In February 2007 Russ and I traveled to Ethiopia where we met our children for the first time.
We walked through the blue metal gates of the orphanage and our lives changed forever. Our daughter was five and a half. She was beautiful, with deep dimples and curly brown hair. One of our little boys was two; he was quiet and cautious. Our baby was just five months old and absolutely precious.
We didn’t know it then, but on that day we also met another little girl who joined our family sixteen months later.
Within days of arriving in Ethiopia, we knew there would be challenges ahead with our daughter, Kalkidan, who had experienced severe trauma and deprivation. We knew it would take time for her to trust us and begin healing. She viewed the world through her experiences of abuse and neglect. Her brain had been rewired to interpret people as threatening and her new siblings as competitors for all resources from food to love.
Parenting often leads us to our knees in prayer. The upheaval in our lives made us desperate for help. We cried out to God and he answered. Over time we created a team of support, including medical experts, therapists, and good friends who cared for our family.
A key turning point was discovering the work of the renowned developmental psychologist, Dr. Karyn Purvis. She taught that in order to build attachment, we had to disarm our children’s fear response and build trust with them.
More than twenty years into our parenting journey, Russ and I had to learn a new way of parenting in order to help our children heal. Our unexpected education included learning to connect with our children before we corrected them. Building trust through a variety of strategies became our goal. Meeting our children’s sensory needs was a key part of the process. We became keenly aware of the importance of drawing our children close rather than using timeout or similar methods that would create distance.
As we learned, we thought about how we had parented our original crew of children. We’d followed traditional Christian methods and our kids had done well. But we wondered how much more joy there would have been if we’d known about attachment-focused and trust-based parenting from the beginning.
You may not have children who joined your family through adoption or foster care, but many kids experience hard beginnings in life. A difficult pregnancy or birth, early medical trauma, extreme stress on the parents, and many other factors can create a higher level of need in a child. Some days you may feel in over your head!
In The Connected Parent, Dr. Purvis offers practical advice and powerful tools to build secure attachment in your family. I demonstrate how I apply these tools in real-life through stories about my family. You’ll gain creative new strategies to add to your parenting toolbox.
May you love your children well and parent them in such a way that they know the steadfast love of God. He is the best Father we could ever have. And remember, you’re a good mom, doing good work.
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This piece originally appeared here, published with permission.
