Early Attachment Research Paper

Working as a preschool teacher, I have first hand experience developing trust and attachments with young children, infants and toddlers. A young child first day is often overwhelming with fear. My job as teacher is to ensure the child that I can be trusted and fulfill all of their needs. As the caregiver, developing a secure attachment is essential to the child and parents as well. The parents want to feel a sense of security from the teachers. To reflect on a past experience, I had a one-year-old toddler came to school for the first time. The child cried, kicked and screamed for 30 minutes after mom and dad left. During the day, the child cried during different transitions. After a week or so, we, child and I, developed a strong attachment.

When babies and young children feel valued, secure and trust the people around them, they are more likely to thrive and achieve their developmental goals. Certain areas of development are linked to the strength of attachment that children have with those around them, especially emotional and language development. We also know that children learn from those they have a strong bond with and so cognitive development can also be linked to strong relationships. This is of course equally true with their primary carer, for example their parents, as well as with their key person in their setting.

* Briefly define what is meant by physical needs, including exercise and rest, diet, health and safety * Identify the specific physical needs of a three year old.Give a full explanation of the steps carers should ideally take to fulfil these physical needs. * Consider for example, how you could provide for gross and fine motor skills. Also think about safety issues (such as appropriate clothing for specific weather conditions), access to fresh air and ventilation in classrooms, opportunities for rest, etc. * Give practical examples of what a

The significance of the early attachment bonds between infants and their mothers, as well as other primary caregivers, on a child’s development has been documented extensively in literature (Snyder, Shapiro, & Treleaven, 2012; Dozier, Lindhiem, & Ackerman, 2005). A mother’s capacity to adjust, regulate, and interact with her infant has extensive cognitive and developmental outcomes (Bowlby 1988; Shapiro 2012). One’s experiences in early childhood create the foundation from which perceptions of the self and others are created. These experiences are linked with the development of neural pathways in the brain that regulate responses to stress (Marmarosh & Tasca, 2013), and influence attachments and the ability to develop relationships throughout life (Snyder, Shapiro, & Treleaven, 2012).

An infant’s attachment style is that of security and attachment to their guardian and using the guardian as a security model for exploration. The guardians of attachment tend to be receptive and cognoscente to their emotions so they can be explorative. In the same way these adult styles are similar their attachment method is available when they have a secure base. The attachment needs are quintessential.

The first years are an important stage in an child’s life. They are learning an abundance of information about themselves and the people and world around them. During this time when there is a great amount of development taking place, one of the major components is establishing some sort of attachment with their primary caregivers. There are two different perspectives on the attachment to consider. Those of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, who emphasized the importance of infants creating relationships to have a healthy up bringing for later adulthood.

This attachment is important to a child’s later development, but some factors tend to get in the way of this goal. When parents are dependable and caring, babies learn to trust them and know they can rely on them for comfort. Infants develop a set of expectations about parent’s availability and responsiveness, overall and during stressful times. This is called an internal working model. If a parent is not dependable and caring the child will not trust them, which may lead into an insecure attachment. Caregiving sensitivity could also lead to an insecure attachment. Not all caregivers will react to babies in a reliable and reassuring manner. They may leave the infant crying over a long period of time, or even respond as if they are annoyed. These babies will see social relationships as inconsistent, and will not gain trust or confidence in the caregiver. The last factor is temperament. A baby who fusses often or is difficult to console may form an insecure attachment. Temperament can form when the infant’s mother has a rigid personality, instead of accepting and flexible personality. Rigid mothers feel that the infants need to adjust to them, where as flexible mothers know that they need to adjust to the infant’s

Bowlby (1962/1969) asserts that the infant relationship with the parent or care giver begins as a set of innate signals that call the adult to the baby’s side. With time, a true affectionate bond develops, supported by new emotional and cognitive capacities as well as by a history of warm, sensitive care (Berk 2009).

Human nature has evolved in ways that allow for people to develop deep connections with one another. These connections are always extremely vulnerable in the very early stages of our infancy. From the moment we are born, we innately seek to forge an attachment with our caregivers; mostly because without it, we would not survive. Evidently, we are biologically programmed to bond with our mothers (or closest caregivers), immediately after birth. More often than not, this is a reciprocal connection which establishes an enduring emotional relationship that inevitably shapes our growth and development. Our capacities to adapt to our environment are inextricably bound to the attachments we form with our closest caregivers.

It was in 1951 that John Bowlby began to write about the opposing influence on development of insufficient parental care and called attention to the acute distress of young children separated from their primary caregivers. (Barth, 2005) The quality of early attachment relationships is correlated with future personality and brain development. “The Attachment Theory is a foundation theory, developed by Bowlby. It focusses on the form, quality, and strengths of human attachments made in early life and their effects on development in pro social behaviors” (Tuner, 2011, p.30). Practitioners have found that the importance of forming a bond with a child from birth has the possibility to shape the life of a person.

Question: Babies only a few months old can be extremely responsive to the reactions or emotions of their mothers. How the mother of a baby reacts to certain situations and how she raises or cares for her child plays an important role in the development of the new life. In chapter 8, Social and Personality Development in Childhood, has shown many studies about how a mother impacts or influences her baby’s outlook on life as they grow older. Virtually all infants will develop an attachment to the person that tends to them—parent, relative, caregiver. There are three different attachment styles, secure, insecure and disorganized. In a secure attachment, the mother is sensitive and responsive. Insecure attachments, which is neglectful and resistant,

Past literature has emphasized the importance of secure attachment bonds in childhood and their impact on social (Bohlin, Hahekull, & Rydell, 2000) emotional (Waters, Virmani, Thompson, Meyer, & Jochem, 2010) and cognitive (Bernier, Beauchamp, Carlson, & Lalonde, 2015) functioning. High-quality caregiver-infant relationships are critical for development and protect against later psychopathology. As mentioned by Bowlby (1969/1982), early infant interactions with caregivers become internalized and serve as internal models for later relationships. These working models influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviours and determine whether a child will develop a secure or insecure attachment style. Maternal sensitivity is seen as central to secure attachment (Ainsworth, Blehar, Water, & Wall, 1978). Attachment figures who display high levels of sensitivity and responsiveness (i.e., appropriately responding to and attending to their children’s cues) promotes secure attachment. The construct of emotional availability successfully captures these important parental qualities and reflects the dyadic nature of caregiver-child relationships.

Attachment is a close emotional bond between two people. Early childhood attachment is very important to how a kid man turn out in the end. There are many advantages and disadvantages to the way a kid interacts or attaches with it’s parents. An example is, they have someone they can always trust. In this world live we live in it can be hard to find someone you can truly trust. If you have that relationship with your parents from the beginning you don’t have to search for that.

A secure attachment to the caregiver predicts a healthy development, whereas an insecure attachment is related to later behavior problems and poor peer relations. It is therefore crucial that appropriate parenting interventions are available to families with infants, especially since interventions in early childhood have been shown not only to be effective, but also to be more effective than interventions later in life, because it is easier to intervene before problems become entrenched (Pontoppidan 2).

By responding with care and comfort, this enables for an “attachment bond” to form between the infant and caregiver, most commonly the mother (White et al., 2013). Following on from Bowlby’s theory, Mary Ainsworth investigated the theory of attachment through observing the reactions of infants when their mothers left them alone with strangers. The investigation was named as the “Ainsworth’s strange situation assessment” (White et al., 2013). It was discovered through this investigation that infants who had secure attachments with their mothers were upset when separated and were easily soothed when the mother returns. This investigation implies that infants with secure attachment to their mothers show signs of normal social development.