Creating a Secrue Attachment

This is taken from Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell's book "Parenting from the Inside Out"

In each situation a father is taking care of his four-month-old daughter.

Secure attachment.
The baby is hungry and starts to cry. Her father hears her crying, puts down his newspaper, and goes to her playpen to see what might be causing her distress. He picks her up tenderly, looks into her eyes, and says, "What's wrong, my little darling? Do you want Daddy to play with you? Oh, I know, I bet you're hungry. Is that what you're trying to tell me?" He takes her with him to the kitchen and prepares her bottle, talking to her and telling her that it's almost ready and she'll eat soon. He sits down and, cradling her in his arms, feeds her the bottle. His daughter looks into his face, satisfied by the warm milk and warm interaction with her father. She feels good. Her signals of distress were p perceived by her father and he was able to make sense of what they meant and responded to her in a timely and effective manner.

The baby learns from this event, and the many repeated similar contingent connections she experiences with her father, that what she feels internally can be known, respected, and responded to by her father... She is able to impact her world with success: "If I communicate, the world will be able to provide me with a way to get my needs met." A secure attachment is developing.

Avoidant attachment.
…when she cries from her playpen, her father doesn't notice at first. When her crying becomes more insistent, he looks up from his newspaper, but returns to finish the article before going to check on his daughter. He's feeling irritated at the interruption, looks at her in the playpen, and says, "Hey, what's all the fuss!" Thinking she might need her diaper changed, he puts her on the changing table, changes her in silence, and then puts her back in the playpen and returns to the paper. She continues to cry, so he decides that she may need a nap and he places her in her crib. She continues to cry, so he gets her blanket and her pacifier hoping they will calm her, and he closes the door, thinking that she will just take a little time to settle down. She doesn't and it's now forty-five minutes since she initially started to communicate her need for food. "Maybe she's hungry," he realizes, looking at the clock and noticing that it's been over four hours since she's eaten. He gets a bottle ready and she finally calms down when he sits down to feed her.

… the baby has learned that her father doesn't always read her signals well. First he has trouble even hearing her, and then he doesn't understand what she wants. He doesn't seem to pay attention to the subtle cues of her communication. Finally, after she's been in distress for quite a while, he gets it right. Overall, repeated patterns like this teach the child that her father is not very available for meeting her needs or connecting to her.

Ambivalent attachment.
… When he hears his daughter crying he sometimes knows just what to do. But other times he acts quite anxious and doesn't feel confident that he has the skill to soothe her crying. He gets up from the table where he was reading and runs over to her with a distressed look on his face and picks her up.… he would never treat his children like his parents had treated him-and would certainly never do anything to make his children cry….Here was his daughter still crying in his arms. "This must be one of those times when she is inconsolable," he, says to himself. His worried face and. his tense arms do not give his daughter a sense of comfort or security. She is only a baby, and cannot know that his anxiety has nothing to do with her own hunger. He soon figures out that she is hungry and gives her a bottle. Although he takes some pleasure in seeing her happy he continues to worry that she will soon start crying again and he won't be able to figure out how to comfort her.

Repeated experiences of this type with her father will lead to an anxious/ambivalent attachment with him. This pattern` of attachment essentially says, "I'm not certain whether my father will be able to meet my needs, at least in any reliable way. Sometimes he can, and sometimes he can't. Which will it be this time?" Such anxiety creates a sense of uncertainty that others in general can't be relied upon for connection.

Disorganized attachment.
A fourth child may find that most of her interactions with her father are similar to one of the patterns of the other three babies' experience, but in moments of intense distress her father acts differently. He feels very uneasy when his daughter cries, so as soon as she starts to cry he puts down his newspaper, jumps up, and goes directly to her playpen, hoping to stop her annoying crying. He picks her up abruptly and in his tense state holds her a little too tightly. She initially responds with relief at his arrival, but the tightness of his arms feels more constraining than comforting. She cries louder because she is now both hungry and uncomfortable. Her father senses her increasing distress, which makes him hold on to her even more tightly. He thinks that she may be hungry and carries his crying daughter to the kitchen where he tries to quickly prepare her bottle. Just as he's finishing, the bottle falls and milk pours out over the floor. Surprised by the sound of the bottle hitting the ground, his daughter cries even louder.

Irritated by his own clumsiness as well as his daughter's relentless crying and frustrated by his inability to soothe his daughter, he becomes unable to cope. He feels helpless less…. (Has flash backs of his own childhood of drunken parents and violence) His daughter is staring off into space, whimpering. Hearing her cries, he realizes he has been somewhere else, off in a trance, and now calls out her name. The flashback is over and he returns to the present, trying to comfort his daughter. She slowly turns back toward him with a vacant look on her face. After a few moments, she looks more fully present. He gets another bottle of milk and sits down to feed her. As she drinks she stares into her father's face, and then looks away at the kitchen floor. He too is shaken by the experience and is only half present. Neither can make any sense of what just happened and each disappears into the disorganization that has developed in his and her mind.

Repeated experiences of her father's entering a trancelike state when she becomes distressed will have a profound impact on the development of his daughter's ability to tolerate and regulate her own intense emotions. These experiences with her father teach her that intense emotion is disorganizing. His overly emotional state creates a disconnection that keeps her from making sense of her own internal and interpersonal world. His entry into a preoccupation with his own unresolved traumas leaves her alone at a time when she desperately needs connection. His nonverbal signals, such as holding her too tightly and, the frightened look on his face, create further distress. These experiences are disorienting because they create a sense of fear in his daughter that parallels the fear her father feels of his own mother as well as his fear of being unable to soothe his daughter's distress. These kinds of interactions create a disorganized attachment, and dealing with intense emotion, both her own and others’ may be difficult for her in the future. Interpersonal relationships may feel unreliable, and dealing with stress may be particularly challenging in the face of her emerging response of dissociation.