That's a very good question... Let's think about a few young people.
Maisie is fiercely independent. At eight she insists she can manage tasks for herself that older kids are still getting help with - if Jill (her carer) let her, she'd cook her own dinner and wash her own clothes. She's responsible and disciplined and other foster carers, battling with non compliance and tantrums, look at her with envy. But Jill's noticed something: there doesn't seem to be much sense of achievement in it all for her. If Jill tries to say, 'well done!', there might be a flicker of a smile but quickly the stony face is clamped back down again. In fact, stony is a good word for her. She's so tiny and looks frail but any attempt to draw her in, to share a treat, to offer a hug, is met with a total brick wall. No way. Maisie's not going there.
Jess is 13 and so Tom and Alex are not surprised to find, soon after she arrives, that 'she has her moments'. Meltdowns, most of us would say. Within a week she's ripped the teddy bear welcome present they'd got her, snapped her favourite hair band and kicked her bedroom door so hard they had to go to A&E to check her foot wasn't broken. When she loses it, she has no control at all. The thing that's strange is what triggers these incidents. Of course she doesn't like hearing 'no', and she gets grumpy when something goes wrong - but the incandescent rage is reserved for times most of us would be happy. School rang the other day to say she'd earned a well done postcard - but when Alex asked about it, Jess dug it out of her bag and furiously ripped it into shreds.
Callum's as cute a button-nosed five year old as you could wish to find. From the day he arrived at Tanya's, he was desperate for affection - constantly hugging her, sitting snuggled up close, following her around the house (she has to sing when she goes to the loo so that he can hear her from outside the door!). Although she's glad he's finally getting the nurture he needs, she has noticed that the closeness doesn't seem to calm him the way it did with her own kids when they were little. He's snuggled in, but still tense as anything. The other day, she tripped over him in the kitchen and though she managed to bite back the, "Oh for goodness' sake!" that rose inside, he froze rigid, his eyes massive... That evening he was more clingy than ever, and as she hugged him close he was still tense - like a coiled up spring, ready to explode at any second, she thought.
Maisie, Jess and Callum - and thousands more trauma-experienced children and young people - are showing classic signs of attachment disorder.
Here's the theory. As babies and young children, we are totally dependent on our caregivers to keep us alive. In fact, we've evolved a whole arsenal of strategies to make sure this happens.
We lock our big eyes onto faces long before we can recognise any other shapes, creating an emotional bond.
We make horrible crying noises that engage our caregivers and push them to find out what we need and do something about it.
We repeat actions that gain a response - like smiling and pointing - to deepen the bond and to keep our caregivers' attention.
We make noises that encourage our caregivers to babble back at us, engaging in interaction long before we can actually talk.
We show our caregivers things that interest us; we explore the world with reference to their reactions.
And where our caregivers are able to respond positively - at least most of the time - this early interaction leads to a positive sense of self.
I am cared for - so I am worthy of care
People engage with me - so I am interesting and valued. What I do matters, and I can learn new things.
I am given what I need - so I am safe, and when I feel unsafe someone can help me feel safe again
My actions have predictable effects - so I have efficacy. I can make an impact on the world
However if the care we receive is poor, inconsistent, or mixed with danger, we end up developing a very different view of our place in the world.
I am not consistently cared for - so I am not worth caring for. I'm worthless. There is something deeply wrong with me.
People don't engage with me - so I'm not important. Therefore it's actually better if people don't notice me... or maybe I have to do extreme things to get the attention I need.
I am not given what I need - so I'm not safe. I have to find ways to make things safer for myself. I can't trust other people to take care of me or make good decisions for me.
My actions don't have predictable outcomes - so the world is chaotic and I can't make it OK. Often I make it worse.
I wonder if you recognise any of your own less-than-ideal patterns of thinking?
It's important to note that there are many reasons why caregivers may not be able to meet their child's needs. Neglect and abuse for sure - but also the complications of life. Children from deeply loving families may nevertheless have been impacted by poverty, poor mental health, stress, competing needs from other family members, bereavement, divorce, sickness, employment away from home... and every child's response is different.
So even if you come from a very loving home, you may have picked up elements of these negative messages along the way. Attachment disorder doesn't prove our parents didn't love us. It just shows we didn't always experience that love in the ways we needed at the time. Because even loving parents aren't perfect!
Whatever the causes, by the time a child is two years old, their basic mental pathways are formed in the brain. These will underpin their social interactions for life.
Child psychologists draw all this together and recognise four basic attachment styles. These underlie our relationships throughout our lives:
Secure attachment - we received good enough care to form a positive self image. We know we are valued and we are able to value others. We know we can learn and can impact the world. We can tolerate someone being angry with us or realising we've made a mistake without our whole foundations being rocked. We are likely to form strong relationships and, if we have children, to provide good enough care for them too.
