Attachment experts: would leaving a 5-6 mo be particularly harmful?

[DitaVonCheese]

Just been reading about attachment theory and was wondering whether parents leaving a 5-6 mo (with GPs obviously, not entirely alone ) for a fortnight would be at all harmful. Sounds a bit early for separation anxiety. Would be fully weaned.

I AP too, though as Loopy I wouldn't call myself an expert. I wouldn't even leave my 2.5 yr old with her GPs for that length of time, and definitely not a small baby. I don't think I'd have attempted to fully wean by 5 months either. Is this something absolutely inevitable that you have to do? Do both of you have to go? It's not about the separation anxiety, it's about the damage it will do to the bond your baby has with you - two weeks is a very long time at that age.

No expert here either, but my thoughts are that i don't believe it would do any lasting harm, unless it happened on a regular basis for such long lengths of time. I am basing this on nothing other than a mother's ability to bond with her adopted child, sometimes when that child is no longer a baby. Basically i think that providing the time you have together when you do have time together is of the highest quality, and your child knows that he or she is loved intensely, your LO will be fine.

That said, i would not personally choose to leave my DS (11 months) for that length of time, primarily because i miss him like crazy when he just spends a night at his GPs. I'd be insufferable if he stayed for longer. But that's my choice and nothing at all to do with AP.

I am by no means an attachment expert but have done a reasonable amount of reading up on this as i have just adopted a little boy.
I have also just read "What every parent needs to know" which is about brain development and how brain connections are made in babies/young children, and how they can be damaged etc.

I would absolutely not leave any baby for that length of time unless there are circumstances that mean it can't be avoided. I don't think attachment would be permanently be affected by the baby being left (providing the babys needs are all met while you are away) but i would worry that the baby would start the bereavement process, and that could have a lasting effect on brain wiring.

By no means an expert but from having left my DS with my parents for a week at a time, honestly, as long as the baby is fed, cleaned and received lots of attention, cuddles etc, he/she doesn?t care the least who caring for him?
They don?t miss you because they don?t have a concept of time
I used to phone every evening and talked to DS1 on the phone even though he didn?t understand anything, it did a lot for me and I hope for him.
My parents were quite adamant that he didn?t miss me one bit. I did leave a muslim square with my smell on it but he never touched it.

That say, two weeks is a long time. How do you feel about it? How well do you think the grand-parents will take care of the baby?

As a rule of thumb, with my children, I ask myself two questions, does it feel right to me? And what would I think if I was DS1 or DS2?
It felt right for me to leave DS1 and I thought he would enjoy the change of scenery and my parents. What about you and your baby?

Many thanks for all the replies, they make very interesting reading.

Apologies for doing the annoying reverse thread thing but I was the baby involved. I was reading about bonding online the other night, having realised I didn't really know what it meant and was struck by how some of the attributes of poorly-bonded individuals could apply to me and was wondering how much I could blame my various current neuroses on my parents going on holiday without me 35 years ago

Blimey! Mind you people knew hardly anything about bonding, child development etc back then - bet this sort of thing was quite common.

It is interesting how having kids makes you think more about how you were parented ...

It definitely does! I used to think this was a funny story before I had kids, now I really really can't understand how they did it - my mum says it was already booked and she didn't appreciate before she had me how much she'd love me, but I still don't understand why they didn't take me or just not go. Apparently I refused to look at her when they got back but not sure whether that's just guilt talking (she feels terrible about it now!).

When DD was 7 months I was due to go back to work but couldn't even think about leaving her for the day without needing to curl up into a ball and sob and put it off for another few months.

It's an interesting one. Children may have to be left - eg illness, economic necessity - and what matters is the quality of care during that period.

Insecure attachment is actually far more likely to occur when the main parent figure is present, but unresponsive to the child or erratically responsive, and this will do far more lasting damage because it is more likely to be protracted and puts a fault line in what should be the primary care relationship.

A couple of weeks with loving and attentive grandparents who are caring competently and responsively to the infant is not likely to be harmful.

Poor you OP (& I guessed it was maybe that way round, because how can you really know in advance that a baby will be fully weaned by a certain date?). I don't know much about attachment theory but I do know I haven't left DD1 aged 14 months overnight yet & am in no hurry to do so, and I was a bit when a mum I know of a 4 month year old went off to Ibiza without her (judgemental, moi?)

Separations are hard on babies and mums, no point pretending otherwise

OP was asking about attachment disorder though. That is something associated with eg abuse and neglect particularly in the first three years.

A two week separation may cause transitory stress, but is not an indicator for the disorder.

Actually she said "would [it be] harmful" not "would it cause attachment disorder".

I suspect if she wanted a professional diagnosis on a specific psychiatric condition (as opposed to mums' opinions on a loose set of ethical issues) she would not be asking her question on MN

i think the fact of leaving a baby for a short period of time is not harmful, it is how it is done, the context, who is going to care for the baby etc...

i have no problems leaving my children to my parents. however my parents are very good friend with another set of grandparents which do not care about their grand children the way my parents do. for example, once after giing the baby a bottle, they put it in the bedroom and left him to cry for 2 hours while they were hAving lunch... the grand mother even turned off the baby monitor so she wouldnt be distturbed by the cries... we were horified and after offering my help mAny times i jus gave up (i even tried to soothe that poor baby but he didnt know me so it was making thngs worse).

every time i have left my children that small theywere happy to see me back but not overly and they certainly never sulked. they never never cried after hearing my voi e on the phone everyday, or at any point during their saty. they were their happy self and i got them back just as happy as i left them.

i really depends on loads of factors and i completly disagree with "you dont leave a little baby without doing any harm"

Whilst I think Penguins' verdict on the OP's parents is a bit harsh, I think s/he makes an important point.

