6 Tips for Promoting Healthy Attachment with Your Child
Written by Marianne Van Oyen, Psychologist | Author
Marianne Van Oyen is a psychologist in private practice with over 30 years of experience. She is a published author with three books to offer those who wish to expand their knowledge and skills by implementing her tools and insights. Marianne brings a blend of intuition, creativity, and psychology to her work.
Parenting is a very serious job. How we raise our children will determine so much of their health, self-esteem, curiosity, productivity, values, beliefs, confidence, empathy, relationships, and how they love. Empathetic responses can reassure parents that their actions directly influence their child's happiness and security, encouraging positive engagement.
This article will describe 6 different ingredients of healthy attachment, giving examples of poor attachment, their causes, and consequences along the way. Recognizing these can help you feel more confident and supported as you create or improve your child’s attachment style, no matter your experience level.
What is an attachment style?
Many psychologists have been reporting on and writing about attachment styles, the factors that contribute to the different types, and how they manifest in people’s lives. There are four main categories: secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-disorganized. Early caregiver interactions impact each style. These attachment styles impact how someone experiences and expresses intimacy in relationships. How each caregiver responds to an infant and child influences the attachment style. Experiences with significant others later in life can also influence and shape attachment styles. Awareness and therapy can help a person deal with and alter their dysfunctional attachment style.
The four attachment styles
Attachment styles are primarily created by the type of care provided in infancy and early childhood. These types are:
1. The anxious-preoccupied attachment style
This attachment style manifests in relationships as anxiety, insecurity, doubt, clinginess, dependency, and a great deal of rumination when encountering episodes of distance between themselves and a love object due to conflict, differences, physical or temporal distance, slow to no responses or feedback from a significant other. When encountering any of these situations, a person with this attachment style will become anxious and assume there is a problem or that they did something wrong. They won’t be able to focus on other important matters like work, school, sleep, or even daily routines. A person with this attachment style can focus their mind and being on their partner, seeking connection and communication to calm their nervous system. They may begin to pursue their significant other, begging for an explanation to feel more grounded and focused. This type of behaviour rarely ends well, as this attachment style is often attracted to dismissive-avoidant types, which makes the situation more precarious and results in the dismissive-avoidant downplaying the other’s needs and feelings, pulling away from and avoiding their anxious counterpart.
2. The dismissive-avoidant attachment style
This form of attachment style manifests as being nonchalant, cool, distant, uncaring, and remote. Too much contact or closeness feels threatening to this type, and they will often pull back emotionally or physically in relationships, especially when they feel the other wants and needs more from them or becomes clingy or dependent in any way. These behaviours can trigger old scenarios, and in response, this individual may act like they don’t care, making the other feel like they are too much and too demanding. Depending on the other's attachment style, this can cause drama and cycles of roller-coaster emotional rides, or the other pulling back or cutting off the relationship or contact, creating more distance between the two parties, which, at first, can make the dismissive-avoidant feel more relaxed. Still, it can often lead to more distance than is comfortable for this person, where they may make attempts to reduce the gap between themselves and the other, which in some case can create the dance of intimacy where there is an approach-avoidant dynamic between the two parties resulting in changes in the amount of closeness and distance depending on what feels comfortable to both parties. Generally, both parties cannot achieve an acceptable amount of closeness or distance.
3. The fearful-disorganized
This attachment style is fearful of relationships and is not clear about how they should be or what to expect in a relationship. They give off mixed messages, having received mixed messages growing up, never knowing who or what they could count on. This inconsistency then manifests as inconsistent behaviours in their current relationships, creating overall confusion for both parties.
4. The secure attachment style
This attachment style is the most sound and productive. A person with a secure attachment style is usually relatively calm and confident in relationships, allowing for closeness and space with their counterpart. There is more fluidity and allowance for personal differences and independence, where this type does not need constant assurance nor feels the need to run when the relationship becomes more serious.
The creation of attachment styles
Early connections between caregivers and infants/babies/ children impact how the child feels and how secure they will feel in their environments. A child who expresses himself and is attended to calmly and without delay will trust their caretaker/parent to respond to their emotional and/or physical needs and will therefore feel calm and confident that they can count on this person, and in turn will feel confident in their environments, eventually soothing and regulating their nervous systems. These children are not left unattended or crying for too long, so they don’t feel helpless or hopeless. They learn to trust their caregivers and, in turn, trust themselves that they will be heard and attended to in a consistent and caring manner.