Anxious insecure attachment - the care we received was inconsistent. Sometimes our caregivers were there for us, but sometimes they weren't - and so we're not confident that others can be trusted to care for us. We are cautious and clingy; we tend to view new challenges with trepidation rather than excitement; we're always afraid that we may be abandoned. This can impede learning as we stick to what we already know; we may find it hard to express love; we can often feel unloved by friends or partners, despite remaining emotionally dependent on others into adulthood. We may be described as needy, angry, or distrustful, and may become codependent.
Avoidant insecure attachment - our emotional needs were not met. Our caregivers minimised our feelings, rejected our demands and didn't help when we needed them, and so we have learned that we need to survive on our own. We don't ask for help, we shut down our feelings and we rely on ourselves. Emotions are scary to us: we have not learned to accurately understand our own emotions, or to express them, and we may become overwhelmed by strong feelings we can't control. We also don't deal well with emotions in others and push anyone away who tries to come close. Commitment feels dangerous to us, not secure.
Disorganised insecure attachment - our caregivers were a source of fear and/or pain. They may have rejected, ridiculed, frightened or hurt us, and so approaching them when we were distressed actually led to the situation becoming worse. This is called 'disorganised' because a child can not come up with a way to make sense of this situation - we are simultaneously pulled towards and repelled from the caregiver. We may react in various ways including anger and aggression, refusing care, becoming self reliant, lacking self-regulation, and developing psychopathic tendencies of our own.
It's worth repeating: while the extremes are more rare, most of us are not completely secure in our attachments. Our parents weren't perfect, our situations weren't perfect, and our personalities have formed with their own unique tweaks. Life experiences also have their impact as we experience the imperfect care of friends, partners and colleagues. It's good to be aware of the tendencies we have, as it can help us to spot when we are heading into difficult territory, to ask for support, and to address our own faulty thinking. It's not something to worry about (or to sue our parents over!)
So let's go back to Maisie, Jess and Callum. What's going on there?
Maisie displays avoidant insecure attachment. She's so independent because she's relying on herself; she's not tantrumming because her emotions are locked away inside. She has learned not to look for emotional support from her carers, so she is not rewarded by praise for doing tasks well, and she won't let Jill get close to her. Deep down, Maisie knows that Jill won't really support her, that she doesn't deserve to be truly loved. Only consistent, loving, gentle evidence to the contrary will help her learn to trust.
Jess is showing disorganised insecure attachment. She is full of rage because the parents who should have loved her, did not - and so she has internalised a message that she is worthless. She feels a deep sense of shame that she can't explain. Although the pain is always there, it is intensified when someone praises her - because she knows that nothing she does is actually good, and that attention from Tom and Alex is likely to lead to pain. Again, the way out of this is consistent, loving, gentle evidence that Tom and Alex see her differently.
Callum has an anxious insecure attachment style. He's desperately clingy because his parents were not able to consistently meet his needs, and now he's just waiting for Tanya to let him down too. All those cuddles aren't actually filling his need for love - they are his desperate attempt to keep her onside. And when he tripped her up, he was terrified that he'd ruined it all and now she would see him as the undeserving pain-in-the-neck he knows he is. Guess what can change this? Consistent, loving, gentle evidence that he no longer needs to earn his care.
And so, finally, we come to us.
We may have seen echoes of ourselves in all the psychology above. We may be able to thank God for parents (and friends, partners, colleagues...) whose care for us was good - or mostly good. We may be lamenting the times our caregivers failed, or the times we fail. We may be reflecting on our own kids and on any patterns they show, and on small changes we might want to make to support them better. All of this is good.
But what always matters most is the parent who matters most: the heavenly Father who has adopted us, and whose parenting we now live under, and into whose home we bring our previous experiences of being parented, of being married, of being a friend, a sibling, an employee. Of being cared for, loved, cherished... or not. And we respond to Him in the ways that we've learned from the world.
This world is broken. Our relationships are broken. Sometimes horribly badly, crushed beyond all recognition of what they were meant to be. More often, just dented a bit, not so shiny, a bit scuffed, with a few rough edges. It's easy to dismiss these little hurts. We don't want to be snowflakes, to make a fuss over nothing.
And yet...
In working with kids in care I've come to recognise that the scars often wrought big and ugly across their lives are also present in me. And while I can manage them OK, I can turn a brave face to the world and appear to be doing fine, deep down where God sees and God knows and God works... they twist my responses to him.
Sometimes I try to manage on my own
Sometimes I don't believe he's really going to stick with me
Sometimes I'm surprised at the level of anger that bursts out of me
Sometimes I'm reluctant to bring all my emotions to him, or to admit them to myself
Sometimes I want to hide when someone praises me
Sometimes I act as if my behaviour is what draws him to me - or pushes him away
All signs of insecure attachment.
All lies I have learned from this broken, battering world.
I know how much it hurts when the kids I work with can't respond to the love and the care I'm offering. How much more does my broken twistedness break his perfect Father's heart?
He isn't OK with me just managing OK.
He is working to mend all that is broken and heal all that is wounded.
All being oh-so-slowly worn away by his consistent, loving, gentle care for me.
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