How to build attachment with your child

5 Ways to Form Stronger Attachment With Your Children

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Children & Youth

Attachment, the pull of two people towards one another, is at the heart of relationships, whether or not we are aware of it. When all is in order, we can simply follow our instincts. But something has changed; societal structures for healthy child-parent attachments are no longer what they once were and we need to be more intentional about attachment than ever before.

In their best-selling book, Hold on to Your Kids, Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabor Mate write, “For the first time in history young people are turning for instruction, modeling and guidance not to mothers, fathers, teachers, and other responsible adults but to people whom nature never intended to place in a parenting role – their own peers” (2004, Random House of Canada Limited, p. 7). Neufeld and Mate refer to this phenomenon as peer orientation. While the societal context driving peer orientation may not be reversible, the antidote lies in preserving and strengthening our parent-child relationships.

Here are 5 tips for forming stronger attachment with your child:

1. Be available

As parents we need to give our children all of our attention at least some of the time. Including times when our child is not demanding it. In fact, inviting connection when a child is least expecting it is the most effective way to meet attachment needs, because it conveys the powerful message that it is the relationship, not anything the child has done, that connects us to them.

An experienced parent shared that his most valuable asset as a parent is time for his kids. He is mindful of his schedule so that he is regularly available to talk and spend time with his children. We need to make space for daily play and interaction, away from our phone or other devices. We need to grab hold of every opportunity in order to build intimacy that our children’s peers cannot compete with.

2. Delight in your child

From toddlerhood on, interactions with our children have a tendency to revolve around direction, teaching or changing behaviour in some way. Though we do have a responsibility for our children’s safety and well-being, simply being together and enjoying one’s child may fall by the wayside. We need to be mindful of interacting with our children in warm and inviting ways. Hugs and embraces, playful smiles, eye contact and warmth in our voice invite connection. Delight is different from praise. Though of course valuable, praise is generally about something that the child has done, whereas delight stems from loving and enjoying the child exactly as they are.

3. Validate and help to manage your child’s feelings

Children are learning to understand and regulate their emotions. Parents play the role of a safe haven in this: noticing how their child is feeling, helping to name those emotions and providing the message that all emotions are natural and serve a purpose. When children experience emotional invalidation, that is, the message that certain emotions are not acceptable to express, barriers to sharing are created, along with the sense that connection is conditional.

Children and youth also need their parents to guide them in managing the full range of emotions. For example, anger itself is not a problem, but we do need to help our children learn how to acknowledge and manage it in a healthy way. Staying with an upset child and guiding them in managing their emotions will help them learn how to do that on their own and will strengthen attachment.

4. Learn about and get involved in what interests them

Recently, a friend shared her great dislike for watching professional football on TV. But, she said, “It’s one thing that my 14-year-old son is happy to have my company for, over a three-hour period.” So she has learned more about football than she ever thought she would and it has become a point of connection for her and her child. With young children, we can be mindful of following their lead in play and watching and noticing as they learn.

5. Set limits and guidelines

We need to put structures in place to restrict those things that would take our children away from us. This includes protecting family outings and holidays, celebrations, activities and regular sit-down meals. It means being mindful of not over-scheduling our children or ourselves. Placing restrictions on access to social media, cell phones and other devices is critical, or the demand for these soon gets out of hand.

We must also create guidelines around peer contact (who and how often) and work to preserve our children’s connection with us as primary. This may involve re-organizing our family life in such a way that there is increased time for the parent-child relationship.

Attachment is about relationship.

More than a set of skills, attachment is about relationship. By following these guidelines, parents can preserve and strengthen the attachment role they are naturally intended to carry with their children.

For more FREE RESOURCES on this topic and others, visit our free resources page.

Author: Kimberly Enns (MSW, RSW)
Trainer, Crisis & Trauma Resource Institute

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Building a secure attachment with your child — Better Kid Care — Penn State Extension

If you were told there was one thing that you could do for your child that would:

increase her self-esteem
help her performance in school
help her to have positive relationships with others all through life
help her to handle stress and
help her to some day raise her own healthy, happy children

would you do it? Most parents would reply, “Of course I would do that for my child!”

What is this powerful force that can be so valuable in a child’s life? It is a SECURE ATTACHMENT.

To become securely attached, children need a dependable adult who responds to their needs. Children who are securely attached use this special adult as their base of security. When children feel secure, they can move away from their dependable adult to explore, knowing they can always go back to that adult as needed. It’s through exploring that children learn.

When children with secure attachments are frustrated, overwhelmed, or upset, they know they can go to their special adult to be comforted, and then are able to return to exploring and learning. This becomes a positive cycle, with the child taking risks by exploring new things, learning from those experiences, and gaining confidence in the process.

Children who don’t have secure attachments spend less time exploring, making it harder for them to learn. If a dependable adult isn’t present it’s difficult for a child to trust that her needs will be met and she learns that she isn’t important.

Attachment tip:
Make up a goodbye ritual, such as a special noisy kiss or a bear hug or a wave from the window. Children are reassured by the routine, and find it comforting when you leave them at child care.

