ATTACHMENT

Why It Matters

Something extraordinary happens in the most ordinary moments between parent and child:

Danny waits for his mother's reassuring smile and nod before climbing into the sandbox with the other children.

Emma instantly calms when her dad lifts his 1-year-old daughter onto his lap even though he's tapping away at his phone and barely looks at the little girl.

Jake stops clobbering his toy drum when his mom switches from demanding that he put it down to exclaiming, "Wow, that's some sense of rhythm you've got, buddy."

Moments like these are so ordinary as to be forgettable, even unnoticeable. Yet what accrues to children as those moments accumulate is nothing short of profound. Every time you answer your child's need for comfort or confidence, you're building a bond of trust. Every time you show that you understand how your child feels and what your child wants, you're demonstrating the power of a primal connection that all of us are born seeking. Every time you help your baby or toddler manage the discomfort and frustration of being a newcomer to the human condition, you're teaching your child acceptance of emotions (even the "ugly" ones), of himself, and of others.

These are the gifts of attachment. A secure attachment forms naturally for a child when a parent or other primary caregiver can:

• Help the child feel safe when frightened or uncomfortable

• Help the child feel secure enough to explore the world, essential to growth and development

• Help the child accept and manage his or her emotional experience

Both parents and children are hardwired for attachment. You start forming a bond with your child even before birth, and miraculously, your newborn emerges with a powerful instinct to be close to you. Not just any adult will do, even though plenty of adults can provide the food, warmth, and protection necessary to the baby's physical survival. Decades of research suggest that babies immediately fall in love with a parent's face because even when they can barely focus on it, they can already sense the parent's love and devotion. This is the person, a baby intuits, who is going to be here for me. This is someone who will help me figure out this confusing new world and find the goodness in it.

Our common bond as parents is that we all want goodness — love and compassion, understanding and acceptance, meaning and fulfillment — for our children. And children come into the world wanting and needing goodness from us. One of our most important mentors, developmental psychologist Jude Cassidy (along with social psychologist Phillip Shaver), recently defined attachment security as "confidence in the possibility of goodness." From our perspective, this is precisely the issue. We want what's good, deeply necessary, and fulfilling for our children. And they come to us in their unique, miraculous, ever-fresh, and often demanding way with that exact request. "Please help me trust in the goodness of you, the goodness of me, the goodness of us." Of course, this is what we're here to offer.

THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF "AND"

We all begin life more integrated with another person than separate. This is not just an acknowledgment that sharing a body before birth creates a bond for mothers and babies that often endures after it. Babies also become attached to their fathers, their grandparents, or anyone else whose gaze says "I am here for you," and who then makes good on that promise much of the time. The very youngest babies seem to recognize this devotion and start to respond in kind during their first days of life. They follow us with their eyes, flap their arms in excitement when we return from work, and their first smiles come in response to our smiles at them — a gift that few parents ever forget. In the Circle of Security program, when we are trying to convey to parents how very important they are to their children, we play Joe Cocker's song "You Are So Beautiful" as we show video clips of attachment moments between parent and child.

As pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott once said, "If you set out to describe a baby, you will find you are describing a baby and someone." He was referring to how essential we are to our infants. Baby Gino or Sasha or Hiroto may have separate arms and legs and face but really doesn't fully exist yet as an individual. We tend to view babies as completely formed little creatures who know deep down what they're feeling and needing and who they are but simply lack the language to express it. In actuality, newborn babies have no clarity about what they're feeling except that there are many times when something unknown and difficult starts happening to them (they need something) — an unformed longing begins to grow. When Mom or Dad gazes into a distressed baby's eyes and coos "There, there" and magically figures out what the baby needs — and even provides it! — the parent is telling the baby "I'm here with you. We share the same kinds of feelings, and we'll figure this out together." As this exchange is repeated again and again, the baby learns that human emotions are natural, acceptable, and shareable. She learns that this special adult can manage them for her and gradually help her learn to manage them for herself — a process called "coregulation of emotions." She learns that although she and her parent(s) have many important things in common, each of them is also unique. She learns that the relationship — the "and" — is critical to the formation of the self.

Up until the middle of the 20th century, the self — a being separate from other humans — was the focus of developmental psychology. In Western society, this emphasis informed many attitudes and expectations about how we should conduct ourselves over the lifespan. As soon as we were able, we were expected to take care of ourselves, and social policies — in the United States at least — often favored individual rights over community needs. In our work with the Circle of Security, we've come around to the opposite view: it's the "and" that matters. We would even go so far as to say this: Self-sufficiency is a myth. From birth through old age,...