ABSTRACT
This is a story about Sonia, an adopted child from Panama. I met her at the Tempo Lineare 0–3 service when she was 2½ years old, just after she arrived in Italy. She was left with pre-adoption foster parents for a few weeks. The Family Advisory Centre, which was involved in the pre-adoption work with Sonia’s parents, referred the family to Tempo Lineare and it was decided that the Family Advisory Centre and Tempo Lineare would work together with Sonia’s parents to think about Sonia and how best to help her develop in the context of her family. The plan for the two services and the parents to collaborate arose from the need for a receptive maternal space for reverie, which could hold the emotional experiences of the child and reflect upon her experiences of change and loss. I was aware that, while in the womb, Sonia’s lack of an early relationship to a receptive mother could cause a lack of development in her neurological capacity to bear anxieties and also could negatively influence her confidence that her anxieties and feelings could be accepted and endured.
