What does good attachment look like?

[nephrofox]

I keep hearing and reading about how important good attachment in the early years is, but how do you know if you've got it right? And how do you promote it?!

I have a 2.5yo and a 6 month old. I care for them and (I think) meet all their needs. I have never left them to cry, altho can have a quite 'no nonsense' style with toddler tantrums. Obviously I've had to get used to splitting my time when the baby arrived.

So why can't I shake off the idea that they're not going to grow up "well attached" or whatever that means?

Not everyone grows up in great circumstances with good, emotionally available parents

I'm pretty sure you're not really trying to educate an adoptive parent about how some families can be dysfunctional!

I still question that 40% of the general population have children with attachment issues - based on my experience of a micro population with hiugher than average attachment issues and the general population of people I know.

Anyone who thinks that 40% of the children that I know or of the people I know who know other children (eg teachers, family friends etc) have an insecure attachment style is somewhat over egging the attachment pudding.

The Strange Situation is a bit more complex than just whether a child goes to their carer when upset too though. A child with an ambivalent attachment might go to the carer but be unable to calm down, an avoidant child might not go to them at all. The Strange Situation looked at behaviour when the parent and child are together and when there is a stranger in the room too.

Obviously all those decades of research was useless Kewcumber, they should have just asked your opinion of your friends

OP the fact that you're aware of attachment and worried about getting it right is, in itself, a good indicator that you're doing ok.

Now try being as kind to yourself as you are to your children!

For those of you shocked by the 40% this also extends to adult attachment too.

That was very offensive snossnidge towards Kew.
I too know not of 1 person within 50 or 100 parents who have this.

I can't seem to get you to answer the question. Let me try, one last time:

Are you seriously suggesting that 40% of parents are getting it SO VERY wrong. Don't you think that this is a concern: that almost half of patents are getting this so very wrong.

I still feel that these 'health professionals'and teachers are so out of touch with reality, over-zealous with their labelling, they are labelling 'NT'normal children.

I've had problems with relationships, but I don't have attachment issues. The two don't always go hand in hand. I can pinpoint my relationship issues on an uninvolved father (who was & is by all accounts great with babies) and my mother's low opinion of men in general leading me to low expectations.

I agree wrt attachment parenting and catastrophising attachments. I did AP but looking back I don't think it was as important as some would have you believe.

Obs2015, are you of the opinion that the Baby Bonds research is just plain wrong?

Nobody is trying to over-label children FFS.

Quite the reverse, it's very hard to get a diagnosis in the UK usually!

I find it quite odd that you can so confidently diagnose all of your friends and acquaintances attachment styles

I think you must be referring to psychologists who have done this research when you talk about people being out of touch with reality?

An insecure attachment style isn't abnormal, and it doesn't make children not neuro-typical either.

40% of people having insecure attachment styles doesn't mean parents are getting it SO VERY wrong. Some children will have had very neglectful or abusive upbringings, and that may result in disorganised attachments or attachment disorders. But there are many reasons why a parent might not be emotionally sensitive to their baby, or able to respond sensitively or consistently to them - mental illness, PND, a long separation in early childhood, having a insecure attachment style themselves and being emotionally distant or needy, drug or alcohol problems, extreme stress from poverty, family breakdown, bereavement, beliefs/a parenting style that means deliberately not responding to the baby's needs. Stress and depression are huge factors (and poverty is a huge factor in both) so really these are structural issues rather than something you can blame on individual parents.

Out of touch with reality? Health professionals and education professionals who spend their days observing and interacting with hundreds of children and families? I really don't think thats fair

And by the way, from the outside my parents looked wonderful and extremely loving. We were beautifully dressed, well fed, loads of toys and books, holidays and my parents told us constantly that they loved us. They were also completely unable to meet our emotional needs, or to see us as separate people, and remain so even now that my siblings and I are in our 30s. We all have significant emotional difficulties as a result. Insecure attachments don't always look so obvious from the outside

Are you serious lotta? Please tell me you are not that naive?
MN is very diverse. A lot of attachment parents, who probably couldn't reconcile with the benign neglect crew or the Gina ford crew. Some posters are very feminist. Done doctors are so pro munchsusens/fii/cot death - sir Roy meadows / Sally Clarke, they simply couldn't reconcile with opposition groups.

Health professionals are as diverse, and some are so 'committed ', they song hear otherwise.
Surely you know this?

So psychologists are all wrong about attachment and have been carrying out meaningless research for decades, health professionals are all wrong about attachment, and teachers are all wrong about attachment... and you're right Obs?

Obs2015, why the tone of outrage in your posts? Of course some health professionals are unreliable, as in any profession. You seem to think that none of us are fit for purpose and are just out to make parents' lives a misery. That is just not the case.

Lots of very good research on attachment and good work done by psychologists. We are a happy receiver of psychologists services.

But yes in my experience there is a rush to over interpret some things. Obviously my view is worthless though as I can only interpret the results based on my observation of the people I know. I count a significant number (a very significant number) of adopted adults and children within my circle and my observation (including discussion with their parents) is that 40% of the general population do not have attachment problems.

If you're saying that that study doesn't say that 40% of the population have attachment problems but only have an insecure attachment style which presumably covers a spectrum from very mildly insecure into the significant range, then I'm not sure what we're arguing about.

