Bonding

Someone keeps hogging the pillow at night and that's why I am so restless. Fortunately, she's adorable. Today, I just need to keep my head up off my desk. I stayed up too late watching a fascinating program on PBS about the amazing capacity humans have to love, to empathize and to bring one another joy.

The first section of the program focused on mother-child attachment studies of orphans from Russia. Many of these children have social and emotional difficulties and disorders that prevent them from understanding boundaries and bonding with their adoptive parents, even after a decade of attentive care and affection. It's not aspergers but rather a learned response to abandonment. When they cried no one responded. They learned that no one is there to hear them or care. It made me think of my uncle, who also had trouble with boundaries, but he was rescued from neglect as an infant.

Studies show that children who are raised in institutional care longer, tend to develop more social and emotional problems than the orphaned who are not one of many. I was very fortunate to have a foster family and only spend a few months with them before coming here. And, personality has something to do with how a child will adapt to their new family. Not to forget that mothers' brains fire off when they see their happy, smiling children in the same part of the brain that registers food or sex. So, we have a built-in reward system and children who provide parents with the rewards - smiles - are helping their adult caregivers to bond with them.

Bonding with others has been on my mind lately with conflicts at work, changes in the nature of friendships in my life, and renewed search for a partner. What this program helped to clarify for me was that bonding with those around you is a combination of early and subsequent experiences with bonding, personality, expectations, and communication. Given all of that, bonds of family, friendship, and romance, which are vital to our happiness, are amazing feats of the heart.