Bringing Your Newly Adopted Child Home - An Introduction
Building trust is the journey for all parents and their children, but with adopted children, this journey is particularly challenging. One of the most effective ways to build this trust is to create a loving, nurturing environment that best facilitates a loving, secure bond between you and your newly adopted child. In my book, Gotcha! Welcoming Your Adopted Child Home, 2011 (now out of publication) I referred to this process as “cocooning.” Cocooning not only helps develop positive attachment relationship between parent and child, it also helps to fill in the developmental needs your child missed in their first one to two years. This facilitates the crucial role of helping your child to “grow up on the inside.” Through cocooning, you make it possible for your child to begin maturing emotionally and developmentally.
The key to cocooning effectively is simple. Simple, but not easy. The key is to see your child through God’s eyes.Who is this child God has created? We can know, as King David did in Psalm 139:14, “. . . I am wondrously made. Wonderful are your works! You know me right well.” The key to cocooning is to discover the wonderful being God knit in her mother’s womb. As David cried out , “Search me, O God, and know my heart!” Cocooning will make it possible for you to search your child and to know her heart.
These ideas may run counter to what you think you should do with your child who is no longer an infant and who may even be a toddler or an older child. People in your life such as relatives, friends, pediatricians and social workers may frown upon these methods. You may find yourself alone in your conviction that giving your child and yourself the time and space to just be together, like when a new mother brings her infant home, is the most important thing you can do right now to solidify your child’s emotional development.
In this series, my desire is to give you the permission, support, encouragement and guidance to insulate you and your newly adopted child from the outside world and to be present in your relationship so you can raise your child who feels valuable, who is capable of having healthy and satisfying relationships, and who is able to be the person they were created to be. I hope you’ll join me on this journey of exploring cocooning!
Licensed Psychologist & Author