Teaching My Adopted Daughter to Love

This Rockland mother rescued her child from a Siberian orphanage at 8 months old. She had no idea she would have to save her daughter again, this time from a disorder that threatened to tear her family apart.

Julia dashed off the school bus and bounded down our path with her usual verve. I was sitting on a bench in our foyer, white as a ghost.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” she asked.

“I got some bad blood test results,” I said.

“Are you going to die?” she asked, fear spreading across her beautiful face.

I told her I had severe anemia. I explained my body had no iron stores, and if I didn’t do something right away I’d need a blood transfusion.

She dropped her knapsack at my feet, yanked a sheet of blank paper and a pen from my desk, and shot off into the kitchen. A few minutes later she returned with a page of calculations. My cereal had 10 percent of my daily iron. Our crackers, 15 percent. Yogurt, 0. 

Though I was preoccupied and panicky, I realized something extraordinary was happening. My 11-year-old daughter was genuinely frightened at the thought that something bad could happen to me.

What child wouldn’t be, you ask?

A child with a syndrome called reactive attachment disorder. A child who, because of early traumatic circumstances, fails to attach, and who is unable to form loving bonds. A child who doesn’t know how to love. That’s not my child anymore, but it was.

It is hard to locate the precise moment when I knew Julia really loved me—and allowed herself to be loved—because the road from being a detached, indifferent, oppositional child to one who opened her heart and let love in was long and complicated. It was through no fault of her own that she arrived in our arms from a Siberian orphanage at 8 months old, with a wall around her heart due to the neglect and absence of a previous primary caretaker.  

It seems incomprehensible to some, but neither my husband Ricky nor I understood how wounded our daughter was. At 40, I was a first-time mother, and I thought my baby didn’t look me in the eye or cling to me because something was wrong with me. I had never heard of reactive attachment disorder, so my child was a complete mystery. She was ebullient and charming, especially with strangers, but she rejected any closeness from me, my husband, or any other primary caretaker. Mommy-and-me experiments were disastrous. There was no hanging with me in the music circle, and mommy-and-me yoga often turned into mommy-and-me wrestling. Julia wanted no part of a relationship with me. She even resisted taking my hand to cross a street.

Looking back, I realize I was unprepared, as many adoptive parents are. In those early years, each day was a desperate battle to survive another round of frustration and sadness, and another day to wonder if our circumstances were ever going to get better. By the time Julia was 3, I assumed I’d be raising a child who would never feel like she belonged to me. I was at the lowest of low points when I began paying greater attention to clues. I needed a lifeboat, and observing my world more objectively saved my family from drowning. I began to note that Julia had no more affection or attachment to her nanny than she did to me. In fact, she attached to no one. At preschool, she isolated herself from other children. She was superficially charming and overly affectionate at first with adults but quickly became difficult and disruptive. Finally, I mentioned these behaviors to her pediatrician, who specialized in international adoptees. He mentioned reactive attachment disorder.