We learn how to connect and how to create the patterns of connection during our infancy and early childhood.
These patterns and experiences become embodied in us and become the way we understand how the world and people work. Early experiences with our primary caregivers teach us what to expect throughout life.
Babies Need Loving Connection to Thrive
René Spitz was a psychiatrist who studied infants and children in orphanages and prisons before Western medicine understood the importance of attachment or connection.Peek-a-Boo is More Than a Game
Attachment is a relational process that builds throughout infancy and is established at 8 months old, when the child develops certain cognitive skills. The child develops the cognitive capacity for what educators call object permanence—the understanding of cause and effect, and that people and objects exist when we can’t see them. The child who loves the game peek-a-boo is in this stage of development.A Sense of Safety or Insecurity
These patterns of attachment or ways of understanding interactions are what we learn through our relationships with our caregivers.A child develops a secure attachment (or relationship) to their parents when the child experiences the parents as safe to explore the world from. The parents’ ability to respond to the child sensitively when the child needs them is crucial to the child forming a secure attachment to them.
The child with a secure attachment pattern has learned their emotional needs will be met. As an adult, this person finds it relatively easy to be close to others and doesn’t worry about closeness or being abandoned.
The child with an avoidant attachment pattern has learned the parent isn’t emotionally available and won’t respond when needed. As an adult, this person is dismissive of emotions and relationships and doesn’t like to get too close to people.
The child with an ambivalent attachment pattern has learned the parent is sometimes attuned and sometimes emotionally unavailable. As an adult, this person is preoccupied with relationships they often worry about being abandoned.
Attachment Can Shift
Attachment patterns can be different with each parent–child relationship. Patterns can change from insecure to secure.A child can become more secure if a parent becomes more sensitive to the child’s cues. An adult can become more secure by having a significant relationship that allows them to trust the other to respond to their emotional needs.
Helping Your Child Connect
Helping your child to build the foundations to create positive adaptive relationships with people throughout their whole life is important. Here are some tips:Comfort your child when they are physically hurt, ill, upset, frightened, or lonely.
Respond to and notice your child.
Give your child a sense of trust in the world and the people in it.
When you leave your child, let them know where you’re going, when you’ll be back, and give them a security object to remember you.
Try to be as predictable and positive as possible when reacting to your child’s behavior.
Physically play and share time, making eye contact, touching, and sharing emotions.
Think about what you want or think is important for the adult you want your child to be. Provide experiences in childhood to support that vision.