These hand-knit, felted mats are an essential tool for building attachment with your child. They are portable, soft and come in a variety of colours and sizes. No two mats are the same.
For adoptive parents, building healthy attachments mean using a variety of strategies depending on each individual child and each situation. What may work with children that were born to you, may not work with children you adopt.
For example, many parents find using “time-outs” an effective technique to change unwanted behaviors. However for our children who come to us at an older age, who have experienced disrupted attachments, multiple caregivers and/or trauma, “time-outs” only further exacerbate the attachment problem. Our children need to know we will always be there for them, no matter what they do. If we remove them to another room instead of keeping them close, we are giving the children the message that we don’t want them around.When two of my children joined our family at the ages of 20 months and 3 years old, they had varying experiences with inconsistent parenting. Especially for the three year old, she only knew how to get negative attention. Trying to change her negative behaviors while building attachment was an on-going challenge for us. That’s when I developed the “time-in” mats.
I’ll give you an example of how the “Time-In” mats work…
My three year old daughter insisted on jumping on the couch. I would tell her to “keep your feet on the floor”, and I would physically pick her up off the couch and put her feet on the floor. I would repeat “keep your feet on the floor”. Then I would leave the room. Sure enough she would start jumping on the couch again. I would then pick her up and bring her into the kitchen and have her sit on the “time-in” mat on the floor beside me, while I was cleaning up or making dinner, whatever. (The mat on the floor works better than on a chair or stool because the child can’t fall off of it while they’re melting down.) When I sat her on her mat she would be melting down, screaming, crying etc. I placed her on the mat and said “When you are calm you can get off your mat”. Of course she would try to get up and leave. I would go get her and place her on the mat again and say the same words “When you are calm you can get off your mat.” Those are the only words I would say to her. I wouldn’t get drawn into her whining “Why, why why” and all the other things she would be crying, yelling, etc. I would just repeat my “When you are calm you can get off your mat.” This cycle would repeat over and over and over, sometimes for hours. I wouldn’t make eye contact with her I would pretend I was doing something or pretending to read something. Finally though, as soon as she appeared to be calming down, I would say “Great! I see you’re calm. Now you can get off the mat.” Yes, it was exhausting and sometimes I would be picking her up and putting her back on the mat ten or twelve times until she finally would calm down. I only ever said my one line “When you are calm you can get off the mat.” It takes so much patience, but it does work. It really does. Especially if I don’t try to talk to her I just keep repeating the same line. It’s difficult to do some days, but it does work. 
The key to this essential tool is consistency. Keeping the child with you instead of sending them off somewhere tells them that you want them to be around you. It tells them you won’t tolerate poor behavior, and nothing is going to separate you from them. As with all attachment building techniques this may take a few days, or a few months. It can be emotionally and physically exhausting for you and your child. You may think you have changed a behavior only to find you have to go back and start all over again. My daughter was a really tough kid to get to follow the household rules…jumping on the furniture was only one of her many talents…but she learned that I wouldn’t send her away and that there were behaviors that were not acceptable in our home.The time-in mats can be placed anywhere you are. If you’re outside in the yard you can have the mat handy to use if you need it while you’re gardening. If you’re at someone else’s house you can bring the mat along to use there.
Note… once my kids learned that I would take the time-in mats with us and they wouldn’t get away with poor behavior outside the home either, there were very few meltdowns anywhere other than home.
Give it a try!
