Promoting Healthy Attachments with Children
Attachment is a crucial element for our child’s early development and is an important predictor of their later social adjustment. A secure attachment to their closest caregivers helps your baby deal with distressing situations, strange environments, and perceived threats. It will help her grow to be a curious, confident, and cooperative child. She will also be more likely to manage her social behavior, impulses, and emotions appropriately as she grows.
Let’s look at some ideas below.
1. Be Involved
Attachment is largely dependent upon what parents do. Therefore, while your little one is an infant, it is especially important that you are present, interactive, and positively engaged with him. Hold him, read to him, smile at him, sing to him. You are his favorite person in the whole world. Your very presence is what he craves and being with you helps him learn that he has a “safe place.”
2. Be Sensitive
Responding to her cries and being sensitive to her signals shows her that she can trust you to meet her needs. She needs to know that she can count on you to comfort her, feed her, and soothe her. When she is secure, knowing she has someone who will meet her needs, she is free to explore other areas that are key for healthy development.
3. Be Appropriate
Parenting an infant can be exhausting. But it is critical for his social and emotional development that your responses to him be appropriate. Even when you are tired, it’s important to be positive and encouraging. He is learning from every interaction with you; remember that you are modeling for him how to be in control of your behavior and emotions.
4. Be Affectionate
Smile at your baby from across the room. When you interact with her, let her see how much you enjoy her. Hug, giggle, snuggle, coo with her. Show her that you notice when she makes a face or tries to talk. Developing this sense of attachment and security frees her to be curious about the world around her, confident that she can return to you, her “safe place”, if she needs to.
Coach Benjamin Mizrahi. Educator. Learning Specialist. Family Coach. Father. Husband.
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