"The theory of attachment was originally developed
by John Bowlby (1907 - 1990), a British psychoanalyst who was attempting to
understand the intense distress experienced by infants who had been separated
from their parents. Bowlby observed that separated infants would go to
extraordinary lengths (e.g., crying, clinging, frantically searching) to
prevent separation from their parents or to reestablish proximity to a missing
parent.
Bowlby argued that, over the course of evolutionary
history, infants who were able to maintain proximity to an attachment figure
via attachment behaviors would be more likely to survive to a reproductive age.
According to Bowlby, a motivational system, what he called theattachment
behavioral system, was gradually "designed" by natural selection to
regulate proximity to an attachment figure.
According to Bowlby, the attachment
system essentially "asks" the following fundamental question: Is the
attachment figure nearby, accessible, and attentive? If the child perceives the
answer to this question to be "yes," he or she feels loved, secure,
and confident, and, behaviorally, is likely to explore his or her environment,
play with others, and be sociable. If, however, the child perceives the answer
to this question to be "no," the child experiences anxiety and,
behaviorally, is likely to exhibit attachment behaviors ranging from simple
visual searching on the low extreme to active following and vocal signaling on
the other" (see Figure below).
Figure 1. Basic control processes
 |
| http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/attachment.htm |
"Bowlby (citing Marris, 1958) claimed that grief and
mourning processes in children and adults appear whenever attachment behaviors
are activated but the attachment figure continues to he unavailable. He also
suggested that an inability to form deep relationships with others may result
when the succession of substitutes is too frequent."
How to avoid harming a
baby’s and a child’s attachment
The key to maintaining secure attachments throughout
childhood is to avoid any experience, however well intentioned, that overwhelms
the attachment bond. Maintaining children’s security of attachment requires
that their attachment figure provides them with a sense of safety and
protection at all times. Children who are frightened, whether by parents who
are abusive, neglectful or violent, or by being separated from their attachment
figures for an inappropriate amount of time (even when they’re in perfectly “safe”
situations) can become insecurely attached.
Extreme experiences of separation that are known to harm
young children are: spending weeks or months in residential care or, as used to
happen in the UK in the 1950’s, spending two weeks in hospital with only brief
visits from an attachment figure. An experience which seems safe to adults but
not to babies, is spending each day without access to an attachment figure in
certain forms of non-parental daycare. The circumstances in which babies cannot
access a secondary attachment figure are found most frequently in group
child-care settings such as day-nurseries.
Bowlby believes that many babies and toddlers develop a
risk factor in daycare without an attachment figure, and babies from
disadvantaged families where insecure attachment is common are particularly
vulnerable. Babies with an insecure attachment at home, who then spend time in
daycare without an attachment figure, will have their negative model of
relationships reinforced.
These babies need daycare from a long-term secondary
attachment figure who is consistent throughout the years of daycare, is
sensitive to their individual needs, and is always available to them. In this
way a more positive model of relationships can develop.
Although we know that this is what babies need, it seems
to be extremely difficult to provide this in group daycare settings." Bowlby
http://www.allianceforchildhood.eu/files/QOC%20Sig%204.pdf
According to Axness "We tend to throw around the
word “attachment” a lot when talking about kids and parenting, so let’s make
sure we’re all talking about the same thing: attachment is a measure of the
security of relationship between a child and those one or two or three adults
with whom that child is in consistent contact.
We now recognize assures Axness that healthy (secure) attachment is a
fundamental form of nourishment for a child’s growing brain. In particular,
attachment fosters rich circuitry in the area of the brain that mediates social
and emotional functioning. A parent’s ability to be present for a child is
fundamental to fostering this brain circuitry needed to regulate attention.
When we distill the attachment and brain development
research, it is remarkably consistent with the teachings of ancient spiritual
traditions as well as modern humanist psychology: for a child to develop secure
attachment (the basis for all future development), the child first and foremost
needs regular doses of the undistracted, full presence of a primary attachment
figure. What the past decade of brain
science has discovered is that a parent’s ability for this kind of presence
goes hand in hand with the an important set of other right-hemisphere, social
brain skills: empathy, autobiographical memory and an array of other
social-emotional capabilities." (Axness)
Relationships with a selective few adults, not sensory
flooding, are the most important form of experience for the growing mind.
Adults who are sensitive to a child’s signals, who can offer consistent and
predictable behaviors, and who care about the child’s internal experiences are
those that are likely to foster a secure attachment. — Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., UCLA Dept. of
Psychiatry
How Attachment Styles
Get “Passed Down” (Axness)
Leading-edge research from the newly aligned fields of
brain science and attachment theory has revealed an astonishing principle: the factor that most reliably predicts a child’s secure,
healthy attachment is the ability of that child’s parent (or consistent
caregiver) to make sense of his/her own early history.** This autobiographical ability tends to go
hand in hand with the ability to be present in the way that nourishes a child’s
growing sense of self. This is a kind of counter-intuitive, puzzling
connection: What does me being able to tell my childhood story have to do with
how good a parent I am??! Turns out that
this has to do with some newly-discovered principles of brain development and
function:
The natural mode of brain functioning for the young child
is governed primarily by the right hemisphere (as in the phrase, “right
brain.”) This is the mode in which key lifelong brain capacities are wired,
which lay a foundation for healthy social-emotional functioning and a strong
sense of self.
But when a child’s need for attachment is thwarted (what
I call “malattachment”) through chronic emotional or physical stress or abuse –
or even the more subtle emotional “non-presence” of a parent – the child’s
adaptive survival response is to prematurely engage the left hemisphere of the
brain, which has to do with facts, logic and thinking.
Under
conditions of malattachment, it is very painful for a child to continue to
“live” in the relationship-seeking right hemisphere, which has to do with
imagination, creativity, andfeeling.
When a child is prematurely “living in the left brain,” the
development of key right brain area skills (including what we have come to call
“emotional intelligence” or “E.Q.”) is dangerously undermined. One such skill
is autobiographical memory. Thus, a child who has spent much of childhood
engaging life through the rational, fact-based left brain is more likely to
grow up to be an adult who is less likely to be able to tell the story of his
or her childhood in a way that hangs together and makes sense. They will more
likely have only disjointed fragments of memories — random pieces of a puzzle,
but without a big picture that fits together reasonably well.
And vice versa: the
ability to easily make sense of and relate one’s early story is good evidence
for one’s own healthy attachment history. But can’t we simply determine to “do
better” for our own child? Why doesour
story make such a difference?
