Six Ways to Build a Secure Attachment With Your Kids
Building a secure attachment with your children is foundational to their overall well-being. Without a secure attachment everything else you want for your children will be a massive struggle for them and for you as a parent. Secure attachments are needed for healthy relationships, self-esteem, and resilience in the face of life's challenges. In this post will offer tips on how to create a secure attachment with your children.
What is a Secure Attachment?
To put it in a nutshell, a secure attachment is the result of a child feeling safe and supported by their parents or caregivers. They know they can rely on their caregivers to be responsive to their needs, consistent and nurturing. For more detailed info on attachment types and what it all means check out Attachment 101. Having a secure attachment is the ideal. When children grow up with a secure attachment they are more likely to:
Have positive self-esteem
Develop healthy relationships throughout their lives
Have improved cognitive development
Can more easily learn to regulate their emotions
However, this isn’t always easy to do, especially for parents and caregivers under lots of stress or for those who may have grown up without a secure attachment themselves.
How to Create a Secure Attachment:
Be Responsive: Respond to your child's physical AND emotional needs in the moment. You can think of this as the opposite of the common advice of letting your babies cry it out. Often parents of infants are told that babies need “sleep training” where they are left alone to cry in their cribs in order to teach them to fall asleep on their own. Logically it makes sense, they learn the parents aren’t coming so the theory is they learn to self-sooth and then drift peacefully off to sleep on their own. However, research on this shows that when babies are subjected to sleep training they do stop crying and fussing but the level of stress hormones in their bodies continues to stay elevated. They may have learned that crying won’t help them get their needs met, but even though they are quiet, they are not okay. The part of the brain responsible for self-soothing isn’t developed enough yet. In fact that part of our brain isn’t 100% there until our mid 20s! This doesn’t mean that we need to co-sleep until our kids are 25, but it does mean we should learn about the developmental level of each child, what they still need physically and emotionally, and what they are ready to do independently. At each developmental stage the kind of care-giving children need changes, but all through their lives kids need parents who are responsive.
Be Consistent: Secure attachment forms when caregivers are reliable. Your child needs to know they can depend on you to meet their needs as consistently as possible. Just showing up, being present and taking a kids needs seriously goes a long way here. This doesn’t mean we always give them what they want though. Kids need boundaries too, but if we can regularly validate that we get why they want it that helps with developing emotion regulation skills and delayed gratification while still being consistent in meeting their emotional needs. “Yes, you really want cake for breakfast its the only thing you like to eat!!! How about a slice after lunch?”
Provide Emotional Connection: Spend quality time together: Engage in activities that promote bonding in ways that follows your child’s interests. Join in their world rather than expecting them to engage in yours. This can feel so hard when your child is on hour two of non-stop chatter about their favorite video game and you lost interest 57 minutes ago. Remind yourself that someday they aren’t going to want to connect with you in this way. And when you really can’t tune in anymore in that moment find a gentle way to re-direct or tell them when you can listen. It might sound like “I’d really love to hear more about how to beat blue bokoblins when you only have 3 hearts, but right now I need to call grandma. Can you tell me all about it in 30 minutes?” If your kid’s like mine in 30 minutes she’ll probably have moved on to something else anyway. Another way to provide emotional connection is to show empathy, use active listening, and validation when your child expresses their feelings. This will also help them build emotion regulation skills. A huge thing that can get in the way with emotional connection is phones. Remind yourself to set your phone down, even put it in a different room if needed. You don’t want your children to look back on their childhood and remember seeing you on the phone instead of engaged with them. If you’re looking for some places to start with younger children they almost universally love to play simple games, be read to, sing songs together, cuddle or spend time outdoors together.
Provide a Safe Environment: Safety is the cornerstone of everything else. If kids don’t feel physically and emotionally safe any other attempt at building a secure attachment just won’t work. Ensure your child's physical environment is safe and get support immediately if its not. In addition we need to create an atmosphere where children feel safe expressing their thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment, ridicule or punishment. If you are already following steps 1-3 your child is probably also feeling pretty emotionally safe.
Encourage Independence: Allow your child to explore and make age-appropriate decisions. Remember, a securely attached child knows their needs will be met AND feels safe to explore their world independently. Encouraging that independence helps them develop a sense of self-confidence and mastery. While promoting independence, provide guidance and support when needed. This balance helps them feel secure in their exploration. The key to this is knowing when to step back and how to guide them without sending the message that the world is unsafe. You might try saying things like “Wow, that ledge is really close!” instead of the more generic “be careful” That way you’re pointing out what in the environment is important to be mindful of without sending the message that they are unsafe- unless of course they actually are doing something unsafe then by all means stop them.
Reconnect and Repair: We are not going to get it right every time. Some days its just too much, our kids have pushed our last button and before we know it a flood of everything we never wanted to say comes out of our mouths. When I have these moments its almost as if I can see what’s happening but have become powerless to stop it, the train has left the station. It happens to all of us, even therapists. Once everyone has had a moment to calm down this is a time to reconnect and repair. Ask your kid if its okay to talk about what happened, apologize genuinely without excuses for why you did what you did. Let them know that though you were frustrated they didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Let your kid say their piece and validate how they feel. Maybe a solution for next time can be brainstormed together. Many parents think that doing this shows weakness or erodes their parental authority, but if you give it a try you might find that this massively strengthens the relationship and repairs the secure bond which in turn increases the respect your children have for you, making them more likely to listen in the future. You’re also modeling for them how to own up to mistakes and correct them in a healthy way.
Though creating a secure attachment with your child is the most important thing you can do to ensure a bright future for them you’re still human. None of use get this right 100% of the time. A secure attachment is everything, and we also know that we only need to be “good enough” parents. When there is a base of that secure attachment, when you usually take these six steps the times that you do make mistakes or can’t get to them right away are also opportunities for our children to develop resilience. In fact being a perfect parent can cause just as much trouble down the road for our children as insecure attachments. So don’t beat yourself up for your mistakes! Feeling guilty does not make us better parents- the ability to reflect on why the mistakes happened and choose to learn from them does. If you’d like to learn more about building a secure attachment with your children and get to the roots of what might be getting in the way for you reach out here!