9 Ways To Bond With Your Adopted Child

Every adoptive parent is hoping for a close bond with their newly adopted child. So how do you bond with your adopted child?

Do Not Try to Rush the Bonding Process

Attachments formed with others happen through time and experiences. There are so many ways to bond with a child. Plan a family camping trip.

Go fishing for the day. Some of the deepest, best conversations can happen as you sit and wait for the fish to bite.

Take advantage of drives to the store, to soccer practice, and other everyday drives. Ask your adopted child open-ended questions that require more than a yes or no answer about things that may interest them.

Love is a process that takes time. Any kind of relationship grows with time and shared experiences. Trust your efforts and give the bonding process a chance.

The reality of adoption can play out a bit differently than how we sometimes imagine it to be. There are so many variables to the bonding process between the adoptive parent and the adopted child.

If a child is an infant or newborn, the bonding process may happen a bit quicker, as an infant is at the stage of needing you and will cling to you quicker than an older child may.

Woman wearing a daytime dress, kneeling and holding the hands of a pre-teen.

There are many factors at play when considering how long it will take to develop that long-awaited bond with your adopted child. For example, was your child adopted internationally and now has a new language to learn?

That feeling of estrangement could linger until there is a way to communicate. Although, that is mere speculation. Perhaps the language barrier will not influence the bonding period at all.

If a child has experienced traumas that have hurt them either physically or emotionally, they may need some time to trust that their new forever home is a safe, loving place to be.

Love is a process that grows through shared experiences and building trust.

Time is on an adoptive parent’s side, as the bond you want with your child is bound to happen eventually.


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Involve Your Adopted Child in Decision-Making

Encourage your adopted child to participate in family decision-making. This will help your child feel valued as an important part of the family.

Genuinely listening to children when they speak, as well as respecting their input, has a significant impact on a child’s self-esteem. When a child feels valued and validated, they feel loved and important.

If acquired at the appropriate age, good decision-making abilities can assist youngsters in becoming successful in life.

With solid decision-making skills, the transition from childhood to adulthood becomes seamless and uncomplicated.

This capacity enables children to resolve conflicts while simultaneously teaching them important life skills. Logical thinking and problem-solving help people make better decisions.

Decision-making abilities are an important skill for youngsters to develop. Making a decision is the action or process of concluding whether or not to accept a significant option after weighing the alternatives.

Children’s choices have an impact on their mental health and well-being. Their success and relationships are primarily dependent on their ability to make decisions.

It promotes the growth of responsibility and independence in children. It also helps children control their impulsive behavior.

The ability to recognize when a decision must be made is the first step toward developing decision-making abilities.

Children learn by observing their parents and peers, hearing discussions about values, and having the opportunity to make a choice and live with the consequences.

Children make mistakes from time to time, but they learn from them and seek to make better judgments in the future.

The talent develops when they have a clear awareness of the reasons for their decision, as well as experience and maturity.

There are numerous advantages to including youngsters in decision-making. The most satisfaction and fulfillment come from a well-thought-out decision.

Making bad mistakes is an unavoidable aspect of their development. If children are taught about the decision-making process, they will gain experience.

It is important to teach children how to make smart judgments. Because it is a difficult method that demands careful consideration, mastering this technique takes several years.

Children should be assigned tasks to perform, with the expectation that they will contribute meaningfully and responsibly.

They are shaped by their decisions into the type of adult they will become and the life routes they will choose later.


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Never Talk Badly About Your Adopted Child’s Birth Parents

Talking badly about a child’s birth parents will only cause further hurt and trauma to an already struggling child. Healing can be a difficult process for anyone.

When a child hears negative things about their birth parents, they find it difficult to move forward positively.

You want your child to learn to have a sense of compassion and understanding toward their birth parents. The skill of compassion and understanding will contribute to your child’s growth and maturity, as well as help them heal.

Talk to Your Adopted Child at Their Eye Level

This could mean kneeling down or perhaps sitting on a chair while they are standing. Making an effort to be at a child’s eye level will help your child feel less intimidated and more comfortable with you.

Being on the same eye level as your child gives him a sense of security and control. You demonstrate that you are completely focused on him. It also indicates that you’re open to interacting with him.

One of the most significant ways you may deliver the word, “You’re important to me,” is by active listening. Bring yourself down to the child’s level, lean in close, and create eye contact.

It is beneficial not only to your child. It also benefits you since being at your child’s eye level allows you to see what he sees. You get to learn from his point of view and perspective, which helps you better understand your child.

Hugs are more inviting, too, when you are already at their level.


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Establish a Routine for Your Adopted Child

Routines offer structure and a feeling of comfort and safety for your child. Most children resent bedtimes, for example, yet structure helps a child feel loved.

Children feel insecure about so many things in life. After all, life is big and scary in the eyes of a small child. If a child lacks a routine, they are more apt to feel a sense of insecurity and instability.

An Adopted Child’s Rejection is Not Personal

Do not take an adopted child’s apparent rejection personally. An adopted child is likely reacting to the hurt and trauma they have endured and not you personally.

