Time to Attach: Older Youth Adoption

By Kyla Beswarick

Survival – that’s the only way I can describe the first year of my adoption.

A constant warzone of emotion marked with a few desperate moments of happiness. This concept is most likely foreign to those who grew up in a stable family environment, forming healthy ways of attaching.

As an adopted youth, I grew up in a world that has always hindered my ability to truly connect as I was silenced by the fragility of childhood and the instability of my two siblings. While transitioning through the childcare system with my siblings at ages 8 (brother), 10 (myself), and 13(sister), I knew there was an important issue that needed to be addressed. I felt like I would never be able to connect with my adoptive family without more time, as my siblings’ high needs would constantly overshadow my own. After 3 years with my adoptive family, I finally felt comfortable enough to speak to my parents about my own issues and work through them, but this could have been easier with additional time at the beginning of our relationship.

Attaching is an important issue to address as bonding to new people who are supposed to be your “new” parents,
can be one of the most difficult things a child or teen can do, especially with the involvement of siblings and other factors like grief and anxieties. In early 2020, I learnt that biological mothers were given maternity leave – 15 additional weeks of time off with their newborn to connect, in contrast to the parental leave that adoptive, kinship, and customary care families are provided with. As an adoptive youth, learning this empowered me to participate in advocating for the Time to Attach movement, giving adoptive parents and primary caregivers the right to 15 more weeks of work leave as these parents are connecting with a young person that already has an established sense of self.

With the advocacy efforts, it appeared that all Members of Parliament agreed that this was an issue that needed to be addressed. After years of being unable to express myself, I felt heard while advocating. I, along with many other children in and from the child welfare system, had extremely high hopes that this policy would be implemented by now, though, nothing has been done.

Kids and teens deserve enough time to build these new and complex attachments. 35 weeks is simply not enough time for a youth like me to feel comfortable with an entirely different family, let alone build trust with these unknown parental figures. I believe, we, who through no fault of our own, have experienced significant losses, deserve equal if not more time to heal and attach to our new family.

The opinions expressed in blogs posted reflect their author and do not represent any official stance of Adopt4Life. We respect the diversity of opinions within the adoption, kinship and customary care community and hope that these posts will stimulate meaningful conversations. Our #timetoattach campaign continues with the aim to adapt public policy to introduce 15 weeks of parental leave (attachment leave) for adoptive parents and kin and customary caregivers. As we, along with Western University and the Adoption Council of Canada, have worked to bring awareness to this important support required for families and children, it has been so important to share the real experiences of parents and their children as they sought to form healthy and lasting attachments. Find out how to share your story.