Deborah D. Gray > Quotes

“As a group, attachment-challenged children need to be looked at differently. This is a group of children who have experiences and fears of being separated from parent figures. Until they can rebuild some of their emotional security, their time in child-care must be restricted.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Parents must understand that their children are not inferior for having to work through additional tasks during childhood. In comparison to most of their peers, such children will be working harder to enjoy stability and happiness in life. Parents will be working alongside their children toward the same end.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“All development is sequential and adaptive. Physical development unfolds in an orderly progression. Children first creep, then crawl, walk, run and hang from their knees or do cartwheels. Similarly, emotional growth unfolds sequentially and in stages.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“If friends or acquaintances seem to want to help with diagnosing, do not appear receptive. Let them know that your child has been diagnosed, that you have professional support and advice, and that you are following a regimen known to be the most successful for the most children. Parents complain that sometimes, with no encouragement, individuals will launch into a story that reminds them of the family’s situation. People are entertained and fascinated by tales. Some of the stories have dreadful and unrelated outcomes. There are books and movies available for the purpose of entertaining others. Feel free to put your child off limits when it comes to being the subject of tales for others. After hearing these unnecessary sad stories, mood is affected. Parents should watch and protect their mood gauges carefully! Parents can protect themselves from frustration by disengaging from these episodes, quickly excusing themselves to make a phone call, find the restroom, or check on something. It is certainly more appropriate to find an excuse than to fume about insensitivity later. Some people are drawn to special needs like a magnet, yet they have nothing positive to offer. Avoid these people.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Families are finding that they are getting funding from a variety of sources. One typical family has counseling covered through their insurance for family counseling, and counseling funded by a federally funded adoption support program for their child. They receive respite care funded through the Division of Developmental Disabilities. They pay privately for Sibshop, a well-loved program for the siblings of their special needs children. Since the Sibshop is through a non-profit organization, it is particularly affordable. Their school district pays for tutoring. After they specifically requested a review, they received an adoption subsidy available to older children through their state. The cost of braces was partially reimbursed by the adoption support system, as well. The combination of resources and financial relief allowed the parents to enjoy some outings, plan a simple family vacation, and get some household help. They said, “Without this help, we would not have made it as an emotionally intact family. We would not have disrupted, but we would not have been the unit that we are today.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“The rule of thumb is that, when first placed, children will relate to new parents in much the same way that they related to former parents or orphanage workers. Without intervention, often this relationship style persists. Parents who are aware of both their own and their children’s challenges in forming trust relationships and emotional modulation are in the best position to develop strategies to strengthen their families and to meet the challenges.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Parents have to wait for children to learn to know and to love them. Children’s resistance to love is one of the hardest challenges of parenting these children. Waiting can become discouraging when adults are ready to teach children the loving meaning of a family and children are not ready. Looking for opportunities, using techniques, and remaining patient all help parents. Parents should be looking for attachment to the caregiver and family within a time frame of two years after arrival. Children who are in placements before the age of four are usually showing the growth of attachment after one year. If there has been trauma, or multiple placements, attachment takes longer. For children who are past four, especially if there is also a cultural change, the time frame stretches longer. If there are not strong gains within two years, however, parents should be concerned.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Children who have been moved need reassurance about the permanent nature of families. In many cases they have specific worries troubling them. Blanket reassurances do not reassure.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Children adopted as infants have been shown to enjoy higher than average rates of secure attachment with their parents. Adopted children may also feel a bond with their birthparents, although they may never have formed an attachment with them. Their shared biologic and emotional connection with birthparents creates a bond.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Spend time with people who help dream for a good future for all of the members of the family.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Unless challenges stand in the way, children naturally respond to trustworthy, nurturing, and sensitive parents by forming a trusting and secure relationship.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Ultimately, to promote attachment, a great deal of control has to be taken from children.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Some children benefit from an extra hour of sleep when they are going through regressions. Often they need more rest time to help them to cope better. After finding that an earlier bedtime works over a few cycles, children will often volunteer that they need an earlier bedtime when they are going through hard times.