Question
What influences a child's sense of attachment?
Answer
Attachment, at its core, comes back to safety, both physical and emotional safety, but also relational safety. Some examples of things that impact a child’s sense of attachment are divorce, trauma or abuse, unexpected moves, and separation from parents. These examples are not all-inclusive of what can impact the quality of a parent and child's attachment relationship.
Divorce, so if parents who were once together are no longer together and the child has to go back and forth between houses perhaps. And maybe at some point in their life, their parents lived together and were predictably available. Now, perhaps they have to see one parent some of the time and the other parent the other part of the time, which could be really painful. And as we know, children sometimes take responsibility for that, even though we know it's not their responsibility.
Any type of trauma or abuse, especially emotional abuse, physical abuse, or sexual abuse, are all types of experiences that lead a child to go from feeling that they can rely on people to feeling like they have to rely on themselves. Or my sense of safety, my sense of being cared for, was either abused or manipulated or taken away from me. So that, of course, can impact a parent and child's relationship.
Unexpected moves. An unexpected move can be traumatic, or it might not be traumatic for a child or for a family. But if someone has their relationships and their people and their support system somewhere, and all of a sudden they have to move away from that person, either from their family or from other people that they receive support from, that can also impact the quality of their attachment relationships.
And separation from parents, any type of separation. What I really want to emphasize here is it doesn't have to be the fault of the parents. It doesn't have to be that the parents consciously left the child in order for it to impact attachment. It could be that the parent was sick. It could be that the parent had to go to a treatment program. It could be that the parent was deployed in the military. There can be very valid, good reasons why a parent must be separated from their child. And even if the reason is very good and very legitimate, that can still impact the quality of the attachment relationship.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar, Working with Parents in Child Therapy, presented by Katie Fries, MSW, LCSW
