Patricia A. MacAulay
CHILD DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT
Early Attachment
Human infants are born in a helpless and vulnerable state. To survive and feel safe, we need to seek out and make a strong emotional bond with a main caregiver who works to meet our needs. As this relationship progresses, we develop a preference for contact and closeness with the caregiver and rely on them to help us cope with the world.
As this attachment figure cares for us, we need them to contain our anxiety and manage the relationship. This is a powerful system of connection and a complex socio-biological process that fosters all aspects of human development.
The caregiver acts as a secure base, enabling us to explore the world and learn from our experiences. We take risks while also maintaining closeness to our caregiver. Over time, we are supposed to transition from seeing the caregiver as our secure base to feeling that security within ourselves.
Attachment plays out as a reciprocal set of behaviours between the child and caregiver. We are aware of each other and tend to seek each other out when feeling stressed. Both try to stay close enough to remain comfortable. This constant and complex interplay is called attunement.
Both parties are trying to find a rhythm together. The caregiver is the leader who senses and responds to moods, feelings, interests, and needs. This requires empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. The two participants build capacity for empathy through attunement.
Through this process, we develop an internal working model of the self, the world, and other people that is meant to enable us to cope with life’s challenges. For most children, this process goes well enough to achieve that end goal. For others, though, there may be disruptions in the process that provoke strong emotional reactions and inhibit curiosity about the world and comfort in exploring it.
In the past, mothers in particular have been blamed for failing to fulfill this bond, but it is important to remember that many factors may affect a caregiver’s capacity to provide a healthy attachment experience, and it is not helpful to blame anyone. We are living with multiple individual and societal circumstances that may inhibit the full development of this bond.
Attachment does not mean the same thing as love. Parents and other primary caregivers may truly love the child, but still have difficulty establishing this sense of security. The caregiver-child bond serves as the basis from which child forms all other relationships, and is an important element to consider when subsequent adult-child relationships experience turbulence.
Caregivers observe the child to understand and respond to real needs, not necessarily every changeable whim or demand. (Without appropriate limits, children feel unsafe.) As well, attuned caregivers recognize when the child requires stimulating and when they need calming. Caregivers constantly gauge the child’s receptivity – simultaneously flexible and consistent.
Overall, the attuned caregiver strives to be engaging and encouraging, mostly through eye contact and physical touch.
Attunement is like a matching game. The caregiver works to mirror the child’s emotions and the child mirrors those back to the caregiver. The most fulfilling times occur when we share moments of joy with each other. Those moments are very nourishing for both the child and the adult.
Researchers stress that children should not be left to endure distress on their own beyond their limits and that those limits look different for each individual child. As part of the attunement process, the parent learns what the child can tolerate and avoids going beyond that point.
It is important to note that adults do not have to be perfect in order to provide lasting benefits to the children in their care. Researchers suggest that the relationship just needs to be “good enough.” In other words, the adult needs to be able to attend to and satisfy the child’s basic needs adequately or more than adequately most of the time in order for the child to feel safe enough to interact with others.