Understanding Fear – Learning to Trust

When prospective adoptive parents ask me what is an important thing to know, I tell them that parenting a traumatized child who has experienced extreme loss, which is definitely true in most cases in international adoption, you can not expect to solely rely upon previously parenting or child development experience or skills. For example, a healthy, securely attached child will tell a lie for a much different reason than a child who has lived in a prolonged situation where his very survival is threatened.

Last fall we had a feral kitten arrive in our neighborhood. After an extraordinary amount of coaxing and swift hands, I was able to capture him and bring him into our home where I attempted to gain his trust.

In the beginning, I thought he had been born in the wild, but after a few days, it was apparent that he had been a part of family at one point. He knew how to use a litter box and he as not entirely unaccustomed to human touch. As a matter-of-fact, he seemed to want it as much he feared it.

As the days passed, he very slowly began to trust me. Though trembling and pulling back, he would allow me to touch him and hold him. Yet at other times, he would hiss, spit and scratch — even though nothing had changed in the circumstances and my actions. It seemed that at times his bravery and desire for love won over his fear and at others his fear won over his bravery.

That is the way it was with our son, whom we adopted in Haiti two years ago. He had obviously spent time in a family, which we actually knew about, but he was terrified of us during his early months home. As well as tremendously homesick. He behaved much the same as our kitten: vacillating between trembling yet brave and fearful with hissing and scratching. Only the hissing and scratching took the form raging tantrums with spitting and biting.

As our son slowly grew to trust us, his tantrums slowly grew father apart until they faded away. After more than two years together, we have learned the signs in his behavior that tell us he is bothered by something and needing us to shift gears. I wish that we could say we’re perfect and all is well, but I can say that we get it right much of the time.

I wish we knew then then what we know now. Those first days and weeks would have been so different for all of us. It took me almost a year to fully comprehend how fear and trauma affect a child’s behavior and reactions, and simply being in a loving family will not heal his wounds overnight. I would have lowered my expectations and been more in the moment with our son, trusting that time, patience and persistence would pay off in the end.

We were fortunate that our son was only in the orphanage for a year and a half, and that he had been able to form secure attachments in his first 3-4 years. Unfortunately, he was also abused in that orphanage thereby learning not to trust adults outside his family of origin, which added additional trauma and difficulty in learning to trust us.

Only time will tell how his teenage years will go, but we continue to progress in our comprehension of how his earlier trauma and losses affect him today. For now, he is doing well.