Supporting Families Around Issues of Attachment and Trust 23
How ATTAcHmenT And TruST Are relATed This chapter focuses on supporting families of very young children during their first year of life. Children in this age group are at the beginning of their socialization. What do attachment and trust have to do with socialization? The answer to that question is everything. Attachment is important to relationships and social develop- ment. It also relates to trust. Further, it impacts cognitive development and even physical development. For example, babies who have a secure attachment tend to explore more. When they explore in a safe, rich, and developmentally appropriate environment they advance their physical skills while developing their intellectual ones.
Think of attachment as a lasting emotional relationship that begins to develop in infancy and serves to tie the infant to one or more people in his or her life. It is a two-way process—adults (first, usually parents or other family members and sec- ond, infant caregivers) attach to infants, and infants attach to adults. This two-way process results in a significant relationship. Attachment is a lifelong process that starts in the first year of life and carries throughout the life span. The first early at- tachment sets the tone for a child’s development and defines some of the issues that he or she will carry into adulthood. This chapter focuses on attachment in in- fancy and the issues and implications for early care and education professionals, teachers, and other professionals working with families.
Everyone who is involved with children and their families—teachers, early educators, and professionals of all sorts—should be concerned about attach- ment. Long ago we learned about the terrible effects of orphanages that neglected to provide for attachment. It took a wise and innovative pediatrician in Hungary, Dr. Emmi Pikler, to come up with solutions for healthy development in group care. Her theories, research, and practical approaches toward creating attachment in out-of-home care were developed in the 1930s. Due to World War II and the Iron Curtain following the war, much of the Western world was denied this insight for the next several decades. Magda Gerber, an infant expert also from Hungary, arrived in the U.S. in 1956 during the Hungarian revolution. She introduced some new ideas about parenting and attachment starting in the 1970s. Both Gerber and Pikler are being studied today in the U.S. and to some extent around the world. The ideas, theories, and research of both innovators are now starting to be ap- plied to child care as well as orphanages (Gonzalez-Mena & Briley, 2011; Green- wald & Weaver, 2013).
Erik Erikson (1963) is the person better known for bringing attention to at- tachment long ago as the first stage of his psycho-social theory, in which he named the eight stages of man (1963). The first stage is Trust versus Mistrust. Erikson focused on mother-infant attachment, which he saw growing out of the babies’ physical and emotional needs being met satisfactorily in the first year. His theory corresponds with the basic three of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (see Chapter 1). Attachment is also important to see in the context of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979), because it happens in the microsystems but is impacted by the other systems as well. One way to look at this chapter is that family in- volvement in programs for young children has plenty of research behind it show- ing what an influence attachment has on positive outcomes for children. “To give children a healthy start, early childhood educators should consider themselves working for the healthy development of two generations, children and their par- ents or caregivers” (Weissbourd, Weissbourd, & O’Carroll, 2010, p. 115).
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Anthropological research that looks cross-culturally (Rogoff, 2003) shows variations on the theme of mother-infant attachment depending on the cultural community. For ex- ample, in some cultures the ideal attachment of an infant is to the group and is not exclu- sive to the mother. Others who have studied attachment cross- culturally are Carol Brunson Day, Alison Wishard Guerra, and Sarah Garrity (Virmani & Mangione, 2013).
Although attachment is an emotional process that we as- sociate with “the heart,” other processes engaging the brain are also involved. Healthy at- tachment provides the foun-
dation for later intellectual development, according to research being done on the brain (Hammond, 2013). The positive nurturing experiences associated with at- tachment produce hormones called neurotransmitters that give the infant a sense of well-being. This sense of well-being reinforces certain pathways in the brain, which leads to mental growth. On the other hand, children who have attachment issues or, worse, no attachment figure(s) lack a sense of security and experience stress, which has a detrimental effect on the brain’s development. Bruce Perry (2002, 2006; Perry & Dobson, 2010) in his writings and lectures talks about the chemicals that wash over the brain when babies experience some of the results of lack of attachment, like abuse or neglect.