You can help your child to make a secure attachment by being dependable and responsive. That means tuning in to your child’s signals that he is hungry or tired, and providing comfort and relief when he needs it.

You might have seen articles and books that say the right way to parent is to carry your baby in a sling, nurse him throughout the early years and sleep together in a family bed. These things can help you to be in touch with your child’s needs, and nursing certainly benefits your child’s health, but you can have a secure attachment with your child without doing any of these things. The secret is in your ability to listen to and respond to your child’s needs.

Your role is to be in tune with your child and to let him set the pace for exploring. Your child needs to be able to trust that you will be there when he needs security and comfort.

Parents who are depressed often have problems making a secure attachment with their child because it’s more difficult for them to tune in and respond to their child’s needs. This means that their child’s efforts to interact with them may be ignored, causing the child to stop using the behaviors that are needed to make good relationships. If you think you may be depressed it is very important to seek help for yourself. You will be better able to meet your child’s needs once your depression is treated.

Parents who are clingy or fearful often discourage their child from exploring, which prevents the positive cycle of exploration and learning that is so important for a child’s success in school and in relationships.

Attachment tip:
Take some time to help your child adjust to child care. Visit before your child's first day, and plan so that you don’t need to leave right away during the first weeks of care. Let your child use you as a secure base while exploring. Give comfort, but let the child set his or her own pace.

Get in tune with your child

When you are sharing those special moments of talking, playing, reading or singing with your baby, you are attuned to her. Your baby is listening to you and you are listening to her. You share a laugh or a smile, and you lock eyes. Getting in tune with your child helps build a secure attachment with your child and helps your child’s mind to grow. Enjoy a song or play a game like rolling a ball back and forth or reading a book together. Most of all, talk with your child. The goal isn’t to finish the book, to teach the child the motions in the game or the words to the song – the goal is to spend some time together and get in tune. It is the experience of being together that matters most.

How to form attachment in a foster child: 7 rules

Having made the decision to take an adopted child into the family of an adopted child, future parents face a lot of fears and fears of fears and fears. We are afraid that adopted children may grow up cruel and insensitive, they will lie, steal, run away from home, use alcohol and drugs. Public opinion tends to attribute these difficulties to adopted children due to "bad heredity". In fact, most of the peculiarities in their behavior are explained by the fact that they were affected to one degree or another by attachment trauma.

Without a close adult nearby or having lost at some point who would be responsible for them, caring and loving, these children are deprived of the opportunity to form trust in the world, in people, learn to love other people and themselves.

In Russia, most often very young children are taken into the family between the ages of birth and three years - at this age, it is rather difficult to assess the psychological state of the child by the behavior of the child. In this article, I am a Parent will tell you how to tell if your foster child has attachment trauma and what you can do to heal it.

What is attachment trauma and why does it occur?

Psychologists understand attachment as a special relationship of intimacy, an emotional connection that develops between a child and an adult caring for him. This does not have to be a mother - such an adult can be someone else from relatives, a foster parent or even a nanny. The main thing is that from the first days of life, “his own” adult is attached to the child. Someone who is responsible for his safety and development, someone he can rely on. If a child did not have the opportunity to form such relationships in early childhood, then psychologists talk about attachment trauma.

In institutions that take care of children, educators who really love their wards often work. But the teacher is one for thirty kids. And he will not be able to become his “own” adult for any of them. Therefore, the development of attachment trauma in children from the Baby Houses is inevitable to one degree or another.

Why is attachment trauma dangerous?

1. Loss of ability to get close to people

An attachment relationship with a caregiver builds a child's ability to connect with people and develop warm feelings for them in the future. Children with attachment trauma do not know how to love and open up. They say about such children that they literally grow up indifferent to the whole world.

2. No empathy for people

One of the consequences of not being able to love is a lack of empathy for others. Children with attachment trauma do not develop empathy, they do not understand that their actions or words can hurt others. Hence their increased cruelty, unformed sense of guilt. Their behavior may leave the feeling that the child "has no conscience."

3. Lack of causation and understanding of boundaries

In the first year of life, through attachment relationships, the child develops the ability to establish cause-and-effect relationships. He understands that if he cries, then they will come to his aid. In children with attachment trauma, the formation of causal relationships is disrupted, since there was no adult nearby who would react to their crying, and in the second year of life, when children begin to explore the world, he would set boundaries. Therefore, they can get into life-threatening situations.

4. Lack of trust in people

A child with attachment trauma has no trust, neither in other people nor in the world at large. He feels personally responsible for his safety, and does not allow anyone to control him. Hence the problems with compliance with the rules of conduct.

7 Rules for Forming Attachment in an Adopted Child

According to the observations of psychologists, the formation of attachment to foster parents takes, depending on the severity of the case, from six months to two years.

In addition, the stages of development of attachment are such that until a child reaches the age of three years, separation from “his adult” is fraught with psychological trauma for him. Therefore, for a period of six months (until the baby is three years old), the child will need your undivided attention.

1. Stay with your child for more than 4 hours

During this period, the mother should not leave the child for longer than four hours. If you are away for a longer time, hire a permanent nanny for your child or choose someone from your family who will constantly replace you so that the child can form an attachment with him too.

