I've adopted two children from China, one was 11 months and the other 14 months at the time of adoption. We have very little information about their day to day lives prior to adopting them, other than some standard boilerplate from the social welfare institutions responsible for them. Both of our kids were in great physical and developmental shape when we got them.
My older daughter is now 5, and is completing kindergarten, where she has been top of the class in just about everything. She was reading last summer. She's very kind, thoughtful, funny, happy and outgoing. She's also got non-stop energy. I'm not saying this to brag (well, maybe not much
), just so you know that children adopted past infancy can do quite well.
She had been in foster care and was obviously attached to her foster mother, although we never met her. She had a tough time adjusting to us initially--took one look and didn't stop screaming for five days. She gradually started to settle in and the bonding started to happen.
We've had a few minor "issues" with her. She initially had a hard time sleeping. She also had a stretch when she was about 3 and a half where she was the Queen of Tantrums. We worked through these things and found Martha Welch's Holding Time to be beneficial. We did a handful of holdings and she made a huge change for the better after the tantrums. I think it showed her that my love was totally unconditional.
Our younger daughter had been in the orphanage. She did seem attached to her nanny. She's been home about a year and a half. This child has the most easy-going, sunny disposition of any kid I've ever seen. She seemed to sense immediately that coming to us was a major improvement in her life situation, and she never looked back.
To be honest, most of the AP techniques that are so popular here were of no use to us. Neither of our girls would do the family bed. They hated the whole thing and refused to sleep with us in the same room. They were sort of past the sling thing, although we do spend lots of lap time together. I also work full time out of the house and my kids go to a family daycare, which has worked out nicely for us.
Bonding takes place over the course of a million interactions. There are things you can do to facilitate these little interactions and I think most will come pretty naturally to you, like playing games that require you and your child to gaze into eachother's faces, acts of feeding, shared laughter, etc. Maybe it will take a little more conscious activity on your part, but believe me, it's not hard.
While I know that some people advocate adoptive breast feeding, it made zero sense to me to try this with kids who were a year old or so and from a different culture. Every single thing about their lives was turned upside down when they came to us, except their bottles, which were a major source of comfort. We looked different, smelled different, sounded different, offered weird table food, etc. It seemed to me that it would be doing them a disservice to try to make them learn to breast feed at that point.
Please rest assured that bonding can take place without having a child from infancy. I was also worried about bonding with an "older" child, but it was never a problem. Adopting these kids has been the best thing dh and I have ever done. I know literally hundreds of families who have adopted children around the age of one year and know of very few problems. I'm not saying that kids without problems aren't out there--they are. Children who have been abused, neglected or who have suffered multiple placements are at higher risk for attachment problems.
Read everything you can. I second the opinion for Weaver's Craft, but read it knowing the author is presenting the worst possible scenarios, and is not portraying the typical adoption. Find some local adoption support groups (if you need help, pm me) and talk to the families and attend their events. It will give you confidence about this kind of adoption.
