The Dance of Attachment

The dance between parent and child that we engage in from the time we bring those sweet smelling, adorably wrapped bundles home from the hospital to the college years and beyond is know as Attachment.  It is a reciprocal interaction that requires attunement to each others' needs and how the responses of each participant impacts the other.   But wait...there's more...so much more!!  We as parents, show up to the dance with our own dance steps and ways of interacting that were established when we were children.  Some of those reactions may not even be within our conscious awareness, but they strongly shape our reactions to our own children.  And what we know from research is that our attachment to our parents and the internal working model that is set within us for creating future relationships is often the type of attachment we will establish with our children.  So how do we build the most secure attachments with our children?
Through the work of researchers such as John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, we have learned a good deal about attachment behaviors and how they influence how we perceive the world.  We also now know the importance of relationships on a child's growing neurobiology,  so in essence, our attachment patterns have a very strong influence on our brain development!  As described in Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell's book, Parenting from the Inside Out, here are the ABC's of Attachment:
Attunement - Aligning your own internal state with those of your children.  Often accomplished by the contingent sharing of nonverbal signals.  (i.e. - your baby smiles -  you smile back!)
Balance - Your children attain balance of their body, emotions and states of mind through attunement with you.  (i.e.- your response to their skinned knee is calm, supportive and validating of the situation; rather than over-reactive - rushing to the hospital or under-reactive and dismissing of the situation.)
Coherence - The sense of integration that is acquired by your children through your relationship with them in which they are able to come to feel both internally integrated and interpersonally connected to others.  (i.e. - your infant cries and you respond to meet their needs allowing them to know that they are capable of getting their needs met and also recognizing that you are there to meet those needs early on.)  
Based on these principles, Attachment allows the child to seek proximity to the parent; go to the parent at times of distress for comforting as a source of safe haven; and internalize the relationship with the parent as an internal model of a secure base.  These repeated experiences of feeling connected, understood and protected are what create a Secure Attachment between parent and child.  We all want that for our children, but what can interfere with achieving a secure attachment are our own unresolved issues and leftover baggage from our own attachment experiences with our parents.  Here's what I consider the really hard part of parenting...self-reflection in order to determine what is undermining our goal of a secure attachment and attuned interactions with our children!  The process of self-reflection takes time and energy, but can be immensely beneficial to making the dance of attachment smoother and more beautiful rather than full of mis-steps and stubbed toes!  An activity that I would like to suggest to start the process of self-reflection would be to write in a journal when your emotions are reactive and heating up.  You may begin to notice certain patterns of interactions with your child that trigger these emotional experiences.  I know for me, I began to recognize that whenever my children approached me for help with a creative project that required some artistic ability, I reacted with agitation and impatience.  I would start to get snippy with them and put down their ideas.  Once this pattern of reaction became apparent to me, I began to reflect on why I reacted that way and I realized that whenever I brought home those types of creative projects, my mother would take over and do it all for me, leaving me feeling helpless and inadequate.  These feelings resurfaced when I was faced with this experience with my own children, thus my reaction!!  With reflection comes much greater awareness and the ability to alter the interactions that impede attunement and connectedness.    Try it...you may be surprised by the results!


Sources:
D. Siegel, &M. Hartzell, Parenting from the Inside Out - How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help you Raise Children Who Thrive, New York, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2003