Since we began raising Aaron, the advice givers have come back out of the woodwork and I'm less tolerant of them than I had been as a young first-time mother. Not so much because I have raised two sons already and I don't consider myself a novice parent anymore. But, because these good intentioned advise givers are not aware of the circumstances surrounding my grandson or children like him. The advice they offer may be quite valid under normal childrearing conditions; except it doesn't always translate to situations like ours or similar kinship families. We're often dealing with children who have been emotionally and psychologically damaged and the same rules do not always apply.
Aaron suffers from extreme separation anxiety and does not cope well when in a daycare situation. In fact, only one of my dear friends and her teenage daughter have babysat him because he is very accustomed to them. It has been suggested to me that I should just place him in daycare and he will get used to it after a few days. It isn't as though I didn't try, I would attend kinship care support group meetings and they offered childcare during the two-hour long meeting. The first couple of times I would return upstairs to get him and discover he was flushed and sweaty (perhaps playing hard while I was downstairs?). The truth came out when the conference room for the meeting was closed one night and we had to hold the meeting upstairs adjacent the playroom. Throughout the entire two-hour meeting he cried for me and I went out several times in an attempt to reassure him and calm him down. I have yet to attend another meeting because I was angered knowing how upset he would become and the staff did not bring him to me as I had requested when he didn't calm down. Quite the opposite, a staff member seemed put-off that I kept leaving the meeting to come comfort Aaron.
This isn't a child who has been in a secure, loving home since birth. This is a baby boy who was left in a crib or Pack N Play in soiled diapers to cry for long periods of time. This is a baby boy who was regularly left with random acquaintances of his mother (strangers to him). A different set of rules apply to ensure he establishes a healthy attachment in time and that can't be done if he is made to feel abandoned by us and is still too young to understand it is only temporary. I've been lectured by several claiming that because he has been with us since he was nine months old, he has no memories of neglect or abandonment. I won't disagree with their assessment, but I strongly believe these children do not forget the feelings associated with what they experienced during that period.
Similarly, Aaron went through a period of strongly resisting bed and naptime, I was advised by numerous people to "just let him cry it out". Yet, if I were to let him cry it out, I would be essentially be recreating the scenario that has made him insecure in the first place! Needless to say, we would tuck him back in multiple times each night and at nap with love and reassurances. We would go to him two and three times a night when he would wake up crying for us and at 27 months old he finally began sleeping through the night; a month later he began decreasing his resistance to bedtime.
Our method may have left us exhausted, it certainly wasn't easy; it's what felt right under OUR circumstances. It seems that overtime our efforts are paying off and he is becoming more self-assured, secure and independent in his time. It's not because he was forced to adjust, but because we were patient in allowing him to trust and learn. I won't regret the bajillion sleepless nights nor the lack of a social life if it means this little boy develops healthy, trusting bonds with us and others in his life.
No one knows what these children have been through better than we do as their grandparents and caregivers. We have to follow our gut instincts in doing what is emotionally and psychologically right for these little people and not feel guilty about the methods we choose to implement. When someone admonishes and accuses me of "spoiling" or "coddling" Aaron, I just chuckle and say "perhaps so". But, I don't alter our course of action one iota. Am I coddling Aaron? Maybe I am, or maybe, just maybe, I'm gradually undoing the damage his psyche received before he found his way into our home for good.