With school readiness receiving so much widespread attention in the early care and education field, some people think the main message from brain research is that academic teaching should start early. On the contrary, the real message is the important role that social-emotional development plays in intellectual develop- ment. In a journal published by the International Mind, Brain, and Education Society, Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007) make an excellent case for emotional processes profoundly affecting learning, attention, and memory. Although they focus on neu- roscience and education, and not on infants, attachment is the foundation of the emotional processes they write about. They say that feelings provide an “emotional rudder” to guide judgment and action. That’s one of the reasons that this book focuses on social-emotional development throughout and starts right off with attachment as the basis for early social-emotional development. It’s important for early childhood educators and the families they work with to recognize the role that social-emotional development plays in the lives, education, and development of children.
A short article in Time brings this point home further (Park, 2007). In 2006 parents spent $200 million on Baby Einstein videos to help their babies get ahead intellectually. Yet in a study done at the University of Washington, researchers found that for every hour babies spent watching the videos, they understood an average of seven fewer words than the babies who had no exposure to the videos. The parents of the video-free babies apparently followed the advice of the American
The positive nurturing experiences associated with attachment produce neurotransmitters that give the infant a sense of well-being
Br ya n Cr ee ly/
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Supporting Families Around Issues of Attachment and Trust 25
Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends that parents keep babies under age two away from screens and just interact with them instead. Those interactions are likely to result in stronger, healthier attachment. Further, parents and caregivers should regard interaction as a two-way street. Their responsiveness to the baby is vital. It’s not just talking to the baby but, even more importantly, responding to what the baby initiates . For more information on the effects of screen time and young children, go to the website for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Here’s another example of how attachment and trust contribute to cognitive de- velopment in infants. As mentioned earlier, when children feel secure, they are freer to explore the environment around them. Watch a group of babies in a playroom. You’re bound to see some exploration as the ones who are mobile go looking to see what’s there. If these babies get too far from their infant care teacher or become star- tled, they head back to touch base, get a little hug, and gather up their courage to move out again. The greatest explorers are usually the ones who are se- curely attached. According to Ainsworth’s research (1977, 1978), secure attach- ment can be easily seen in the behavior of infants who are separated from their parents and then reunited with them. Attachment is a matter of trust, which is the subject of the next section.
THe developmenT oF ATTAcHmenT And TruST The basis of healthy care and education is social-emotional development and the basis of that is attachment, which comes from a synchronous relationship, which grows from a number of synchronous interactions. Here’s what a synchronous inter- action looks like, whether the adult in the scene is the baby’s parent, a center-based infant care teacher, or a family child care provider.
The adult is bent over a three-month-old baby who is lying on her back in a play area. The adult is expressionless. The baby rounds her mouth and lets out a breathy sound while reaching out her arms. The adult responds by widening her eyes, rounding her own mouth, and imitating the sound. She reaches for the baby’s hands and holds them in her own. The baby pulls her hands away, kicks her feet, and widens her own eyes in imitation of the adult. The adult smiles. The baby smiles back. The adult keeps smiling, makes clucking noises, and claps her hands. The baby turns away. “Oh, that was too much for you,” responds the adult, quieting her activity. The baby looks back. The adult smiles. The baby smiles, then arches and reaches. “You want up?” the adult asks, reaching out her arms to the child.
These two are “in sync” with each other. The adult is sensitive to the baby’s signals and reads the turning away as a need to tune out, not a personal rejection of her. The baby knows how to “light up” the adult’s face. The adult knows how to “turn on” the baby. The two are good together. If they are not already attached, they are becoming attached.
Check Your Understanding 2.1
Click here to check your understanding of how attachment and trust are related.
Infants who are left screaming for long periods, gripped in the agony of hunger pangs, come to see the world as an unfriendly place
ar tu sh /F ot ol ia
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Babies become attached when people in their lives are sensitive and responsive. That means that they pay attention to the baby’s signals and read them accurately, responding readily and appropriately. Adults practice being responsive when they play with babies, as in this scene. They also meet needs by reading babies’ cues and responding in a timely fashion with feeding, for example. Both play and meeting needs contribute to the development of attachment.
