Adoptive Mummy

I happened to catch the last ten minutes of a programme by Louis Theroux on Autism on thursday night (who I love by the way) and thought to myself goodness that really puts my life into perspective. I made a mental note to myself to catch up with the programme on iPlayer and did so this morning. I still feel after watching it that in some ways our life although difficult and stressful at times is not even anywhere near as difficult as as the parents on the programme but in other ways attachment disorder can have some similar symptoms to autism and I felt a certain amount of empathy for the parents.

I think the greatest difference is with the two conditions is that with time and consistency Girl should have a good chance of learning to self-regulate and integrate into the ‘right’ social circles. When I say the right social circles I’m not talking about kids with Autism being the wrong social circle (just to make that clear). I am talking specifically about
Girl and her future.

I have read that adults with attachment disorder tend to socialise with people who may be considered social outcasts such as criminals, drug-users, alcoholics etc and shy away from the in-crowd because of their self-esteem and confidence issues. They feel that is the social circle where they belong and that does make sense to me so that is my biggest fear for Girl, that she will not learn to regulate herself and her emotions, that we
won’t be able to boost her confidence enough to think that yes she should be part of the ‘in-crowd’ or maybe even just the everyday normal crowd!

Girl currently has a lot of ‘best-friends’ because she wants to be liked by everybody, that’s sort of OK to me at this age and probably pretty normal, however I do feel I need to teach her that she needs to choose her best-friends carefully and not to try and please everybody because that could lead her into making bad choices just to please people she doesn’t need to please.