No Connection

Surviving Attachment Disorders

By Teri Brown

(Beyond Consequences Institute, 2006), an attachment disorder occurs when a child has difficulty connecting in an interpersonal relationship with his or her attachment figure. For a child, this would be the child's caretaker parent, grandparent, etc.

"Children develop attachment challenges when their early life experiences are challenged by parents and caretakers who are too stressed and dysregulated to stay attuned to the child's signals for needs," Forbes says. "Babies and young children do not have a regulatory system equipped to calm themselves or to self-soothe. It is the parent's biological responsibility to provide this regulatory presence for a child."

According to Forbes, if the child goes without this calming parental presence, the child's neurological system stays at a heightened stress level. This affects literally every aspect of the child's development, including his or her emotional, physical, mental, cognitive, social, behavioral and spiritual development. "A child in a chronic state of stress and fear can not connect in relationships; thus we have a child with an attachment disorder, or commonly known amongst mental health care professionals as reactive attachment disorder," she says.

Karyn Purvis, director of Texas Christian University Institute of Child Development in Fort Worth and co-author of The Connected Child (McGraw Hill, 2007), says that in order to understand attachment disorders we must first understand attachment. "Attachment can be described as an affectional bond between a primary caregiver and developing infant," she says. "In its most basic form, attachment protects the survival of the infant, but at deeper levels, attachment protects and enhances the complete development of the infant."

According to Purvis, attachment develops when the child's emotional and physical needs are consistently met in sensitive ways. Securely attached infants come to trust that their caregivers will be present for them. They learn to believe that they are precious ad valuable, because they see themselves through the eyes of the caregiver, who values them. In addition, securely attached children learn to be emotionally and socially attentive and responsive to their parents and others.

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