[From J-]

A few weeks ago, I took a walk in the park with T-7 and our two dogs. We’ve done this a number of times, though I’ve often had to wrestle/drag her back to the car, even with a lot of preparation. This time, I had a plan.

I chose a very precise walking pace, much slower than I would normally walk, and maintained it throughout the course of the walk. T-7’s m.o. had now become very clear to me: she is unable to match the “rhythm” of another person. When we walk from school or her afterschool program, she runs ahead or lags behind. If we’re in a store or a street that requires holding hands, she tugs and complains. This has a technical description: an inability to enter into “intersubjective [dyadic] affective states.” The idea here is that very young children learn their emotional range by participating in dyadic affectivity. By sharing an experience with a caretaker, looking in their eyes, laughing together, being held when she cries, the child distinguishes and learns to control and enjoy her mental environment. A child with an attachment disorder has never developed the ability to have coherent emotional states, due to neglect. After all, it takes hundreds or even thousands of intersubjective experiences for the child to be able to regulate her own emotional life. Children of neglect are thus typically “dys-regulated,” out of control, and they have no capacity to self-soothe or endure frustration, or to take pleasure in their own self.

On our walk, T-7 did exactly as predicted. She lagged behind, calling out to me to “Wait! Look! Stop!” I didn’t. She ran ahead, even turning corners so she was just out of sight, in the hopes that I would speed up or call out after her. I didn’t. She would return to me and walk alongside—but never in time with my step. Instead, she would take my hand and tug me back or forward. She even would step in front of me or bump into my side, all in a sort of unconscious effort to control the rhythm (actually, to produce an arhythmic chaos) of our walk. But my chosen pace was the right one, slow enough to give me the balance needed to remain on course, even with T-7’s 55 pounds bumping my side or tangling her legs in mine.

I could sense her frustration beginning to mount. The tricky moment had arrived. Would she turn and run the other direction? Would she lie down on the trail and cry? Would she find some stranger to talk to, perhaps begin following them for a bit? Would she start pushing and punching me aggressively? Bribery is useless at this point, as offering her a treat in the car or when we get home never stalls her tantrum. I sat down on some rocks by the water and waited. She poked listlessly at some nearby bushes. I waited. She sat down and bumped my shoulder repeatedly. I waited. She got up to play with a passing dog. They moved on. I waited. She then told me she was tired and wanted to go home right away. I nodded and resumed my slow, measured pace. She asked to be carried. No, my back hurts. (Being carried is her favorite method of transport, since with every step she can shift her weight and thus force adjustments by the carrier.) Defeated, she walked along to the car, and we drove home.

Children with an attachment disorder attempt to dys-regulate their environment at all times. One way I’ve heard it described is that “since their internal world is a chaos of a nonintegrated self, the only time they are ‘at-home’ in the world is when they can produce an external chaos to match their internal state.” T-7 cannot hold a gaze, play a game, take turns in a conversation, or stay quiet for more than a few seconds. Before bed, when we sit on the couch to read a book, she complains that my voice is too loud, too soft, that she doesn’t want to read this book, that I’m using “too many voices.” (I’ve been told that varying intonation when reading stories stimulates brain activity, and found her resistance to this very interesting!) She rolls around on the couch, grabs at the book, plays with a doll or toy, chews on her sleeve. Occasionally she can relate what has happened in a story or even a single paragraph, but not often.

D- and I were never especially idealistic or romantic about the relationships we would create with our children. I never expected that life with children of neglect and special needs would be “a walk in the park.” Though I recall some of my own happiest early moments walking along a beach with my Dad, listening to stories and watching swimmers and sunbathers, I never entered into an adoptive placement thinking I could or even should reproduce these moments. In our case, “a walk in the park” is just one more site in which the magnitude of T-7’s problems became visible.