#007 How Your Attachment Style Shows Up When Your Child Struggles

ISSUE #007 HOW YOUR ATTACHMENT STYLE SHOWS UP WHEN YOUR CHILD STRUGGLES

THE INSIGHT

A parent can be deeply involved in a child's learning and still bring something into the process they may not realize is there:

Their own attachment pattern.

Most people think about attachment as something the child has.

Is the child secure?

Does the child become anxious?

Does the child pull away?

But adults have attachment patterns, too.

Those patterns can influence how comfortable we are with closeness, dependence, distress, and emotional need.

And that matters during learning.

Because learning creates plenty of moments when a child becomes upset.

The child gets frustrated.

The child freezes.

The child refuses.

The child wants help.

The child pushes help away.

The child makes a mistake and falls apart.

We usually focus on what is happening in the child during those moments.

Attachment research gives us another question:

What happens in the parent when the child struggles?

Because sometimes the child's distress activates something in the adult, too.

And that may change what happens next.

WHAT THE RESEARCH TELLS US

Adult attachment is often studied using two dimensions: attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance.

Attachment anxiety involves greater concern about rejection, closeness, or whether relationships are secure.

Attachment avoidance involves greater discomfort with emotional closeness and dependence.

Researchers Jones and colleagues wanted to know whether those differences might affect how mothers respond when their children experience negative emotions.

They followed 230 mothers of adolescents over time.

First, the mothers reported their own attachment anxiety and avoidance. One year later, researchers measured the mothers' difficulty regulating their own emotions. The following year, mothers reported how they would respond to their adolescents' negative emotions.

The pattern was important.

Mothers with greater attachment anxiety and greater attachment avoidance reported more difficulty regulating their own emotions one year later.

Those emotion-regulation difficulties then predicted more distressed and harsh responses—and fewer supportive responses—to their adolescents' negative emotions the following year.

Attachment avoidance also directly predicted harsher responses to adolescent distress two years later.

In other words, the mother's own ability to regulate herself appeared to be an important part of the connection between her attachment pattern and how she responded when her child was upset.

That gives us a much more interesting mechanism than:

"Your attachment style affects your parenting."

Something may be happening in between.

The child's distress can create distress in the parent.

And how well the parent can manage that reaction may influence the response the child receives.

Other attachment research helps explain why that matters.

Sensitive caregiving involves noticing a child's signals, interpreting those signals accurately, and responding in a way that fits what the child actually needs. With older children, that can include encouragement, assistance, instruction, or reassurance during difficult tasks.

But there are important limits to what we can conclude.

Jones and colleagues studied mothers of adolescents, not parents of young children. The mothers also reported how they believed they would respond to hypothetical situations involving their adolescents' negative emotions; researchers were not observing parents helping children through actual learning tasks.

So the study does not tell us that a particular parent attachment pattern causes a particular response when a child struggles with reading, math, sports, or another challenge.

What it does tell us is important enough:

A parent's attachment pattern was related to their own emotion regulation, which was then related to how they responded to their child's distress.

WHY IT MATTERS

That makes something we often call "helping" much more complicated.

Imagine a child struggling with something new.

The child becomes upset and says:

"I can't do this."

One parent immediately takes over.

Another becomes frustrated:

"You know how to do this. Just do it."

Another starts reassuring:

"You're okay. You're okay. Don't worry."

Another stays nearby, helps the child settle, and gives just enough support for the child to continue.

All four parents may love their child.

All four may believe they are helping.

But the child's experience is very different.

Attachment research gives us reason to look not only at the child's reaction, but also at the adult's.

Because sometimes we may be responding to our reaction to the child's struggle, not only to what the child actually needs.

That challenges a very comfortable assumption:

If I'm trying to help, then my help must be helpful.

Not necessarily.

Our intention and the child's experience are not always the same thing.

RESEARCH FOR THE REAL WORLD

Imagine a child who is afraid to try something difficult.

"Can you do it for me?"

The child is uncomfortable.

But watching the child struggle may make the parent uncomfortable, too.

So the parent steps in.

"Okay. I'll do this part."

And something interesting happens.

The child's discomfort goes down.

But so does the parent's.

That does not automatically make the response wrong. Children genuinely need help sometimes.

But it does give us a reason to become curious about whose discomfort we are trying to solve.

This is also where protection can sometimes slide into accommodation.

A child is nervous about trying something, so we remove the challenge.

A child becomes frustrated, so we take over.

A child worries about getting something wrong, so we provide reassurance again and again.

Those responses can bring immediate relief.

What the Jones study does not show is that insecure parental attachment causes accommodation. That would go beyond the evidence.

What it does show is that a parent's attachment insecurity can be related to difficulty managing their own emotions when their child is distressed, and those difficulties can influence how the parent responds.

Applying that finding to learning situations gives us a question worth asking:

"What is my child's struggle bringing up in me?"

Maybe I feel an urgent need to make the discomfort disappear.

Maybe I become frustrated that my child still needs help.

Maybe I am more anxious about the struggle than my child is.

Maybe I rush to solve something that my child actually needs time to work through.

Those reactions are not diagnoses.

They are information.

Because support does not always mean ending distress as quickly as possible.

Sometimes support looks more like:

"I'm here. I know this is hard. You can keep going."

That leaves room for something children need in order to learn:

the experience of struggling with something difficult and discovering,

"I can handle this."

THE BIGGER QUESTION

If a parent's attachment pattern can shape how they respond when their child becomes distressed, then knowing the "right" parenting strategy may not always be enough.

A parent can understand that children need challenge.

They can believe in independence.

They can know they should not rescue too quickly.

And still find themselves stepping in.

Or pulling away.

Or becoming more anxious than the child.

Because knowing what the child needs and being able to tolerate what it feels like to give them that experience are two different things.

So maybe the bigger question isn't simply:

"What kind of support helps children learn?"

It is:

"Can I tolerate my child's struggle long enough to give them the support they actually need?"

And if our own relationship history can influence that answer, then understanding attachment may not only help us understand our children.

It may help us understand what happens in us when our children need us most.

SOURCE

Bergin, C., & Bergin, D. (2009). Attachment in the classroom. Educational Psychology Review, 21, 141–170. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-009-9104-0

Jones, J. D., Brett, B. E., Ehrlich, K. B., Lejuez, C. W., & Cassidy, J. (2014). Maternal attachment style and responses to adolescents' negative emotions: The mediating role of maternal emotion regulation. Parenting, 14(3–4), 235–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295192.2014.972760