My thoughts on bonding

Just thought I'd try to put into words a little of what I've learned about bonding. Having given birth twice and adopted 4 times, I think we may have experienced bonding in a couple of different ways.

Anyone who has adopted has surely heard a lot about this subject. I never even gave it a thought until we adopted our first precious little girl.

I think I understand what the experts are trying to say about eye contact. Thinking back about 30 yrs now, I realize that bonding (or identification) happened between me and my birth children while I was nursing them, as we gazed into each other's eyes. There is no experience to rival that close contact between parent and child. It is much more than a momentary eye contact. The feeding lasts for 15 to 30 minutes usually and the there is such a close feeling between parent and child. This experience is repeated over and over again over the following months. I don't believe bonding could occur properly with only one such episode. There is direct eye contact and openness and acceptance during this experience. And a deep feeling of love develops between parent and child. The bonding grows daily and the child learns to trust the parent to meet his needs.

I think I can compare this experience to a spiritual one. There is a bonding, or identification, that can occur between us as individuals and God. I will try to explain more about this in my future posts about bonding. I have learned a lot about our relationship to God through my children. I think that God loves us very much and teaches us about spiritual things through our everyday experiences. It is at times like this that I wish I could choose the right words to explain my thoughts and feelings.

I don't have any electronic pictures of my older kids to post here, wish I did. In the next posts I will try to talk about how bonding occurred with each of our adopted children. I wonder if anyone will bother to wade through these posts?