Monday, January 6, 2014

Creating Attachment


Donald and Harold*are twins born into a poor family near the U.S. border with Mexico.  Their mother, having given birth to three older children, became pregnant with them during a period in which she was separating from an abusive husband and starting a lifelong addiction to methamphetamine.  Born prematurely at five and a half and three pounds respectively, Donald and Harold were handed over to their maternal grandmother who attempted to keep the children together.  Child welfare services came in and out of the boys’ lives until they were removed at age two.  They were placed in foster care and then back with an older sister and her husband who were starting their own young family.  Like their mother, their sister found methamphetamine to treat what was likely intergenerational depression.  Donald and Harold fended for themselves and attempted to hide from fighting and physical abuse.  Case workers moved the boys from family to foster homes where they grew up, now difficult to place because of age, gender, and number, into a second then third adoptive home with a woman who brought her new eight year old sons to my office.  We worked together three years.