Do you find it's harder to bond with an older child? Are they more likely to have attachment issues?
Thanks..:thanks: :thanks:
my experience was yes and no. i bonded quicker with one over the other we adopted, but one had attachment issues- which made it difficult. the one i bonded to quicker....that still took longer than it did for me to bond with a baby. i always used to tell my husband i think it was because there was no background there- no memories of sleeping babies, first steps, first teeth, first words....no memories of innocent times. that made it hard when they were naughty, because all i could see was annoying behavior(although justifiable based on their past). it took many years to build up those happy, cute memories. :) i can tell now that i am parenting a child(since they were born) near the age the older ones were when they moved in that THAT was one of my big problems....because when this 8 year old does similar behaviors they used to do....it honestly doesn't bother me as much. i still like him, i still feel connected to him. but i've loved him and watched him grow for 8 years, rather than 8 weeks or 8 months.
in the end, we were just fine...we all lived, it was just something that i had to acknowledge in myself- that I was having a hard time bonding to them due to lack of history with them. looking back, we could have been better at attachment parenting with them from the start and i think that would have sped up the process. my one piece of advice if you found yourself in this situation would be to MAKE the happy memories happen so that you could begin to stack some up. it may be hard in the beginning if you are both struggling to bond, as kids tend to act out, which makes a parent want to cancel whatever fun thing was planned. we learned really quickly that if we kept doing that, we would NEVER have any happy memories....only memories of time out and missed experiences. lol. there were certain activities that we planned that dh and i would decided ahead of time, it did not matter what dd did to sabotage the fun activity, we would do it regardless. it was necessary for the health of our family....even though it sounds completely backwards.
