I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Once my daughter gets home, I will have experienced two different adoptions. One of my son, who was about two years old at homecoming in 2008. This would be considered a toddler adoption. One of my daughter, who will be about 11 months at homecoming. I know that each experience will be completely different and that each child is different, but I would like to chronicle some of our experiences in hopes of helping, or just empathizing with, other families.

A little background on my son. He is full of life. When it comes to fight or flight situations, he will fight...every time,but he is learning to control this. He is smart and fiesty. He is goofy and a tease. He also likes to be in control, and I am not sure if this is nature or nurture, but he is who he is. And I love him.

My first reflection will be on hand holding, because it was one of the hardest things for us to tackle. On homecoming, my son was at an age when he was striving for independence, but needing dependence too, and would jump between the two regularly. He knew that he had to hold my hand when we crossed a street or in parking lots, but he would vehemently fight it other places. When he was two I would whisk him up in my arms and carry him instead.

However, when he turned three, and he was much bigger, we were still struggling with this. I knew I had to try various tactics. Here is what did NOT work; forcing him to hold my hand, telling him how much I liked to hold his hand, giving time outs for not listening, and trying the squeeze hands and smile at each other method that I read in a book. He wasn't buying it. Here is what finally worked...it took time, over a year. (and it still doesn't always work, especially if he is tired)

1. Being neutral when hand holding was optional. He would say, "Do you like holding my hand?" I would respond, "It doesn't matter, either way." Most times he would hold my hand then and say, "I like holding your hand." I would respond, "Ok."

2. When it wasn't optional like in a busy store, I would say, "I am going to hold your hand, because I need to know where you are and keep you safe." I would keep it neutral, but non-optional. This worked, still does.

3. Singing, "I wanna hold your hand...." (Even though this wasn't neutral, he still liked it.)

I do view hand holding as partly symbolic on attachment and bonding, and so it was frustrating that it took so long for this to become comfortable for us and not something that we battled with on most outing. And being completely honest, we still have our days where I feel like we are duking it out with each other. Sigh.

I think my next entry will be on sleeping issues, especially when we first got home.