Oh Baby! I’m here for you! The Importance of Forming Secure Attachments
Oh Baby! I’m here for you! The Importance of Forming Secure Attachments
By Aoife Magee
Secure Attachment
Infants and toddlers learn to trust that the world is safe and that they are valued through sensitive and responsive caregiving. As the parent or caregiver watches for the child’s cues to determine what they need, and responds to them promptly, consistently, and respectfully, this brings positive results for children. Everyday interactions that feel meaningful and responsive promote the development of a secure attachment with their caregiver.
Attuning to each baby requires slowing down, watching, and interacting in a loving and nurturing way. A responsive approach may include an adult reflecting on what a child is communicating through their actions, facial expressions, and body language, and developing an awareness of how their own caregiving behaviors are meeting their developmental need for trust, comfort, wellbeing, and security. Infants and toddlers who have developed healthy attachments show happiness and affection with familiar adults, seek and accept comfort, make their needs known, express a variety of emotions, and show interest in the environment. Secure attachment in early childhood can lead to healthy relationships and a sense of wellbeing throughout life.
Insecure Attachment
Infants and toddlers experience the world through their relationships. These relationships affect nearly all aspects of their development including social, emotional, physical, intellectual, behavioral, and moral. The relationships infants and toddlers have with their caregivers play a critical role in regulating stress and organizing their internal experiences.
When interactions between the caregiver and the child do not feel consistently meaningful or responsive, or emotional and physical needs go unmet, an insecure attachment may form. This may contribute to feelings of anxiety, ambivalence, dysregulation, or fear in the child, which is a common result of unresponsive or inconsistent caregiving. If the primary caregiver-child bond does not offer protection, predictability, and safety, the child will have a more reactive stress response. Stress in a young child can impact their development in serious ways.
Signs of Distress or Mistrust
Children who lack consistent responsive caregiving may show signs of stress or display challenges in their mental processes, language development, physical health, and social-emotional development. If the child has difficulty trusting their needs will be met, they may not seek connection with adults when upset. Instead, they may shutdown or show excessive crying, or have difficulty being comforted and calming down. The child may have challenges with playing and paying attention to stories, exhibit learning delays, or withdraw. The child may also have feeding issues, sleep disturbances, physical complaints, problems with coordination and balance, and - in the extreme - show a failure to thrive. Over time, children in distress may develop more serious mental and physical health problems that are more difficult to resolve if they lack a supportive adult.
Resilience and Attachment Type Changes
Caring adults who provide a level of support, comfort, stimulation, interaction, and nurturing can play a key role in cultivating resilience and improving outcomes for infants and toddlers. Resilience is the ability to overcome adversity. Early childhood resilience research tells us that the strongest protective factor for children is having at least one relationship with a caring, responsive, loving adult. Responsive relationships are a protective factor for children and provide a sense of emotional safety and healing.
Interpersonal attachments don’t end in childhood. ‘Earned’ secure attachment is when someone develops a secure attachment later in life, despite having an insecure attachment style early on. The process of earning a secure attachment typically happens in the context of a safe and trusted relationship, which is built over time through meaningful connection.
As the American author Tom Robbins wrote, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
Resources from Harvard Center for the Developing Child
To learn more about child development, stress, resilience, and attachment parenting, please check out the links below.
Aoife Rose Magee, PhD, earned a doctoral degree in Special Education from the University of Oregon Early Intervention Program. Her personal and professional interests have been largely focused on the social-emotional development of young children and how positive parenting and teaching practices may contribute to healthy development, promote resiliency, and mediate risk factors. Aoife is a professional development specialist for students and practitioners in the areas of Early Childhood Education, Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education and Parenting Education. Aoife serves as a Master Trainer for the Oregon Registry and frequently provides community based and private workshops for early childhood educators, parenting educators, and other professionals. For more than thirty years, she worked directly with families as a parenting educator, and she is a former Oregon Parenting Education Collaborative Hub Coordinator for the Parenting Success Network. She currently teaches as a full-time faculty in the Early Childhood Education Program at Lane Community College. She is also the mother of a fantastic young adult son and enjoys nature and creative pursuits in her spare time.