2. Restore physical contact between the child and the adult

Attachment relationships are shaped to a large extent through skin-to-skin body contact and eye contact. Therefore, try to ensure that the child spends as much time as possible in your arms.

3. Do not allow other adults to hold the baby for a long time

Only mom and dad can hold a baby for a long time in their arms. This is necessary so that the child "allocates" parental figures from all the adults with whom he contacts, and learns to separate "us" and "them".

4. Give your child a massage

Give your baby a massage every day. During the massage, comment on your actions, smile and interact with him.

5. Take your baby to sleep with you or next to you

At night, the child should sleep with you in the same bed or very close. Arrange a place for him to sleep so that the child cannot fall on the floor. Before going to bed, rock, lull the baby. You can come up with your own special ritual of going to bed, a ritual of going to bed, and repeat it every night.

6. Help the baby in the process of feeding

For children who are already out of infancy, at first help in the feeding process so that he feels your support.

7. Don't leave a crying baby alone

Respond to any call of the baby, especially crying. The trauma of attachment was formed in the child precisely as a result of the fact that his crying, his needs, fear, his desire to be loved were ignored. The best thing to do is to respond to his need for protection and closeness as often and for as long as it takes to catch up.

Are you ready to become foster parents?
Find out!

Anna Kolchugina

Developing a child's attachment to parents

Relationships between parents and children are always very strong and deep. It is impossible to assess the degree of attachment of the child to the parents, because they are relatives by blood and spirit. The mutual love of parents and their babies is a strong bond that allows you to cope with any adversity. Children with such a strong emotional connection have many advantages: high self-esteem, stress resistance, the ability to easily adapt in a team and find a common language with people.

What is an emotional connection with a child?

Emotional connection is a rather complex concept that is difficult to explain. It's easier to imagine. Such a connection is like an invisible thread that connects the hearts of two or more people. And the emotional connection between mother and child is even more important, because a woman carries a child under her heart for 9 whole months. For almost a year she has been a single whole with him. She begins to take care of him much earlier than her father, because it depends on her health, actions, words how the baby will be born. Attachment is formed the moment a woman finds out she is pregnant. At the same moment, her life is divided into before and after.

Attachment of parents and children

The development of a child's attachment is growing every day. Such relationships between adults and children last a lifetime, and every year they become only stronger. Scientists have proven that already at 24 weeks of pregnancy, the fetus hears how parents are talking to him. Gradually, he begins to recognize their voices. He associates them with closeness, warmth, protection and care. Moreover, babies feel when their mother strokes her stomach.

People who are connected by such an emotional connection have a lot in common. They are even comfortable just being silent in each other's presence. And this silence will be the most wonderful pastime.

To strengthen the relationship between parents and children, it is necessary to constantly provide mutual tactile actions. Take the baby by the hand, hug, kiss. Tell him how much you love him, how happy you are that you have him. And the backlash will not be long in coming.

How to form an emotional connection with a child

Attachment does not appear at the moment of birth. To establish a connection with the baby, you need to behave correctly from the first days of the baby's life. Eye contact, a gentle voice, a willingness to help - we understand the importance of some actions intuitively. The remaining secrets of mutual understanding can be comprehended by observing simple rules.

Become a stone wall for your son or daughter. A sense of security and a sense of comradeship is the basis of a trusting relationship. To raise a genius, it is not enough just to send the baby to the AMAKids Intelligence Development Academy. Provide freedom, give opportunities, encourage initiative and be there in moments of difficulty.
Find opportunities for communication. Joint games and hobbies will strengthen spiritual relationships even stronger. At the same time, it absolutely does not matter what you are doing - mastering the Liberica technique or making handicrafts. By spending time together, you will learn more about his interests and be able to establish useful traditions.
Learn to express emotions. High emotional intelligence is the ability to easily adapt to the world around you and feel harmonious. Help your child learn to show and manage emotions. Watch his reactions, put yourself in his shoes, and feel free to show your own feelings. Open emotions will help you connect and instill important skills.
Be patient. From an early age, children plague their parents with tantrums and whims. Preschoolers are mischievous, unable to express their feelings, teenagers try to manipulate adults. One way or another, your task is to always stay close. Try to switch the attention of the little troublemaker, help him get out of an unpleasant situation by offering an interesting game or joint activities. For example, enroll in the AMAKids Intelligence Development Academy and try to go through a quest with tasks in mental arithmetic together.
Be predictable. Try to follow the daily routine, enter simple rules and follow them with the whole family. So you will make life more measured and safe, and your little fidget will know exactly what and when is required of him.
Love your baby. Feel free to openly show love and tenderness. A sense of security, a sense of attention and care will help establish a warm, trusting relationship. Over the years, the attachment will become stronger, instilling in your child self-confidence and a desire to explore the entire Universe.

Emotional dependence of the child on the condition of the parents

The emotional attachment of the child to the parents cannot be compared or calculated. Adults need to know that their moods influence how children think about themselves. If mom is upset, and dad swears, the baby immediately begins to think that he is bad.