Now that I am a professional blogger (blog # 2) I thought I d talk about Erickson's Basic trust vs. Mistrust concept and about what happens when attachments are not made in early social interactions. My husband and I have 3 of our own children but over the last 10 years have participated in raising a number of boys who for a variety of reasons could no longer be raised by their biological family and somehow or another  ended up in ours. Having been raised myself largely by strangers I thought I was ideally suited to understand the needs of these displaced children. I have never been more challenged or heart broken or hopeful than in my interactions with my children biological and not. One child in particular comes to mind. We cared for him briefly when he was 3. Our own daughter was only 6 months younger and the differences between them were startling. He was a beautiful boy with giant eyes and a slow smile. His language skills were very delayed, He rarely talked and in comparison to our non-stop talker his lack of verbal interaction made him seem much younger. He struggled with toilet training and was prone to temper tantrums, He was wary and defensive but craved attention and was often physically aggressive to get it. He was born addicted to cocaine to a mother who was unable to provide the consistent care his fragile nervous system needed. His early years were marked by move after move often living in homeless shelters. He came to us after being left in a daycare center, turned over to CPS when his mother on a drug binge neglected to pick him up. We only had him for a short time but in that time he became calmer,his verbal skills improved, he began to ask for what he wanted instead of screaming. He began to show affection and respond when affection was shown to him. He was far from unbroken but I thought we were forming a bond. Then a petition from his now jailed mother returned him to his extended family. When he left he did n't even cry. At 3 he had accepted that the world was unpredictable and often painful. I thought about him a lot in the years that followed. We had 2 more children of our own and many that were not, 9 years later at 12 he came back into our lives. Bounced from foster home to foster home he seemed surprisingly intact. The report we had been given of a child chronically truant, physically aggressive and defiant did not fit the charming little boy we saw in front of us. He got along with the other kids (now 6 of them) and seemed determined to please.It did not last. He struggled academically, was easily frustrated and distracted with an extremely poor attention span. He was very social but did not form deep friendships, he often chose friends based on what he could get from them. He was manipulative and prone to angry outbursts. A talented athlete he was unattached to his team and argumentative with his coaches. He was with us 5 years. His is our only child that did not graduate from high school, he has struggled with substance abuse, his aggression and poor decision making have led him places I can not follow. He stays in contact sporadically. I believe that his inability to form an attachment to his drug addicted mother left him without the "hope" he needed to gain the skills to overcome his difficult beginning. His deep mistrust prevents him from forming the meaningful relationships he needs to build a new frame of reference. The chaos and neglect he suffered so early on left him hyper vigilant and unable to truly adapt. His intellectual ability was impacted by his instability leaving him with less ability to evaluate the consequences of his actions.Fundamentally he does not believe he is capable of success and the course of his life so far has been determined by the callousness of his early experience. I continue to hope that he will find  the hope that was taken from him by not being valued the way he should have been, that he will find a way to redefine himself.