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ATTACHMENT

What is Attachment?

Attachment is an emotional bond to another person and attachment theory is focused on these bonds between people, particularly long-term relationships, including those between a parent and child. The earlier years of a child’s life are the most important for building a secure attachment and these experiences can go on to affect all relationships we form in later life.

British psychologist John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist, describing attachment as a ‘lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.’ Bowlby believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life driven by a need for comfort and protection and allowing their safe exploration of the world.

PARENT CHILD RELATIONSHIPS – DEVELOPMENT OF ATTACHMENT

“The propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals (is) a basic component of human behaviour.”

“Children are not slates from which the past can be rubbed by a duster or a sponge, but human beings who carry their previous experiences with them and whose behaviour in the present is profoundly affected by what has gone before.”

John Bowlby

“attachment theory holds that, within close relationships, young children acquire mental representations, or internal working models of their own worthiness based on other people’s availability and their willingness to provide care and protection….by understanding one’s self, one begins to understand other people. Thus, the world of relationships is both the problem to be solved and the means to its solution.”

Development of Relationships

STAGES OF ATTACHMENT

· Birth – child can tell people apart

· Up to six months – may show preference for main carer

· 7–10 months – develops specific attachments

· 10–18 months – child upset when separated from attachment figures

· 18 months–2 years – child can explore from safe and secure base (trusted adult)

· 3 years – attachments strong, dependence decreases

· 4.5–5 years – child can cope with longer separations but still needs to return to base if distressed or threatened.

Main Messages:

· Children reach these stages at different times, just as they reach physical milestones at different times.

· A securely attached child will develop trust in self, others and the world.

· Even where the child has a secure attachment, repeated or prolonged separation from their primary attachment figures can cause distress and anxiety and halt development.

· Children who have not been able to build an attachment properly will experience difficulties with attachment later on. The nature of their attachment pattern will vary, depending on the interaction they have had with the caregiver and dependent on their age.

DAMAGED ATTACHMENTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR ADOPTERS

· Damaged attachments can affect a child’s capacity to form new attachments

· Child’s behaviours can be puzzling and upsetting for adopters

· It can feel as though the child is rejecting you.

· Child’s behaviour in foster family may not predict how they will be with adopters

· When there’s a possible match, it will be important to explore and understand the child’s attachment history and needs.

Main Messages:

· Even if a child seems to be doing well with foster carers, that doesn’t mean everything will be fine when they move to their adoptive family. The child may cope less well with the emotional demands of being in an adoptive family.

· Expectations and emotions are very difficult when permanence and commitment to a new family become a reality.

· Children may show a range of attachment behaviours which can be difficult and wearing for you as adoptive parents. This is why it is crucial for prospective adopters to understand attachment.

WHAT IS A SECURE BASE?

“A secure base is provided through a relationship with one or more sensitive and responsive attachment figures who meet the child’s needs and to whom the child can turn as a safe haven, when upset or anxious”.

(Schofield and Beck, 2014)

THE SECURE BASE MODEL

The Secure Base model provides a positive framework for therapeutic caregiving which helps infants, children and young people to move towards greater security and builds resilience. The model focuses on the interactions that occur between caregivers and children on a day to day, minute by minute basis within the caregiving environment. But it also considers how those relationships can enable the child to develop competence in the outside world of school, peer group and community.

It can be helpful, first, to think about caregiver/child interactions as having the potential to shape the thinking and feeling and ultimately the behaviour of the child.

This process begins with the child's needs and behaviour and then focuses on what is going on in the mind of the caregiver. How a caregiver thinks and feels about a child's needs and behaviour will determine his or her caregiving behaviours. The caregiver may draw on their own ideas about what children need or what makes a good parent from their own experiences or from what they have learned from training. The caregiving behaviours that result convey certain messages to the child. The child's thinking and feeling about themselves and other people will be affected by these messages and there will be a consequent impact on his or her development. We have chosen to represent this process in a circular model, the caregiving cycle, which shows the inter-connectedness of caregiver/child minds and behaviour, as well as their ongoing movement and change.

Each interaction conveys a number of messages to the child and has an incremental effect on the child's beliefs about him or herself, beliefs about other people and the relationship between self and others. These internal working models will influence the child's functioning and development.

· Availability helps the child to trust

· Sensitivity helps the child to manage his/her feelings.

· Acceptance helps build the child’s self -esteem and self- worth

· Co-operation helps the child to feel effective

· Family membership is key to helping the child to belong as part of a family.

All of these dimensions of caregiving relationships are important from infancy to adolescence.

They combine and interact with each other to create a secure base for the child.

The importance of availability and sensitive parenting which considers a child’s unique experiences.

The Secure Base Model - Professor Gillian Schofield

HELPING THE CHILD RECOVER & BUILDING RESILIENCE

Includes

· Being available

· Responding sensitively

· Accepting the child

· Promoting a sense of belonging

(Schofield and Beck, 2014)

Main Messages:

· Children who have experienced trauma need to be made to feel secure and need to learn that their caregivers are reliable and there for them in order to build up healthy attachments and grow in independence.

· As adoptive parents you will need to be emotionally available for your child, connecting emotionally and in a nurturing way using comforting touch and eye contact. Be ready to respond to their needs as this will build up trust.

· Remember that a child who has experienced trauma is likely to be emotionally younger than other children their age, so they may need extra support with more basic tasks and responding to these needs in a nurturing way will help to validate their feelings and develop a bond of trust.

· Experts in this area Kim Golding, Sue Goulding and others refer to this as the “Dance of Attachment.” Learning to understand the steps of your child’s Dance of Attachment can help them to learn to attach in healthy ways.