Attachment, bonding, connectedness – whatever your theory or label, parents, and perhaps especially parents who adopt children, hope it happens with our children and we hope it happens early and enough.
On that note, biological parents tend to think it’s “automatic.” I don’t think it is.
Anyway, I know I looked for it. I still do. Back then, when my sons were infants and they hiked all the stages of child development, I looked for signs that my sons had bonded with me, I with them, and that they (perhaps more importantly for me) bonded with each other.
Oddly it’s the attachments I have to fight and resist that expose how bonded we are. For instance, when my boys are disappointed for ANY reason, any reason at all, I feel the urge to save them from it – no matter who or what caused it – rising up in me.
When they express that they feel they have no friends or when they hear about events and they are not invited – I have to calm my inner-fierceness. It’s here, right here, where I believe we as parents can do some real damage – when our attachments to our children mess with the natural, necessary pain life sends all of our ways and does so just because we are human.
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