Attachment: Building the First Relationship

Candace wrote this entry, and here she is with
Levar when he was 8 months old.

My two year old, Levar Jr., has been at Campus Children’s Center since he was 3 months old. I was only 20 when I got pregnant and 21 when I actually gave birth. As a child development major, I thought I had everything figured out and all the answers to everything. But on May 27^th, 2009, my life changed forever. I knew that at 7:32 am I was responsible for another being. I had taken on the job of being a provider, a protector, and my baby’s first teacher. I was responsible for caring, loving, supporting, nurturing and making sure that he was well off emotionally. But boy, was I in for a rude awakening!

It wasn’t until 4 days later when we were released from the hospital that my job as a mother had started. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love every minute of it, but parenting sure has its frustrating moments. I knew that to ensure that my baby and I formed a secure attachment, I had to be there no matter what and respond to his every want and need. But it’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when you’re still enrolled in school and working full time, as well, to pay the bills. I mean, let’s face it, most people with children would agree that parenting isn’t easy, but knowing that your baby has formed attachments with the people he loves most is priceless. All the hard work and sleepless nights makes it all worth it in the end.

After reading this chapter on attachment, I found myself agreeing with a lot the author had to say about forming attachments and the base for forming them. I believe that forming secure attachment has a lot to do with the environment that the child is in, the emotional state that the caregivers are in, and how well the caregivers respond to people in general. The chapter talks about building relationships and attachments with the people an infant most comes in contact with and how answering cues or not answering them at all can have a detrimental effect on how well these infants are able to form relationships as they get older. They also talk about the structure of the family such as two parent families, single parent families, and same sex families etc, but the main point is that whatever the structure is, the most valuable institution for nurturing attachment is the family. After reading about how structures in a family can have an impact on a child’s wellbeing, I started to think of how I was raised and how my life was growing up.

Although I wasn’t raised with my biological mother and father, I was still able to be with a family who cared so much about me and my well being. They were always there for me and always came to my rescue, making me feel safe and loved with them. I had a bond with them that no one could take away. To me they were my mom and dad, because they loved me unconditionally and supported me throughout my entire life. Because of their actions and how well they nurtured me, I am able to form trusting relationships with others and build attachments with other people, including my own son.

The book also talked about how infants give cues to their caregivers, such as crying, pointing or grabbing, as a way to communicate a problem so that it can be fixed. When babies cry, if an attachment between the baby and the caregiver is strong, the baby will stay calm and feel at ease because he knows that his cry will be answered, and his needs will be met by his caregivers. However, if a baby has not formed an attachment, he will feel anxious, distressed, and will most likely become agitated. Attachments are usually formed and are crucial in the first year of life.  How well an infant forms an attachment relies greatly on the caregiver. “When a baby learns that her cries will evoke a consistent and comforting response from her mother, she develops confidence in her mother as a reliable protector” (p.102).  I see this in my own son all the time when I drop him off at daycare. It has been such a routine for him to see me drop him off at school, and he will cry for a second as we depart, but he has confidence that I will always come back for him at the end of each day. He also knows that when I leave, he is surrounded with a group of loving, caring and nurturing teachers who has been their consistently since day one. He is comfortable being there, so I am comfortable leaving him there. But it wasn’t always this easy for him. It took him awhile to settle down and get used to his caregivers at school, but as time went on he began to trust them in the way that he trusted me and began to feel secure in his environment.

Attachment doesn’t just happen over night between an infant and his caregiver. It is inspired by a number of incidents that happen. “It’s built on hundreds of small interactions between parent and baby that go on everyday” (p. 106). For instance, when cues are given from an infant to the caregiver; if they are answered and the needs are met, a trust is being built and being strengthened every time it happens. After a while, the baby begins to gain a sense of trust and he/she feels cared for. When he begins to feel this way, he starts to regulate his own emotions in certain situations. “Investing in children during these early years to promote solid, healthy attachments is the best investment a family can make, the best investment a community can make, and the best investment the world can make” (p. 113). No one person can do everything, but everyone can do something, especially when it comes to forming positive attachments between a baby and a caregiver.