Représentations d’attachement chez des enfants adoptés et chez leurs parents

The quality of the attachment relationships between adopted children and their parents has been evaluated one year after adoption, during an action-research aimed at enhancing the parenting skills of the adopters giving them specific indications concerning the attachment state of mind of their child. A battery of observational as well as narrative tools has been proposed to 17 internationally adopted children aged 16 mois and 11 ans and to their parents. The hypothesis was that the attachment security of at least one parent could positively influence the child’s construction of secure Internal Working Models. Our results highlighted a high frequency of disorganized children and the anxious representations of the adopters to cope with the adoptees’ troubled behaviors and their need to have a support to better understand their own as well their children’s emotional and behavioral difficulties.