Relationships

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What is the best “investment” you can make in your child’s life?  Among the winning answers seems to be focusing on the quality of your relationship with your child.  A highly responsive parenting style called attachment parenting centers around building a loving and secure relationship between parent and child.  Research has shown that children who have at least one parent or caregiver who “responds appropriately, promptly and consistently to needs” (also called secure attachment), do better in nearly all areas of development and gain healthy traits that help them throughout their lifespan.

Here are some of the benefits of secure attachment by age as compared to children who did not experience secure attachment (from Attachment 101 By Willemsen and Marcel):

• 0-3 years: more independent and have an easier time separating from parent without anxiety, positive sense of self, increased self-awareness, enhanced sensorimotor skills
• Preschool years, Ages 3-5: better able to play in non-destructive and socially acceptable ways with peers, more readily able to learn from environment, advanced language development
• Middle Childhood: better relationships with teachers and peers, early reading skills, more socially competent, fewer behavior problems
• Adolescence: more likely to be socially well-adjusted, better able to regulate their own emotions, stronger internal sense of what behaviors are appropriate, more able to cope with stress
• Adulthood: higher relationship satisfaction with partners/spouses, more likely to form secure attachment with his/her own child, less likely to abuse his/her child, higher self-esteem, greater job satisfaction

Fostering attachment with your child can start at birth.  Dr sears offers what he calls the 7 Baby B’s tools, for promoting healthy attachment in the earliest months in a child’s life:

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