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Most parents are parenting children who are emotionally younger than their chronological ages. Even when their children arrive at older ages, parents use the amount of structure typically given to a younger child. High nurture means that parents are increasing opportunities for nurturing their children. Meals, bedtimes, walks, and games are tilted to emphasize the nurturance on which children thrive. Recognizing that children have missed dependable nurture, parents are supplying what was missed. This is specialized parenting at its best, when children are given a ton of love and enough structure to succeed. Since people usually pair high structure with low affection in our society, parents may think that it is loving to reduce structure. Instead, loving parents are providing the structure that helps their emotionally younger or emotionally fragile child have a chance for a good day.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“If an adult is married to an abusive spouse, divorce is a sensible solution. Yet, there is normal grief in the decision-making to sever the relationship. Longing for the positive times with the former spouse is balanced against knowing the destructiveness of abuse. Similarly, if a partner callously abandons an adult, grief is normal. Even though the partner may have lacked qualities like loyalty, commitment, or sensitivity, the degree of felt pain is not initially measured by the worthiness of the partner. Only after grieving do people start to realize that their partner’s abandonment might be a bit of luck! The legal and emotional ties of children to their birthparents are similar to marriage. Even though their parents may have abandoned, abused, or neglected them, children will not calibrate their love or longing by the worthiness of their lost parents. Methods that are most successful for grieving children do not emphasize parent replacement, especially in the beginning of placement. Parents who acknowledge that their children are still missing and loving their former parents affirm their children. Parents do not shame their children in any way for their devotion. Instead, parents say that it sounds like the children loved that previous parent the best they could. Sometimes questions give parents a sense of the degree of resolution that a child has about their loss. Examples are, “Did you have a chance to say goodbye? Are you still thinking that you will move back? What might happen so that you could go back?” It helps to ease children into bonding when parents say that they will be giving their children all the love they need, and that children can still care for birthparents or former foster parents. Parents can give matter-of-fact information that all children need someone to love them day-to-day, even if children want to be in another home.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Brain Shift This technique helps parents catch children who are starting to lose it, or melt down. Parents ask children questions that require them to use a different part of the brain. Swanson and Thompson describe this technique by having parents ask a child, “Are you too hot? Here, let me feel your forehead. I think that you are too hot.” This will give the parent a moment to also calm a child. Another question is, “Can you smell that? I think that I smell french fries.” As children shift away from the emotional centers of the brain to test this, parents have a chance to steer their child (Swanson, Thompson, 1997).”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Healthy families master the knack of keeping the accent on the positive. Although the family alters after a challenging placement, they work through grief, re-balance, add resources, and find new ways to make life good. Their identity is not wrapped around a child’s trauma or limitations. Instead, they find ways to accommodate special needs, without the special needs becoming the focal point of life.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“When children are regressing, increase nurture. Usually the fighting or distancing is caused by fear. Parents can help the agitated child to slow down, accept comfort, talk about feelings, or improve his physical state. Gradually, children learn to seek out parents when they are hurting.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Parents wonder if dissociation feels negative, since children describe themselves as numb. In fact, the numb feeling of dissociation is among the most common symptoms for which sufferers seek medication. It causes people to feel awful within their own being. It leaves people expressing that they are robotic, without normal feelings for others. While children cannot express the feeling in adult abstracts, children whom I have treated want to be rid of the “nothing feeling.” They say that it feels “weird” or “not good.” They also notice that they are angry shortly after the “nothing feeling” goes away.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Events that cause out-of-home placement often occur during the toddler or preschool years. At that age it is normal for children to believe that they are the cause of life’s events. Children’s egocentricity, which is a normal part of personality development, results in excessive feelings of responsibility. Children are shamed by the meaning that they derive from maltreatment or loss—that it was something that emanated from them.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“When parents and children enter shared helplessness, children make no progress. Instead, they experience their parents as helpless peers. Parents who tell children that they are safe, and that ways to continue to help them will be pursued, are beacons of reassurance to children.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Parents with the most challenging children need support. If the parents get too tired to provide nurture, children cannot do well. Parents have to go through a mental shift, recognizing that supporting people with special needs is a priority in society. It is appropriate and necessary to get support for the family when members have special needs.