:34,000 Also connect with us on social media. 168 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:38,000 We're on Instagram and Facebook at Open Adoption Project. 169 00:20:38,000 --> 00:21:05,000 Yeah, thank you so much for being here and learning with us as we just keep talking and learning about all of these different nuances of adoption.