Imagine yourself a very young baby, lying asleep in a crib. You open your eyes— suddenly you’re wide awake. You see nothing except a blur of light—there are no objects, no movement within your visual range. You feel a very uncomfortable sensation in your midsection. You squirm around. Changing position doesn’t help. Suddenly you feel desperate. The sensation in your midsection takes over your whole body. You squeeze your eyes shut tight and open your mouth wide. Into your ears comes a piercing sound. You don’t know that it’s your own cry. You only know that something is terribly wrong, and your whole being reacts to it. Your heart pounds, your face burns, and you scream in agony, then gasp for breath, only to start screaming again once you get your lungs full. You’re like this for what seems an eternity but is actually less than two minutes. You feel something touch you. You open your eyes and find something very distinctive and vaguely famil- iar in front of the blur of light that was all that was there before. The something moves in a way that makes you feel comfortable. As you pause for breath, you hear another sound—not the high, agonized one of before, but a soft, soothing one. You feel a blanket of pleasure surround you, providing immeasurable relief, and, true to your most cherished hope, you find yourself lifted in the air out of the loneliness—the isolation—and snuggled into a pair of warm arms. You’re basking in the glow of the feelings of this, when—wonder of wonders—something familiar touches your cheek. You jerk toward the something, manage to get your mouth around it, and begin sucking. A warm, sweet sensation floods your mouth and you’re in heaven.
Imagine now a different scene where the hungry baby wakes up and doesn’t have to signal her needs because the adult is right there with her and feeding occurs immediately, before the baby even cries.
These two scenes illustrate how, as mentioned earlier, needs, attachment, and trust all come in a bundle in the beginning of life. The scenes are slightly different. In the first one, the infant wakes up alone and must let the adult know about the need for food and comfort. In the second scene, the infant wakes up in physical contact with the adult, who anticipates the needs before crying occurs.
You may prefer one scene over the other—you may actually feel critical of one of the scenes. However, both of these patterns of relating to the needs of the very young infant lead to a healthy attachment, one that serves both the individual and the culture. It’s important to remember that attachment patterns are related to parental values and goals (Chang, 1993; Gonzalez-Mena, 1997, 2004, 2008; Virmani & Mangione, 2013). Parents rear their children to fit the world as they perceive it. Attachment is vital. It is a means of ensuring survival of the child and also of the species (Bowlby, 2000). It creates the caring (the feeling) that motivates the action of giving care. It ensures that nurturing and protection will be provided to the relatively helpless infant. But beyond physical survival, the first attachments provide the basis for all future relationships.
If the infant finds that when needs arise they are met with reasonable prompt- ness, as in the two prior scenes, he or she comes to see the world as a welcom- ing place. A sense of trust grows from fulfillment and satisfaction in the first year
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Supporting Families Around Issues of Attachment and Trust 27
of life. Infants who are left scream- ing for long periods, gripped in the agony of hunger pangs, come to see the world as an unfriendly place. They find that they can’t trust anyone to take care of them. If they give signals and no one responds, they see them- selves as powerless and the world as cold and hostile. When these children grow out of infancy, they continue to view the world with distrust. Erikson (1963) wrote about this psycho- social dilemma a long time ago (see Figure 2.1).
Trust is a lifelong issue for all of us. However, children who develop a sense of distrust in infancy grapple with the issue more intensely than oth- ers. Some of these children are left with unresolved trust issues; others success- fully deal with the problem if the situation changes and those around them become more responsive and meet their needs more promptly. Children with unresolved trust issues often reach adulthood still seeking the early caregiver who left their needs unmet. Because it is never too late to resolve trust issues, some adults seem continu- ally to choose to connect to people who treat them much as their early caregiver(s) did. They put themselves back into their infant situation, to perhaps give themselves another chance to relive the situation and manage a different outcome. The human being is very resilient! Continually seeking their early caregiver later in life may not be necessary for those children who find a warm, nurturing person to whom to attach in their early care and education program. According to Perry, a firm, healthy attach- ment is one way to get children through hard times in their lives with less damage to their brain development and therefore to their social-emotional and cognitive devel- opment (2006).
Attachment is a powerful process—and it seems that even a little goes a long way. Look at studies of survivor types—children who manage to cope and live a productive life in spite of factors in their early years that work against that. The one thing that all these survivor children have in common is a person they could