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Grieving children are known for their irritability. They are grouchy and hard to live with. Grieving children do not want to please or to be pleasing. They are constantly asking for parents to change the environment in some way so that they feel better. However, when the parents make the changes, children still feel bad. Nothing seems right to the grieving child. This exacerbates attachment issues. It is hard to move towards meeting children’s needs and feeling in tune when children are saying that nothing feels right.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“It helps kids to know that they are doing some of the emotional work that their peers may be doing later in life. Learning to cope with lack of control over life’s events, grief over losing loved ones, betrayal over misplaced loyalties, and shame over feeling inadequate are struggles for everyone over the life cycle. For a percentage of people, trauma will also be their experience. These children may be lagging in some emotional developmental tasks, but be ahead, ultimately, in learning to deal with life.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Many children described in this book have had prenatal exposure to toxins, including alcohol and/or a background of severe deprivation. Teachers need to learn that these experiences compromise judgement. They will need to be clear about rules and specific about where and when the rules apply. Steady, but upbeat, reinforcement of rules helps children to make good choices. Long discussions about whether children really meant to hit another child, or to write on someone’s project, etc. only teach children skills to debate their responsibility for actions. It is a better message to children to say that they may never hit or destroy someone’s property as a choice.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Deep Breathing First show children how to produce anxiety in themselves. Ask them to take many shallow breaths so that they are panting. They will have some of the same feeling that they have with anxiety. Then, show them how to fill up their bellies (diaphragms) with air. Have them blow out the scared feeling first, being careful to blow all of the air out. Next have them breathe in and hold the air. Then blow all of the way out again, and breathe in again. It is important that they are really filling their lungs, and slowing down their breathing. Children like being capable of stopping an anxious response. They also begin to recognize when their shoulders are up, and they are taking shallow little breaths. With non-verbal cues from parents, who gently push shoulders down, rub their backs, and take deep breaths with them, children can correct their breathing and take control of their anxiety. In time, they can do this for themselves. Many children are so anxious, that when asked to take a deep breath, they cannot get a deep breath in unless they blow out first. I work with children until they can get a “jelly belly” (a soft, relaxed tummy). It works well for some older children to have a timer on their watches which is set to go off on the hour. The timer reminds them to do diaphragmatic breathing throughout the day. This helps anxious children feel much better. With hyper-arousal reduced, they melt down less frequently.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Children who are permanently separated from their parents face a mourning process that is similar to children’s reactions to a parent’s death. In fact, the parents, with their connection and resources and care, are permanently lost to children. The literature that describes children’s reactions to a loss of the parent through death is quite relevant to the population of later-placed adopted children, or children in the foster care system who have lost attachment figures.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Practice Compliance Children can be given five-minute sessions in which they do things that their parents ask them to do. This time is structured, fun, and filled with praise. It resembles the “Simon Says” game. Children do what parents say, and get lots of attention. This game starts to redefine what it means when parents are in charge. Instead of feeling like they are losing, children find that it feels silly, non-threatening, and fun. This starts to redefine control.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Attachment is a two-way street. Both parents and children must begin the dance of attachment. They practice getting to know each other. They learn each other’s signals and responses. In normal and healthy attachment, both parents and children believe that they are doing a good job in loving each other most days. They tend to exhibit a smooth reciprocity—a mutual giving and receiving of love—with each other. Children and parents can have such synchronicity that they may look as if they have been choreographed.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents

“Occasionally, I give kids days off. If a child seems to be losing ground at school, return him home for a few days or even a week or two to recoup. He rests from so much outside contact, and gets recharged to cope with the world in a constructive way again. Parents usually only use a few days a year, so school progress is not much affected. For the occasional child who is out ten days in a year, the problems are serious enough that school achievement is secondary to health. In these cases the school is the communication loop with parents and therapist. Working parents have used sick days to stay out with their child. Some parents have asked a grandparent or relative to come in while they work. Often the regression has so worn the parent down, that a two-day break is a welcome respite for both of them to sleep in and recharge. Using these breaks has helped keep kids from ruining the gains that they have made in the school and community over a series of months. While these breaks need to be used judiciously, they have helped children to keep friendships and reputations that would otherwise be at risk.”
― Deborah D. Gray, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents