You may have heard of attachment within pop psychology but what does it mean and, more importantly, how can it affect your child? In this blog I will explore the different attachment styles and how you can cultivate the most secure attachment with your baby!
What is attachment & why is it important?
Attachment is all about the relationships you have, this is particularly important when thinking about the relationships you have with your little ones. Your attachment with them creates the important emotional bond you share. The type of bond/attachment you have with your children can affect their future development in many ways; this explains why it’s such a highly researched area within developmental psychology.
Some of the ways in which your attachment with your baby can affect their future include:
Social development
A secure attachment allows children to form healthy future relationships through improved social skills. It gives them the confidence to trust others and feel safe and supported during their ever-important developing social interactions. This continues as children grow into adults and is relevant for all different types of connections, from friendly to romantic to working relationships.
Emotional development
As children grow up, they learn to express and manage their emotions – a skill we all continue to practice no matter our age! The level at which we are able to do this has been strongly linked to the attachments we form with our caregivers in our early years of life. This means healthy attachments can lead to higher emotional intelligence and potentially stronger foundations to avoid future mental health problems.
Cognitive development
Given attachment is all about your little one’s social relationship with you, it may be surprising that it can affect their cognitive development too! Securely attached children are able to explore the world around them more confidently as they are not preoccupied with making sure their emotional needs are met. Caregivers with secure attachments to their little ones are also likely encourage this behaviour. Therefore, these children are able to learn and come across new experiences regularly – leading to their improved cognitive development. This includes better decision making, attention spans, and reasoning abilities.
Language development
Another way in which attachment can impact your child’s future is through their language development. If you are securely attached to your child, it is likely you talk to them a lot, even if this is through baby talk (see our previous blog here to see why baby talk is actually very beneficial to your child!). The more children are exposed to language, the more easily they will develop their own language skills. Therefore, your attachment style with your child can also inadvertently affect their ability to speak and understand you and others.
What are the different attachment styles?
The type of attachment you have with your baby is described as secure or insecure. If insecurely attached, there are typically three different styles you and your child’s relationship can fall into. Attachment styles are assessed in a lab setting through Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Paradigm. This involves a researcher observing your child’s behaviour when you are in the room with them, when you leave, and when you return.
The four attachment styles are:
*These are all considered to be insecure attachment styles
Secure
This is the healthiest attachment style and, as described earlier in this blog, leads to the most positive future outcomes for your child. During the Strange Situation, these children typically show initial distress when their caregiver leaves the room but settle down shortly after. They are also happy when their caregiver returns and interact with them positively while in their company.
Anxious-avoidant*
Anxious-avoidant attachment is seen in severely independent children. They shy away from emotional closeness and prefer to be on their own. Avoidantly attached children show little emotion during all stages of the Strange Situation and tend to ignore their caregiver when they are in the room with them.
Anxious-ambivalent*
Those children who exhibit anxious-ambivalent attachments tend need a lot of reassurance and fear rejection. This is seen in the Strange Situation through extreme distress when their caregiver leaves and inability to soothe themselves thereafter – during their return, the child still struggles to calm down. These children tend to show very clingy behaviour towards their caregiver.
Disorganised*
This attachment style leads to children developing extreme mood swings. These children are often unpredictable and can show behaviour typical of both the avoidant and ambivalent attachment styles. Their behaviour in the Strange Situation is inconsistent – for example, they may show severe distress when their caregiver leaves but then avoid them upon their return.
It is very important to note that just because your child occasionally shows the behaviour typical of insecurely attached children this does not necessarily mean you don’t have a secure attachment with them! Children will, of course, vary in their behaviour depending on many factors or contexts – e.g., amount of sleep, hunger, or general mood. Their attachment to you is defined upon their typical/most common behaviour in relation to you.
How to foster a healthy attachment with your children
As we’ve established throughout this blog, the healthiest and most beneficial type of attachment to have with your little one is a secure one. There are many ways in which you can help to create this type of bond with your baby, many of which you’ll do automatically! Here are some examples of how you can form a secure attachment with your child:
Be present and available when you can, especially if you child needs you
Try to anticipate your child’s wants and needs and respond to them as quickly and appropriately as you can
Ensure you are a source of comfort to your baby by soothing them when they need it – whether this be vocally (e.g., talking or singing to them) or physically (e.g., stroking, rocking, or holding them)
Encourage your child to explore the world and other relationships while maintaining a safe base for them to return to
Give them stability via consistent routines where possible
Make your child feel wanted and special in your eyes – constantly try and keep their self-esteem high
In comparison to the above, insecure attachments can form if parenting is distant and unemotional (often leading to avoidant attachments) or inconsistent and over-protective (often leading to ambivalent attachments). Disorganised attachments tend to form in more extreme cases, such as childhood trauma or abuse.
Take home message…
How you bond with your baby is extremely important to their current and future development and results in your attachment style with them. The most common and positive attachment type is a secure attachment. This leads to children feeling loved and supported whilst being able to explore the world beyond their caregiver. In contrast, children can also be insecurely attached to their caregiver. There are typically three different forms of insecure attachment, but these can be avoided through warm, supportive, and consistent parenting.
About the author
Alice is our Marketing Executive and also a developmental psychologist. She is currently studying as a PhD student at the University of Birmingham within the Birmingham BabyLab. Her research involves exploring how babies develop a sense of self-awareness, creating and using a new virtual reality system to do so.
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