TOP TEN TIPS FOR THE
FIRST YEAR HOME
By Deborah Gray MSW, MPA
Author of the books: Attaching in Adoption
& Nurturing Adoptions
Parents passionately want to succeed in raising emotionally healthy
children. They also want to enjoy their little ones. When their
children arrive later in infancy or childhood, most parents are
well-aware that they are doing more careful parenting. They are
nurturing not only to build a relationship, but to help mitigate any
impact of losses or maltreatment.
What are reasonable things for parents to concentrate on during the
first year home? How can parents do the best to enjoy their children?
They do not want the pleasures of parenting their children dimmed by a
chorus of cautions. On the other hand, they do want to make that first
year a great start. Here are my TOP TEN hits for a great start to your
relationship with your baby or child.
1. Spend ample time in nurturing activities.
The most significant process of the first year home is creating a trust
relationship. Intentional and ample nurturing promotes this goal.
Restrict your hours away from the little one. Do not leave your child
for overnight trips for this first year.
Meet your little one’s needs in an especially sensitive manner. Feed on
demand. Respond quickly to fussing. Allow the toddler or child to
regress, bottle-feeding, rocking to sleep, lap sitting, and being
carried. Let your child experience you as the safe person who is
sensitively meeting her needs. Play little games that promote eye
contact, like peekaboo, pony ride, and hide-and-seek. Make positive
associations between yourself and food.
Rather than children becoming more dependent through this extra
nurturing, they instead become trusting. Anxious people do not know who
they can trust to help them. More secure individuals understand that
they do not have to be perfect and that they can rely on significant
others. Children who do not learn to depend on others tend to be
anxious or emotionally constricted. Their “independence” is a false
one, meaning that they do not trust others and can only rely on
themselves. The child who has learned a healthy dependence is more
secure in trying new things and venturing out. She always has a safe
home base to come back to—you!
2. Teach
children to play with you.
Many little ones have missed the joys of play. Act as an amplifier,
teaching toddlers and children the pleasure of play. Most children have
missed the experience of having parents express joy as they played.
Because of this, their reward centers were not stimulated. This
restricted the association of exploration and play with pleasure. Set
aside at least thirty minutes a day for play with your children.
Younger children may want this in segments. Do not hesitate to use
voice tones and expressions that are ones usually meant for infants and
younger children.
If your child can already play, then continue to build your
relationship through play. Shared enjoyment cements relationships. Make
your family one that develops a pattern of having fun. Throughout life
having fun as a family builds self-esteem.
While some children take off in play, others cannot stay engaged for
long. Continue to stretch the more tentative child, engaging her in
mutually enjoyable activities. Look for different sensory modalities
that might feel safer or more interesting. For example, a boy who
was afraid to play outdoors began to use sidewalk chalk with his
mother, even though the grass seemed overwhelming. Gradually a ball was
used on the sidewalk, and then onto the grass. Take things in steps if
children are wary.
3. Talk to
your child.
Parents of infants use exaggerated voice tones to
emphasize important concepts. Their “amplifier system” helps children
with attention to most important parts of the whole environment. After
children move into the preschool age, some of this “cheerleader”
amplification diminishes. Continue to use this brighter emotional tone
with your child as she understands your shared world—even if she is not
an infant.
Explain things to him, even though you might think that the meaning of
what you are doing is obvious. Not only are you conveying information
to him, you are revealing your view of the world to him. Your voice
tones guide him to better understand the context. Be sure to use your
fingers and gestures to point out important things to him. This helps
him to both attend to and understand the meaning of the context around
him. Early language not only teaches us words, but a way of
understanding our world through the subjects selected for attention and
their associated intonations, expressions, and gestures.
Most of us have an internal dialogue going on during the day. (Yes, we
are actually talking to ourselves.) Simply make some of this internal
language external. This is a typical activity for parents of infants.
However, it tends to diminish as children get older. Since children
have missed this early activity, parents should feel free to describe
things as they would to an infant.
4. When toddlers
or older children have behavior problems, use your body to stop them.
Be gentle, but be consistently and predictably competent in stopping
negative behaviors. Do not use over the shoulder commands or across the
room reminders. Stay within arm’s reach of the child, moving their
hands, bodies, feet, to where you want them to go. Never tolerate
hitting, kicking, or hurting. Some parents allow a child painful
“exploration” of the parents’ faces. This is teaching that
will have to be undone later. Gently move their bodies to where you
want them to be. For example, if your little one is reaching for an
item, move the child or the item. Use the voice for a back up. Do not
remind or repeat several times. Instead, describe in a pleasant manner
how precious or pretty the item appears to you—as you move your child.
Teach boundaries of respect from the beginning.
Obviously, most parents will not be getting much done except parenting
when their child is awake. Remind yourself that your primary job is
parenting when your child is awake.
