I’ve been reflecting on comments made recently in the class I teach, The Introduction to the Neurosequential Model for Caregivers. Dr. Perry describes, what he calls, the Intimacy Barrier. It seems to be similar to what we’ve long called ambivalence in a child’s experience of their connection to their caregiver(s).
The story that set me on this path went something like this: Any time I deliver my 4-year-old foster daughter to daycare, she walks me around the room to introduce me to everyone there as her mommy. She’s done this several times. After visits with her mother, she calls me by my first name for a few days and is generally uncooperative with daily routines. Usually, she tells me she loves me at least 40 times a day and follows me around the house almost constantly.
The concept of attunement is central to this picture. Attunement is the practice of understanding and accurately responding to a child’s expressed needs, i.e., some cries are for food, some are about boredom, some are expressing other discomforts.
It isn’t hard to imagine what brought this child to this place in her relationships with caregivers. Imagine a caregiver who’s simply hot and cold, attunement-wise. In one moment, they are over-involved, anticipating your every need, and meeting those needs even before you express anything about those needs. At other times, no matter how loud and demanding you get, they will not respond. Meeting your needs relies exclusively on their decision/ability/inclination to pay attention to you or not. As I heard someone express this once, “you are either on the island or off it and you aren’t sure how to get back on it.”
But if you are a toddler, you have the capacity to notice the power of your affection on your caregivers. You’ve been dropping stuff off your high chair for at least a year now and amused by the fact that someone usually returns what you have dropped. This sort of manipulation is part of growing up. It isn’t hard to generalize this experience to trying to make a caregiver “happy” and getting their attention by being cute, saying “I love you”, or otherwise trying to control the mood of the room to find a way back on to the island.
Addictions and significant mental health problems are often at the heart of these situations. Any attunement is at high risk for going out the window when an addiction has to be factored into the caregiving equation or when caregiver functioning is compromised by severe mental illness like post-partum depression, schizophrenia, or even severe bi-polar disorder, to name a few. The day-in, day-out push-pull on the young child leaves its mark neurologically. When things are this unpredictable, the child is left feeling it is their fault and it is up to them to always try to fix things in this unreliable world.
Sometimes it takes a while for a person to admit their role in bringing about the destruction of their family (Quite the understatement there, huh?). This is ripe territory for mom or dad telling the child terrible and confusing things about the foster/adoptive/kinship parents at visits. The visits leave the child’s affection for foster/adoptive/kinship parents feeling traitorous and it may seem like the only way to make mommy/daddy happy is to turn against the identified interlopers. After a few days things settle down, and it all starts over after the next visit. It might even begin before the next visit in anticipation of this chain of events, right?
Finally, by the age of 4 children have a pretty solid social awareness and still think that their pretending that a foster parent is ‘mommy’ will convince others who might just suspect something is up because they don’t look much alike. This magical thinking is a hallmark of this age. In their way of magical thinking, this strategy makes them just like everyone else with a mommy at childcare, not different.
What can a foster/adoptive/kinship parent do about it?
1. Do your best to be consistent. If you are a typically reserved person, stay that way. If you tend to be all bright and chipper, carry on. If you tend to be all business, be all business. Be ready to explain yourself anytime you deviate, though. These children have radar for phonies. Your predictability/consistency is the healer in this situation.
2. I like the idea of being a foster parent rather than a foster mom/dad (Thanks, Kay). That way mommy is always mommy. A friend’s daughter called her childcare provider “2-mama”. Talking about this with bio mom/dad could go a long way to easing this if they are open to it.
3. Be honest with yourself about how you feel when these things happen. If your efforts at attunement are consistent, you are not failing this child. These competing loyalties are just too confusing for them and can be for you, too.
4. Find other foster parents to talk to.
5. Use respite regularly.
6. Show yourself some grace.
If you are an adult with a history in the foster care system, and you see residual patterns like this in your relationships, consider checking out
1. https://fostercarealumni.org/arizona-chapter/ for support groups.
2. https://www.attachmentproject.com/ for strategies to combat early patterns.
3. This site is chock full of all kinds of resources for those who have aged-out: https://www.fosterclub.com/youth-perspective
Peace,
Cathy