Many of us parents obsess about whether one particular event (e.g. leaving baby to go away, doing controlled crying, etc) causes harm. Actually what's important for attachment is whether that one event was symptomatic of the whole relationship or not. Was it part of a pattern of neglect/unresponsiveness or a genuine one-off.

It doesn't sound to me from the OP that this was a pattern of behaviour, but instead a one off that OP's mother 'feels awful about now'. And OP didn't say that her parents didn't expect to love her very strongly, her mother 'didn't appreciate before she had me how much she'd love me' which is a different thing entirely. I took this to mean how i assume the majority of mums (myself included) feel before they actually hold their baby in their arms for the first time. I certainly could never have imagined in my wildest dreams just how deep that love is - nothing else compares to it and you had no idea you could love another human being as strongly, as all consumingly, prior to giving birth. I had all sorts of notions before i had my DS that i no longer have, purely on the basis that i was completely taken by surprise by mother/ baby love.

These days there are theories for everything - it's wrong to pick up your child when they cry, it's wrong to leave them to cry when they cry, your child shouldn't co-sleep, they should co-sleep etc etc. Personally i think blissful ignorance back in the old days must have been lovely. Most mothers brought up their children the best way they knew how to and, for the most part, did a good job despite the absence of modern day advice and theories. I don't think that leaving your LO for a couple of weeks as a one off has a lasting affect. But I do think that doing so every couple of weeks and being non responsive every day is highly likely to be damaging. And this, i believe, is common sense and i don't need to read a book to realise it. And neither did millions of other women all those years ago.

Thanks again for all the replies, I have been lurking and pondering. Btw I didn't seriously think I might be able to hang all my adult problems on one incident when I was a nipper, seems to be absolving myself of responsibility a bit to go the they-fuck-you-up route.

I've been trying to think whether there was a general pattern. I'm also currently reading Families and how to survive them by John Cleese and Robin Skynner, which is influencing my thinking a bit.

I think there was probably a culture of it being okay to leave babies in my parents' respective families. They were both sent off to boarding school - my dad at six and my mum at ten. My mum was the third of eight children so I think that she probably didn't get a lot of individual parental attention. My dad's mum was the subject of some pretty terrible parenting herself and I suspect that her main focus was her husband rather than her sons. (She had a stepdad who would for example buy three cakes - one for him, one for her mum and one for his biological daughter. Gran's mum would then share her cake with gran - I was told this story as an example of what a brilliant parent gran's mum was . Anyway, the lesson my gran learned was that the most important thing in life is to get a husband and then keep him.)

My mum also looked after her niece when said neice was two weeks old as my aunt wanted to go to a party (before my mum had children). Apparently DN started crying within ten minutes of my aunt and uncle leaving and cried solidly until they came home at 2 am. Aunt phoned every hour to see how she was but each time just said she'd leave it another hour and see how DN was. So again my mum was given the example that it's okay to leave babies. I also remember her telling me that I slept through from six weeks because "I had to, because that was the only chance she got to garden" (she is a keen gardener and has a huge garden) which suggests she wasn't around in the evenings much!

I think my parents are probably quite emotionally repressed. When DD was a baby I remember telling her that I loved her and thinking "Of course, I'll have to stop telling her that once she's old enough to understand what I'm saying". The odd thing was that it took me ages to realise what a warped POV that was (I still tell her I love her every day). My mum at a similar age told DD that she "didn't love her when she was like that" (covered in food - we BLWed and my mum hated it - hardly a crime for a small baby).

When I was 14 I went on holiday with a friend's family and mum put a note in my suitcase which said "I love you, especially when you keep your things tidy, so please do so even when I can't see them". I kept that note over my desk for about a decade because it was the first and only time she'd ever overtly told me that she loved me. Took a long time before I realised how conditional it was. I think it was all quite conditional eg I was locked in my room for tantrumming/general punishment I think, can't really remember now.

Sorry this is so long and self-indulgent Hope it all makes sense, bit sleep-deprived after the clock changing thing. Prob should have name-changed. Ho hum.

Dita you might find it interesting to read What Every Parent Needs to Know as well - it's based on over 700 studies of the neuroscience of babies and is a fascinating read. I got it yesterday, partly because of this thread, to be honest - I wanted to know the facts about how babies' brains are affected by the care they get (rather than reading scaremongering journalism, for example). I haven't got very far with it yet but so far it's got some interesting stuff - e.g. about how many adults don't deal well with stress because they were never helped to deal with stress as babies.

aww, Dita! Sounds like you are putting a lot of careful thought into something that's complex and important - no need to beat yourself up.

Yes in the end we all have to take adult responsibility for our own lives, but that doesn't mean remaining blissfully unaware of how we were parented, or pretending that it was all fine when it wasn't. Lots of us feel sad or angry when we start thinking about this stuff. But there is always more to learn and reflect on, and in my experience feelings about one's parents change and evolve over time.

You are trying hard to be the best parent you can, not just blindly repeating the mistakes of past generations, and I think your reflectiveness does you credit.