5. Get enough
sleep, good food, and exercise to stay in a good mood.
Little ones who have been moved and/or neglected tend to be irritable,
fussy, and hard to soothe. Parents use their own positive,
well-regulated moods to help calm and engage these little ones.
Your own emotional stability will help to steady your child’s
moods. A depressed parent struggles to form a positive, secure
attachment with her baby or child. Depression makes the parent
emotionally less available. The parent who is tired, eating junk food,
and inert by day’s end does not give a child a competent source of
emotional regulation. Parents who find that their moods are slipping,
even with good self-care, should see about counseling and/or an
antidepressant. It is simply too hard to do this essential, nurturing
parenting while being depressed. Model respect for yourself by
taking time for showers, good meals, and sleep.
6. Be part
of an adoption support group.
The relationships between families are invaluable. The relationships
can be emotional lifelines on hard days. If possible, find a mentor who
is positive, and who likes you and your child. Ask her to be part of
your circle of support. We all need to feel understood and
authentically accepted. A mentor who can provide that sense of nurture
for the parent helps the parent to be a good
nurturer. The mentor relationship provides a sense of being heard and
accepted, and tips and information. Parents are working harder
emotionally when parenting a baby or child who has lived through uneven
parenting. Parents need someone who cares for them. Sometimes this can
be mutual support, and sometimes one-to-one.
7. Keep a
calm, but interesting home.
Match the amount of stimulation in the home to the amount that is
within the child’s ability to tolerate. Many children have been
massively understimulated before they came to parents. Neglect
massively understimulates children. They do not build neurology to
process as much sensory stimulation. After adoption, their worlds can
suddenly be overwhelming. Things are too bright, too loud, move too
much, and tilt too much. Slow things down, buffering your baby or child
to the extent that they can process the information coming their way.
Often children who are overwhelmed by noise will begin shouting, or
those overstimulated by too much movement
will begin running with arms like windmills. Lay out predictable,
consistent events for the day. Some children find the movement of the
car to be disorienting. If your child is havingdifficulties, try a
couple of days limiting the car, determining whether or not this makes
a
difference.
8. Explain to
children basics of your relationships as they gain language.
For example, “A mother’s job is to love you. I will always come back
home to you when I leave in the car to go shopping. You will live with
me until you are as big as I am. I will not let anybody hurt you.
I will never hurt you. We will always have enough food.” One
mother told me of her son’s relief and better behavior when she told
him that she would never allow others to hurt him. “Why didn’t I
think to tell him the first year?” She questioned. “He was afraid every
time we went to the mall. He has been thinking for two years that just
anyone could haul off and hit him.” Another parent told me of the
melting smile that her daughter gave her when she said that a mother’s
job was to love her child. “I just assumed that she knew that. But she
didn’t. She looked at my face much more after that.”
9. Do watch for
signs of an exclusive attachment by the end of the first year.
Children should be seeking out their parents for affection and play.
They should be showing off for positive attention. They should prefer
being with the parent. They should show some excitement about time
together. When hurt or distressed, the child should seek out the
parent. In a secure attachment, the child will calm with the parent and
accept soothing. Trauma and traumatic grief are the common
culprits when children are remaining wary, fearful, and controlling of
their parents. Signs of trauma with younger children include regular
night terrors, dissociation (child shuts off emotionally and stares
away), scratching, biting, extreme moods, freezing in place, and
destructiveness. Parents who see these symptoms should be finding a
mental health counselor to help their child. If the child is under the
age of three, the parent is given special parenting advice. Usually
therapy with an experienced child therapist can begin not long after
the age of three. Do not have an artificial timeline of “fixed in
a year,” for the preschooler or older child. Consider the year marker
as the time it takes to really get to know your child—not to iron out
any behavioral irregularities.
10. Enter
your little one’s space—positively.
This
often means getting low and looking up for eye contact. It means trying
hard and trying patiently for a longer time. You are the one who
has the responsibility of engaging your child positively. Do not use
punitive techniques to try to build relationships. After all, no one
wants to attach to a mean person. Instead, be strong, dependable,
available, and kind. Veer away from advice that is strong, controlling,
and mean in tone. Sensitive and kind parents gradually build empathy
and security in their relationships with their children. That process
takes time and the type of
parenting that caused you to want to be a parent in the first place!
Maintain a
sane schedule as you move into year two. Many parents decide that the
first year is the marker until they can re-enter a “normal” schedule.
Among family therapists there is national concern about the taxing
schedule that Americans are considering “normal.” Resist this
widespread but unhealthy pace. Continue to parent with margins of time
that allow forsensitivity, with margins of emotional energy that allow
for appreciation of those around you. Model a healthy,
emotionally fulfilling lifestyle to your child.
