Valentine’s Day is fast-approaching, as are the multiple commercial advertisements reminding us to buy things to show others that we love them. Flowers, candies, chocolate-covered strawberries, cards … the list goes on and on. There are many days in which I wish giving and receiving love was just this simple; however, the reality is, it is not.

Even in families not created through adoption or guardianship, the giving and receiving of love takes time, commitment, intention, grace and forgiveness. It is not easy. The same is true and often even harder for families in the adoption and guardianship community. Many parents and guardians in this community have hearts ready to spill over with love but have children in their homes who are not ready for, or unsure of, how to receive that love. Because of the impact of loss, trauma, and inadequate nurture, these children from hard places have a diminished capacity for relationships … to love and be loved.

C.A.S.E. Institute offers an amazing adoption competency training for child welfare professionals called NTI (National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative). Capacity for relationships is one such area discussed. This training describes attachment as foundational to all development, and that children who are securely attached have a sense of safety and worth, as well as a base for conscience and a capacity for empathy. These are important factors to have when in relationship with others.

For children coming from hard places, there is a distrust of others and they learn to protect themselves from closeness, often because it is associated with pain and loss. Although closeness is part of attachment and it is something these children desire, they may vacillate between closeness and distance with a parent or guardian because it scares them. Another very important and oftentimes overlooked factor (at least from what I’ve seen) in forging new relationships is unresolved grief and loss. All children coming into adopted or guardianship situations have experienced grief and loss, whether it be associated with an actual death of a loved one, or related to the grief and loss of a school, a community, an identity, a church, a culture, siblings, pets, etc. The list, once you start to think of it from a perspective where the grief/loss is NOT associated with death, can be quite long for these children and must be addressed for new attachments to begin.

The good news is that there are specific tasks for children and for parents, that can help build this capacity for relationship. Here are tasks that the NTI training outlines: