The Four Attachment Styles in Children -Holiday Edition
Secure Attachment
So what does secure attachment look like? According to Bowbly, as cited in Nurturing Adoptions, securely attached children believe the following:
• My parents come back. They are reliable.
• I am worth coming back to.
• I can depend on my parents and the people they entrust to educate and spend time with me.
• My feelings are mirrored back to me so that I can process how I feel and how others feel.
• I want to please my parents most of the time.
• I am rewarded for becoming competent, for my creativity, and for my positive states.
• I can get help with psychologically overwhelming events and feelings.
• My parents will teach me how to cope with problems and how to resolve them.
• Intimacy is enjoyable.
• My needs are routinely met in a timely, sensitive manner.
• Repairs to relationship disruptions are empathic and prompt.
If we ourselves have felt secure attachment, we expect our children to follow that pattern, as well — even if their experiences have been vastly different from ours. We parents tend to expect our newly adopted children to enter the home and quickly develop a secure attachment style. We assume that they know the amount of time and work it took to secure their adoption.
According to Steele, Steele, and Gray (as cited in the Empowered to Connect Training Manual), “in the at-risk population, as much as 80% of children are classified as disorganized.” It’s important to remember that secure attachment is only one attachment style. The other three are avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized. Most kids who come to us from foster care or traumatic beginnings are disorganized.
Let’s dig a little deeper into what this means.
The Five Bs of Trauma
“Too often, parents and experts look at behavioral disorders as they existed separate from sensory impairments; separate from attention difficulties; separate from early childhood deprivation, neurological damage, attachment disorders, posttraumatic stress and so on.” – The Connected Child
By taking the time to examine what issues are driving a behavioral disorder, we gain a foundation of understanding. When we learn the science — the “why” behind a child’s behavior — our reactions will be tempered.
When a child is behaving poorly, we often try to treat the symptoms rather than getting to the root of the issue. I know I’ve been guilty of that on several occasions. Of course, this approach doesn’t work; it never does. Just as removing a bottle of whiskey from the liquor cabinet won’t cure your father’s alcoholism, focusing on a child’s behavior won’t cure their attachment issues. There is a deeper problem we have to address.
“Chronic trauma is a lifestyle that is marked with traumatic events. Children who have been in domestic and international placements have often experienced chronic trauma.” – Nurturing Adoptions
Science says there are five Bs affected by trauma, and we cannot overlook them. In kids from hard places, behavioral disorders are a symptom of the effect trauma has had on their development.
Negative behaviors will be taken care of once a child is securely attached. To achieve that, we must start with the five Bs and work our way out from there.
1. Brain — altered brain development and an overactive amygdala. As Deborah D. Gray explains in Nurturing Adoptions, “Neurobiologically, trauma shapes the developing brain. Early high stress is especially damaging because brain development is at an early stage.” In Emotional Development, Alan Sroufe makes a similar point when he describes the brain as experience-expectant and experience-dependent. Neglect deprives the experience-dependent brain of the experiences needed to develop the brain structures that support and stretch positive mood states. Neglected babies do not build the structures in the brain that allow for self-soothing or smooth processing through highly arousing experiences.
2. Biology — altered neurochemistry. Complex trauma can cause a variety of issues: sensorimotor development problems, hypersensitivity to physical contact, somatization, increased medical problems, and problems with coordination and balance.
3. Body — altered physical development and impacted ability to process sensory inputs. Dr. Dana Johnson has described developmental delays and growth disturbances as one month of linear growth loss for every three months that children remain in an orphanage.
4. Beliefs — an altered belief system, or the lens through which they see the world. “Some children, in fact, refuse reward systems. They refuse to be involved in a system that challenges their negative view of the world. They may find rewards anxiety-producing. Systems also force them to accept responsibility for their actions. And, while children may be shame-filled, they typically have a difficult time accepting responsibility following early years filled with neglect. They react to having to accept appropriate amounts of guilt”(Nurturing Adoptions). They may think, I would rather have everyone give up on me; it’s easier.
5. Behavior — an altered ability to self-regulate in response to stressors. This can manifest as impulsiveness, self-destructive behavior, aggressive behavior, excessive compliance, sleep disturbances, eating disorders, substance abuse, re-enactment of their traumatic past, or pathological self-soothing behaviors.
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The Four Attachment Styles
Now I’d like to cover children’s attachment styles:
1. Secure — The child feels confident that the attachment figure will be available to meet their needs. They use the attachment figure as a safe base to explore the environment and seek the attachment figure in times of distress.
2. Avoidant — The child has trouble seeking care. Infants with this attachment style communicate with their mothers only when they are feeling well. These children exhibit self-soothing behaviors and tend to mask negative emotions. They are often perfectionists.
