The importance of attachment can only be understood when you are completely in a relationship. Attachment is powerful and beautiful. But the problem is that we fail to connect one hundred percent to anything. Fear of getting detached is always stopping us from completely connecting to something or someone. These days connections are narrow, selfish, and are for limited gains. Funny as it may sound, we get attached to our Nature which is negative because it makes us attached to our ego and our ignorance and so we always like to live with the two of them.
Why is importance of attachment in early years?
For children, attachment is an emotional bond between them and their parents. Infants get more attached to the caregiving person who feeds them comforts them when they are tired or ill. In the early years of the infants, protective caregiving helps in coping up with the negative emotions. Which helps them to explore the surrounding without fear. This feeling stays with them at their adulthood they become more fearless to any situation.
What is the process of attachment?
Babies go through multiple phases of attachment. In the first phase signaling the people these signals are more associated with the sound of a person, their body odor, their touch, etc.
In the second phase, babies develop preferences towards their caregivers. They get more comfortable around one or more caregivers when they’re around.
The third phase is, active attachment in this infants wants to stay near the specific person by signaling them and the movements.
With these children enters the fourth and important phase, following the behavior in this phase kids start following their parents and they orient their goals according to their parents. They try to fit their plans and activities with respect to their parents.
How Adoptive Families Can Promote Attachment
As they say babies mind is a clean slate. You can shape is the way you want to. Achieving genuine attachment with your little one is not easy but you can achieve it with the conscientious and routine work. You need to be more observant about their behavior. I can suggest you some steps to nurture the healthy attachment with your kids.
- Maintain physical contact with your baby: physical contact is a way of communication in the babies. By staying close to the babies you assure them security and love which is a fundamental emotion.
- Stays attentive – Kids always want you to listen to them. If in case you ignore them chances are they might hesitate to talk to you or behave more chaotic to get your attention.
- Encourage to express their emotions – It is important for you to help your kids express their emotions. When babies want to express their feelings make sure to reinforce and encourage them.
- Keep a stable environment – It is important for you to create a predictive environment and create a routine for your babies which will help them to comfort.
Why is attachment so important for social and emotional development?
The first years last a lifetime.
Children’s experiences in their earliest years affect how their brains work, the way they respond to stress, and their ability to form trusting relationships. During these years the brain undergoes its most dramatic growth, setting the stage for social and emotional development. Language blossoms, basic motor abilities form, thinking becomes more complex, and children begin to understand their own feelings and those of others.
Did you know?
- A child’s brain doubles in size in the first year, and by age three it reaches 80 percent of its adult volume.
- The back-and-forth interactions of babies and adults shape a baby’s brain architecture, supporting the development of communication and social skills.
- What happens in the first years of life is directly related to children’s long-term cognitive, emotional, and social outcomes through adulthood.
Children’s ability to react to the social environment has changed over time. Developing social emotion is a complex process. which can be discribe as below:
- temperament: It the way your young one acts and responds to different situations, caregivers, and strangers
- attachment: It is the emotional bond between a caregiver and the child.
- social skills or social competence: the ability to get along with the other people
- emotion regulation: It is the ability of a child to control their emotions and reactions to the environment.
What are healthy attachments?
Human life is complex to cope up with the complexity is is important to have a secure attachment at all stages of life. It’s the only truly healthy form of attachment. In secure attachment person feels confident around their caregiver of romantic partner. Also, they feel little distressed when they are away.
Secure Infant Attachment In Infants And Children
In Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Test, the infants with secure attachment explored freely when the caregiver was nearby. Whenever the infant felt distressed, they would come close to them for reassurance. Then, they went back to exploring.
When the caregiver left, the infant showed only mild distress. When the caregiver returned, the infant quickly re-established contact.
Secure Adult Attachment
In a secure adult attachment, you feel positive about yourself and see yourself as worthy of love. You also have a positive view of others. You assume that others are usually accepting and responsive.
What are insecure attachments?
Knowingly or unknowingly people are more susceptible to form an insecure attachment. It is a bond that is contaminated with fear. People feel more reluctant towards getting more attached to the fear of not getting enough attention.
It is a belief in the insecure attachment form in early childhood itself. It is a consequence of the relationship we build in childhood. The first few bonds form the foundation of the type of relationship we build in the later stage of our life.
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
-George Bernard Shaw-
If children develop secure attachment it promotes healthy bonds. In other words, they learn to expect the best from the other person. They start believing in another person. On the other hand, people with insecure attachment tend to abandon a person or harm them in some way or another. To overcome this it is important to trust the person you love.
What are the signs of attachment disorder in adults?
For adults, it becomes hard to form a meaningful relationship. They mostly get burdened by their responsibilities and forget to appreciate the love they get through their close ones.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders recognizes two main attachment disorders. Both are generally only diagnosed in children between the ages of 9 months and 5 years.
- Reactive attachment disorder (RAD). RAD involves patterns of emotional withdrawal from caregivers. Children with RAD usually don’t seek or respond to comfort, even when they’re upset.
- Disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED). DSED involves being overly friendly with unknown adults. Children with DSED might wander off often, approach strangers with no hesitation, and hug or touch unknown adults easily.
For attachment disorder, there is no formal diagnosis. But we can certainly say that attachment disorder is somehow associated with the childhood upbringing. For some people, these symptoms of RAG or DSED are the once which could not diagnose at childhood.
Conclusions
Attachment is a great power! But we have not discovered that power as of yet. We are allowing our senses to play with our lives because of our ignorance and our ego which wants constant gratification. When we feel very close to someone emotionally, physically, and mentally we start feeling we are connected to that person. It is not an attachment. It is our arrangement made for comfort and maintaining the “self”. We start feeling comfortable with that and we get attached to that, not to the person.
As human beings we have one strong quality: we have the power to transform matter, give shape to it according to our requirements. Even with people, we try to transform that person so that he should be convenient for us. It is not an attachment. It is a mental game, your nature and it is our beauty, too. Why beauty? That is how life has seen material progress and we have made all things around us congenial to our existence. This is not an attachment; this is our ignorance.
Attachment is very beautiful if it is to nature around us, to sunlight, to something which is bigger than oneself, vast. Attachment born out of our desire for comfort gives us pain and suffering.
However, if our attachment is one hundred percent, then there will be no pain or suffering. When the fruit ripens a hundred percent it detaches from the tree. It is the power of attachment. Till your attachment is fifty, sixty, seventy percent, you are hanging on with that and you will feel miserable with that kind of attachment. You will suffer, cry, complain, but you will have no power to get rid of it. Get attached to the pain you are in, just try it once! You can do that! Do not hang in between, do it one hundred percent, and after one hundred percent something will change in your nature and you start feeling absolutely great.
You can experiment. If you like chocolate, try this. Let it be chocolate for breakfast, chocolate for dinner, chocolate for lunch, always eat chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. In twenty-four hours you will start feeling an aversion for chocolate. If 24 hours you are listening to the same music, you will start disliking it, but if you are listening to the same music once in a while it will be ok. If I start telling you the same story every day how many times will you listen to it? Once, twice, thrice, ten times? We are not able to tolerate it.
So as soon as you will get one hundred percent attachment it will teach you healthy detachment. Attachment is one of nature’s processes. Nature wants that you learn to live, learn to grow, learn to progress. Attachment is power, my power, your power. Learn to use this power. If you use it wisely you will get attached to the light, soul, to the Divine, Truth, to beauty…true attachment will open everything for you, will give you the conscious clarities, the highest clarities.
Also Read: Love beyond romantic relationship
Very nice post