What is Attachment
Attachment Disorders
Video

Research has found that infants with secure attachment relationships with their care providers are more likely to play, explore, and interact with adults in their child care setting. This relationship between infants and their child care providers can complement the relationship between parents and young children and facilitate early learning and social development. A “continuity of care” approach can enhance the relationship between caregivers and young children by keeping young children within the same setting and with the same team of providers for an extended period, usually for the first three years of their lives. Unnecessary disruptions in services can stunt or delay social-emotional and cognitive development while safe, stable environments allow young children the opportunity to develop the relationships and trust necessary to comfortably explore and learn from their surroundings.

Infant Attachment: Indicator of the quality of infant’s relationship with a caregiver. It develops over time and is an indicator of how they will be in relationships later in life.

Attachment security: is often indicated by child’s secure base behavior. Child being able to branch away from the caregiver yet returns when they need feel stress is a indicator or secure attachment. Attachment security ranges from secure to insecure.

Development of Attachment: Attachment is often used loosely as a synonym from an emotional relationship, the concept of attachment as introduced by John Bowlbe has a more technical meaning: it refers to the dimension of the infant caregiver relationship involving protection and security regulation.

As with most of the topics having to do with child development, that of attachment disorders is not easily categorized into black and white. There are a lot of variables that can affect attachment. Disorders of attachment in infancy can be defined most concisely as deviations from the normative patterns of relationship between a child under 3 years of age and his or her primary mother figure.

Disorder of Nonattachment
- A child goes from place to place to place to rapidly and has never had time to build an attachment. They do not know how relationships work
  - Emotional withdrawal
  - Indiscriminate relationship- does not know how to engage appropriately with adults
- Disordered Attachment
  - Has one attachment figure but is insecure in the attachment
  - The adults have “checked out”
    - Will not go out and explore (clinging)
    - Avoidance of the attached adult
  - Disrupted Attachment Disorder
    - Had an attachment but lost it – could be death, divorce
      - Sadness

The best thing to do for child with an attachment disorder is to provide them the opportunity to attach.

Creating Secure Infant Attachment (how the role of relationships contributes to the development of trust and attachment) (22 minutes)