3. Resistant/Ambivalent — The child develops a “stay near mom” strategy. These children use negative emotions to gain attention. They exhibit angry, resistant behavior toward the caregiver and exaggerated fearfulness. They tend to suppress their feelings and expect caregivers to be inconsistently available. These children expect parents to be preoccupied.
4. Disorganized — The child has no strategic response because the parent is always changing his or her response. These kids have the most difficulty seeking or responding to care. Their reactions are mystifying and disorganized because they have experienced maternal behavior that is frightening and unpredictable. As Dr. Dan Siegel notes, “Frightening behavior by a parent activates simultaneously inevitably competing tendencies to flee to the parent as a haven of safety and to flee from the parent as a source of alarm.” It’s tough to be a child when your parent is both your security blanket and your worst enemy.
Attachment Parenting
When a child moves into a new placement, he will use the attachment style he already knows. This is why it is important to understand attachment styles.
We parents spend money and time trying to fix behaviors (guilty). We pour over books about learning styles and love languages, and all of this information is beneficial, but we are left scratching our heads when it comes to attachment. It seems as if it should be seamless and natural, yet it is the hardest thing we parents will ever do. It isn’t often mentioned, this attaching and the work that goes into it. Often, it isn’t factored into the equation of parenting at all.
I’ve talked to many young moms who have made the brave decision to stay home, and yet they don’t know what to do at home. As I scroll through Instagram, I find moms totally consumed by picture-perfect fixer-upper homes à la Joanna Gaines. Other accounts promote PiYo, P90x, green smoothies, and clean eating.
Let me stop right here and say that both of the aforementioned aspects of keeping a home are things that I love. I love project-ing. I love healthy foods, most of the time. (By which I mean, if you make a cheesecake, I will eat it.)
Yet even though these are trés important parts of being a mom, I see moms floundering with the purpose of staying home.
So what’s missing? The work of attaching. It’s a full-time job.
Don’t get me wrong. I do see Moms succeeding at it. They just don’t know how to define it. If I were to write a manual for motherhood, the first chapter would be devoted to attachment. However, because I am writing a book for foster/adoptive parents, I’ve devoted more than one chapter. We foster and adoptive parents have to educate ourselves about attachment, determine our style, and then figure out our children’s styles. Attachment should be first on our list of parenting goals.
The goal of attachment parenting is not to be the perfect parent, but to be faithful in loving our children the way they need to be loved.
Knowing where your child came from is the first step. To quote Maria from The Sound of Music, “You start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” We parents must go back and fill in what the child missed. Having a list of developmental goals can help.
If the goal is attachment, then we must use:
• Eye contact (hands and eyes).
• Safe touch.
• Prosodic voice.
• Playful interaction.
• Joy and laughter.
For the best results, turn your efforts at attachment into a game. After all, children learn best through play. Games can help disarm their fear and foster connection. Keep things playful and incorporate touch games, such as putting on bandaids and taking turns giving each other a back massage. You can even revive some old favorites like “Mother May I” and “Simon Says.” (For more suggestions, see The Out of Sync Child Has Fun by Carol Kranowitz.)
The outcome is the capacity to receive nurture.
“Truth. Emotional education can help children know what they feel. It is more important for a child to know what he feels than why he feels it. When he knows clearly what his feelings are, he is less likely to feel {ambivalent} inside.”
(Haim Ginott, 1965)
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Prerequisites for Secure Attachment
According to Bowlby, humans are biologically predisposed to want care. However, in order for this to work, we need a secure attachment system — including a safe haven, a secure base, proximity maintenance, and separation distress.
Conclusion
Fortunately for us and our children, there is always hope. The part of the brain most central to the attachment process is the most plastic part of the cortex. It allows for continued reorganization throughout life. If a person has not had a history of secure attachment but has been able to make sense of his past, he is more likely to form secure attachments in adulthood. Our foster/adopted kiddos come to us with their own attachment styles. We cannot expect them to flip a switch and be suddenly secure. We have to earn that secure attachment, first for ourselves and then for them. Remember, in Chapter 4, when I spoke of returning to homeschool co-op and my kids clinging to me? Gregory, who had braved going to class alone, decided he needed me. That was a good thing.
Many times, parents assume that when children don’t want to leave them, something is wrong. However, this often means something is right. Don’t give up on attachment. Don’t give up on the children God has placed in your home. Keep working through the cycles of attachment until the goal of secure attachment has been realized.
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other resources:
How to Have Peace When Your Kids Are in Chaos
3 Tips From God’s Example of Attachment
3 Tips For Repairing Breaks In Attachment
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