Eventually, your child will learn that you are on their side.

Offer Comfort to Your Adopted Child

An adopted child has gone through a good deal of transition and will likely need to be comforted. This could mean little things like offering a stuffed animal at bedtime; perhaps one they picked out at the store themselves.

Other ways to comfort a child could be offering them foods they enjoy or are accustomed to eating. This is not to imply spoiling a child, but rather to initially make them as comfortable as possible.

Providing your child is accepting of physical contact, a comforting hug can do wonders as well. Even if a child seems a bit stiff and unaccepting of a hug, you will be making them feel cared for. Eventually, they will likely trust you and reciprocate your physical affection.


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Misbehaving Does Not Mean Rehoming

An adopted child who has gone through trauma may not trust your sincerity and may try to test your commitment. Sadly, this could be due to being let down by other adults in their lives, specifically their birth parents.

Many children in foster care bounce from one foster home to another, as well. That instability takes a toll on a child, leaving them skeptical of trusting that their new home is their forever home.

When your child misbehaves, you will want to reassure them that you will still be there to love them, no matter what. Stability might be new to an adopted child; something they will need to learn to trust.

Establish an Open Dialog With your Child

Depending on the age of your child, they may or may not wish to contribute to open conversations in the beginning.

Perhaps spending time doing fun things like fishing, swimming, attending fairs, carnivals, and other fun family events will help break the ice and encourage a gradual comfort level with your communications.

How Long Does it Take to Bond With an Adopted Child?

The long wait is over, and you finally have your adopted child. A common question is, how long does it take to bond with an adopted child?

Bonding with an adopted child can take between 6 months to 2 years, depending on the age of the child and other circumstances. Bonding with an infant can be quicker than bonding with an older child who has a good deal of adjustment to get through. Bonding is a process, regardless of the child’s age.

When anticipating the adoption of a child, it can be easy to fantasize about the outcome.

We will bring the adopted child home, and they will be so grateful to have been adopted, they will show so much love and the bonding will happen very quickly.

It’s a two-way street when it comes to attachment. The child must not only be attached to the parent but the parent must also be attached to the child. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, parental attachment does not always occur.

Parents may simply not have given it enough time. They expected attachment to emerge naturally and immediately, but instead, they feel like a babysitter at best, and like they’ve been invaded by someone else’s child at worst.

Rather than falling in love, some people need to develop in love. Adoption of a kid over the age of infancy can feel like an arranged marriage at first, and connection can take up to two years.

Parental attachment can be hampered by unrealistic expectations. When adopting an older child, it’s crucial not to invest too much time and energy anticipating how this child will be and behave.

Regardless of what the child’s caseworker, foster parent, or orphanage caretaker has told you, enter older child adoption with a feeling of wonder: “I wonder what this child will like, I wonder what his strengths will be,” says Abbie Smith, an adoption social worker at Holt International.

Always be on the lookout for the unexpected.

It also aids in the management of your gratitude expectations. No child should be expected to be thankful to her parents, but it’s tempting to do so subtly when you’ve worked so hard (and spent so much money?) to obtain her.

In my experience, kids aren’t naturally appreciative until they’re in their mid-to-late-twenties if they’re lucky.

Aside from having excessive expectations regarding our child, it’s typical to have false expectations about ourselves as new parents. Most parents expect to love and be attached to their children without thinking about it.

That is, after all, how normal parents feel! Right? They don’t expect to feel as if they’re just going through the motions of being a parent.

The disparity between how they imagined themselves to be and how they are can send them into a tailspin.

Is It Hard to Love an Adopted Child?

When adoptive parents are asked by others if they love their adopted child the same, a common and probably defensive response is often, “Of course, I love all of my children the same.” Is it hard, though, to love an adopted child?

It is not hard to love an adopted child. Parents love all of their children, yet the type of love a parent feels for their biological child is genetically and naturally different. Adopted children are not loved less, but rather adopted children are loved differently.

If parents are answering more honestly, they will tell you that they love all of their children, but the love they feel for their adopted child or children is a different kind of love than what they feel for their biological children.

It is completely natural to have a concern that perhaps you will not bond with and love your adopted child like you would a biological child.

The love and bond that a parent feels for their biological child is a fierce, overwhelming emotion that does not exist or can be understood until you have a biological child of your own.

This does not mean, though, that we are incapable of loving our adopted children. The love we feel may just differ slightly from how we love our biological children. Strong, emotional love is very much felt for all of our children, blood or not.

Another factor that comes into play here is that the bond you establish with your adopted child also depends on the age of your adopted child.

Adopting a baby or infant offers a tremendous amount of bonding time to happen almost as naturally as it would with your biological child.

Visit The Guardian to read more about loving your adopted child.

Trina Greenfield - Adoption Author

About the Author:
Trina Greenfield is passionate about providing information to those considering growing their family. Trina does not run an adoption agency. Her website is strictly information-based, so she is able to provide unbiased, credible information that she hopes will help guide those along their journey.