You were the one that said 40% having an insecure attachment style is nonsense

The report states that around 25% of those that aren't securely attached have an avoidant attachment type, and around 15% have a disorganised attachment type. It doesn't give any detail on the "severity" or impact of the insecure attachment.

I can see children getting mislabeled. DD isn't cuddly or clingy by nature. She would rather explore than sit on my lap. For the longest time she would be ambivalent to me when I left or returned.

I had to learn to let her come to me on her own terms (which means quick pecks instead of cuddles), and now she's thrilled to see me when I get back. But I wouldn't go so far as to say because she's not clingy like other children that something is wrong either.

I've not read all the articles but to me it's a spectrum like asd tbh.

I've taught quite a few children whom have glaringly obvious attachment 'issues' due to family background. Some are far more severe than others and that generally correlates with how young they were when family issues arose and whether those issues ended with them no longer living with the family.
I'm not qualified to 'diagnose' attachment 'disorder' as someone helpfully pointed out, but it's not hard to see the effect of it when it's severe.

However I've also seen far more mild attachment issues in children and recognise it in myself due to my relationship with one of my parents, and see it hugely in my siblings who suffered it more than me.

I think it's a wide spectrum and sometimes the seemingly 'perfect' family is actually almost as damaging on the inside as the glaringly obvious neglect in others.

It mentions disabilities as a cause of insecure attachments, which means that 40% includes children with disabilities that would affect attachment and babies kept from their mothers at birth for medical reasons.

20% of children have SENs, so while some of those SENs wouldn't affect attachment, you've still got children who were premature or had medical intervention at birth with no ongoing issues to add in as well.

If you take those out, it's a much more believable figure.

I think just from reading mumsnet you can see it isn't an unbelievable figure. How many people would describe their parent as being distant or emotionally unavailable? Or not really seeing their children as separate people? Or quite selfish and narcissistic? How many posters describe themselves or their partners as being afraid of commitment, or jealous, controlling, clingy or needy in relationships - where do you think these patterns of behaviour come from? Add in all those people who had mothers who were depressed, had PND, were ill for an extended period when they were young, had alcohol issues, suffered family breakdown or DV? Some parent styles advocate being unresponsive to a child's needs - plenty of posters report midwives or MILs telling them not to pick up the baby when it cries or you'll spoil it, show it who's boss, babies are manipulative. That's even before we talk about children who were abused or neglected or in care.

I spent last weekend with a nice, professional, married couple who obviously loved their toddler very much, and he was well fed and cared for. However they felt strongly that babies shouldn't be mollycoddled and mustn't learn that if they cry someone will come to them etc. Already at 2 you could see the child had a insecure attachment style.

An ex-partner of mine had an avoidant attachment style - he doesn't display a lot of emotion, he can be distant, reacts to stress by withdrawing, tends towards being a loner. His mother had very severe and largely untreated PND after his birth and until he was 2 or 3 really, and although she did a great job caring for him she found it hard to bond with him in his early months.

The OP asked about what a good attachment looks like, and from her posts it sounds like she has it - she responds to her children's needs, is sensitive to their emotions, and they are confident to explore or go to others while still looking to her as a secure base.

'I think just from reading mumsnet you can see it isn't an unbelievable figure'

I don't agree with that. In the past it's been pointed out that parents who have children with SN (in particular ASD) seem to be overrepresented on the boards in comparison to in RL. The reason for that seems to be because people specifically come to MN looking for support and advice.
I think the same is probably true of people who post about their difficult relationships with their parents.

Just a minor point. Several large scale studies have shown no correlation between PND and insecure attachment style. Untreated PND can be a risk factor... living in poverty, being an abuse survivor, chronic depression, addiction.. but none of these 'mean' attachment will necessarily be compromised, anyone than having smoked means you will get lung cancer. The danger in overinterpretation of data is that attachment difficulties are shown on very flimsy bases.

Doing Gina Ford is absolutely not a cause of attachment disorder.

I have an eighteen month old who will very occasionally resist cuddling when upset for a few moments. He will run around distressed on these rare occasions, as if trying to climb out of his skin. If a HCP sees this they need to ask if this is the norm and know about the wide range of behaviours associated with poor attachment, not say, as worryingly has been suggested on this thread, that a child 'clearly' has attachment issues on the basis of one trial assessment. This is a child who trips and comes for a kiss or comes for a cuddle when sad 99 times out of 100, day in and day out. A child who is absolutely secure in exploring and appropriately wary of strangers. A child who has about five secure attachments with adults and who shows empathy appropriate to a toddler, kissing his brothers when they fall. As a HCP myself, and supervisor of HCPs, it is critical we don't overegg data or simplify models of pathology.

Attachment difficulties can be very serious and require sensitive intervention to resolve but they're not a product of 'good enough' parenting. The goal is never perfection in parenting, just reasonably stable yet flexible and consistent responding.

I actually studied this in 1 year olds. In brief- 'cause I need to sleep- we expected the child to be upset when the mother left (in the situation of being left with a stranger) but be easily comforted by her return.

A well attached child would not be clingy, would explore the room bringing toys back to the mother, or showing them to her.