Simple language for parents about childhood attachment
Here is the most common situation: you are waiting for guests. Your child is also happy about the upcoming holiday, he helps you set the table, diligently washes vegetables, lays out napkins, flourishes with praise. This behavior of attachment, he wants to be with you, wants you to like, to do a common cause.
Here are guests on the doorstep - and the child is suddenly embarrassed, hiding behind you, you should work to persuade him to go out and say hello. This behavior of attachment, he is careful with strangers, not "his", adults and seeks protection from the parent.
You are sitting at the table, carried away by an interesting conversation, and the child seems to have broken loose from the chain: makes noise, runs, jerks you. This is attachment behavior: He gets anxious when he sees that a stranger has taken over your attention and wants your attention as confirmation that your relationship is okay.
You lose patience, get angry with him and push him out of the room. He cries loudly, beats against the door, hysteria begins. This is the behavior of attachment: you made it clear to him that you can cut off the connection with him, moreover, you symbolically broke it by closing the door, he protests with all his might, trying to restore the connection..
You feel sorry for him, you go to him, hug him, lead him to wash. He sobs for a while, then promises that he will behave well and you allow him to stay. He soon dies down, curled up in your lap and really isn't playing anymore. This is the behavior of attachment - the connection is restored, the tension has subsided, the fear has released, the child is exhausted, and it is best to restore strength next to the parent.
Perhaps you have never thought about it that way. Perhaps you thought, or others told you that this is all happening because the child is spoiled, or ill-mannered, or mischievous, or overexcited. In fact, everything is simpler and more serious. He just needs a connection with you. That's all. If you understand this and be able to see how the state of your relationship affects the state and behavior of the child, many cases of "bad" behavior will appear in a different light.
We remember that the child's relationship with the parent is even more important for him than for us the relationship with the partner, he is even more dependent on the parent's love for him to be unshakable, like a rock, so that this relationship cannot be interrupted either by mistake or stupidity, or imperfection of character, appearance, abilities.
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An attempt to set a “bar of expectations” for a child plunges him into deepest stress and causes strong protest. And instead of the expected "pedagogical effect" of our notations and admonitions, we get overt or covert sabotage, and sometimes a paradoxical reaction: the child enhances just that behavior or quality with which we are often unhappy. How it works?
Imagine that you are walking along a path over an abyss (and this is, in a sense, a general metaphor of our life), and you are secured by a strong rope, which is held on the other side by a person whom you absolutely trust, more than yourself. This is how the child perceives his attachment to the parent and the parent to him. And suddenly it seems to you that the rope has become loose, sagged somehow. What happened? Let go? forgot? threw? Gone? You cannot ask, go to find out too - it's scary to take a step, without insurance. What are you going to do?
That's right, to pull on the rope, in the hope that it just sagged a little and now it will stretch again and become strong and reliable as before. Tugging with a sinking heart - what if you pull, and it turns out that at the other end she was released? But if you do not pull, how do you know?
This is exactly what the child does when he has doubts about the strength of the attachment. Pulls the rope. Tries again the very behavior that, from experience, puts the parent's attitude towards him at risk. “Are you still my adult? - as if he asks. - Even if I do this? Even if I'm bad? I cannot live in such anxiety, answer quickly so that I know for sure."
If a parent succeeds in letting the child understand that, of course, you, dear, have broken the wood, but don't worry, I still love you, I'm with you, you can count on me, the rope is strong, - the child calms down and can change behavior … If an adult also gets turned on in response, he himself falls under the power of anxiety "he will always do this now, I am a bad parent, I cannot cope, he does not obey me, it is out of spite, you need to be tougher with him so that it will be discouraging in the future" and that's it like that, the child's question is not removed, but only becomes more acute.
So what should be expected? Yeah, repetition of that very parent-unbearable behavior.
Lyudmila Petranovskaya, fragment from the book "If it is difficult with a child"