Children who are left alone to “cry it out” become anxious-preoccupied or fearful-disorganized because they don’t know if help is on the way. Will they be left to cry for hours alone until they pass out from fatigue, and then cling to their caregiver when they finally decide to respond or be fearful and disorganized, as sometimes their caregiver responds, and other times doesn’t. This pattern of behaviour leaves the baby or child feeling afraid and confused. Being cared for then feels like gambling, but it’s gambling with the child's feelings and how they will grow up and interpret the world.
A baby or child that has emotionally and/or physically distant caregivers will learn to “self-soothe” as if there is such a thing. These children will learn to be remote and detached because caregivers dismissed their feelings and needs, thus leaving them feeling unimportant and alone. They will grow up in the world and treat others in the same manner, making relationships difficult to navigate.
6 tips on how to create a healthy and secure attachment style
Parents and caregivers need to realize that their children have no way to communicate to have all their needs met, be it fear, hunger, pain, comfort, etc., except by crying, fussing, or reaching out. They have no language when they are babies, they cannot move or avoid danger, they cannot feed themselves, relieve their pain, walk, run, or understand much, yet many parents are encouraged to ignore their baby’s needs and not to “spoil” them or allow their infant or child to “manipulate” them, which in my mind is ridiculous. Babies and children cannot take care of themselves in any way. They need their caregivers to help them. So, listening, responding, reassuring, and securing a child will help them learn to trust and to feel calm.
Listening to our babies and children and what they are trying to express is essential when creating understanding and emotional bonds.
Empathizing with our babies and children allows us to feel connected to them, which gives our children a sense that they matter and that their needs and feelings are important. We are also modelling empathy for them, which they will, in turn, do for others.
Communicating with our babies and children will make them feel important and heard and will foster language development and effective social skills. These ingredients are necessary for healthy relationships and to help children function with more agency in the world.
Consistency in our behaviour will allow our babies and children to feel calm and know what they can expect and count on without feeling anxious, fearful, or second-guessing. These negative emotions can lead to anxious or fearful attachment styles, impacting the rest of their lives unless they seek therapy and learn how to feel regulated and secure in the world, which can take years and thousands of dollars. Pay now or pay later. Helping a baby or child regulate their emotions and nervous system will make for a happier, calmer, and more secure individual. This guidance will provide tools for self-mastery and better emotional and physical health.
Connecting to our babies and children through eye contact, play, singing, talking, listening, and understanding will make our children feel seen, heard, respected, and valued. Putting our phones away when we are in the presence of our children is paramount to raising engaged and more secure children and adults. For a child to feel dismissed or ignored because of a phone or anything else that blocks eye contact is very damaging and destructive to the well-being of any child.
Start your journey today
Gentle and calm parenting is a worthwhile investment for you and your children. It is a win/win strategy that ensures the best ways to help you connect and bond with your children, rather than encouraging them to feel alone and insecure. Many children who feel insecure and anxious will bond with objects like blankets, toys, and pacifiers, and with other people, which can set them up to favour materialism or put them in harm's way with false actors who manipulate them for attention.
Attachment styles are foundational, so choose wisely. If you are struggling or need guidance, connect with me for a time-limited 10-minute discovery call or find my book, Calm Parenting: Effective strategies to improve cooperation, facilitate clear communication, lessen sibling rivalry, avoid meltdowns, and promote positive behavior, available on Amazon. It’s an easy read and worth every penny.
Remember that you are the most important person in your child’s life. Children have only one mother and one father, if they’re lucky.
Read more from Marianne Van Oyen
Marianne Van Oyen, Psychologist | Author
Marianne Van Oyen answered her call to serve others at the age of 21 and to help make the world a better place, one person at a time. She works primarily with adolescents, adults, and couples in person and virtually. Marianne has spent money, time, and energy in many professional development programs, learning many modalities of therapy to offer her clients the best service and results possible. She has also taken the same path to develop her skills as a writer, author, and publisher so that she can expand her reach.
