Consider that an average person spends about 20 years in a formal education setting , it would be interesting to learn how one copes better than the other. What makes one child more resilient than the other?

According to a longterm research, children who are more securely attached with their carers are more able to adapt to changing life circumstances, such as school life, than those who have less secure attachment relationships. Further details about the Minnesota Longitudinal Project, which followed children and their carers from infancy to adulthood, can be found in “The Fate of Early Experience Following Development Change” by Sroufe L A, Egeland B, Kreutzer, T 1990.

Securely attached here means children who have developed highly trusting relationships, particularly in the early years. According to child development experts, children must acquire a balance towards the positive (i.e. trust) and some of the negative potential (i.e. mistrust). When children have a strong balance towards the positive side of trust, they will be able to meet later emotional/social development with more ease and will be more likely to maintain this positive balance.

As children who are securely attached and have a strong sense of inner security grow into adolescents, they would have a solid emotional and social foundation on which to develop further (read Beardslee W R (2002): “How to protect your children from the effects of depression in the family”).

On the flip side, children whose behaviours are of extreme defiance of adults and have an inability to form any peer relationships are characteristics of those who have serious attachment and trauma difficulties.

In short, trust is the keyword. How does a child develop trust, in order for her to improve her resiliency?

From the moment your child is born, she cries to be comforted. Crying is her way of communicating her need for your help. You take the first step in establishing trust when you pacify her. Experts say if you consistently soothe your child’s distress over the years and take any anguished crying seriously, highly effective stress response systems can be established in her brain. You can help her cope well with stress in later life.

Research shows that if a child’s need for comfort is not met with emotional responsiveness and soothing, her autonomic nervous system can over time become wired for bodily hyper-arousal. This can make life stressful and exhausting and also result in physical ailments in later life such as problems with breathing (asthma), heart disease, eating and digestive disorders, poor sleep, high blood pressure, panic attacks, muscular tension, headaches and chronic fatigue. In “brain-gut studies”, there is a link of uncomforted stress in early life with irritable bowel syndrome.

Neuroscience explains when a child cries, the stress hormone called cortisol is released by the adrenal glands. If she is soothed and comforted, the cortisol level goes down, but if left to cry continuously, the level remains high. Over a prolonged period, cortisol can reach toxic levels that may damage key structures and systems in a developing brain. Cortisol is a slow-acting chemical that can stay at high levels in the brain for hours and in clinically depressed people, for days or weeks.

Research shows when a child has an over-sensitive stress response system may leave her susceptible to anxiety disorders, depression, smoking addiction and alcohol abuse in later life. This is particularly the case with children left to prolonged crying as babies and then experienced strict discipline with little warm physical affection to compensate.

Attachment Theory developed by John Bowlby in the sixties may now be further validated by findings in neuroscience. The core theme of attachment theory is that mothers (primary caregivers) who are available and responsive to their infant’s needs establish a sense of security. The infant knows that the caregiver is dependable and she experiences trust.

Mary Ainsworth developed John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory further in the 1970s. In pioneering “Strange Situation” study, researchers observed toddlers between the ages of 12 and 18 months as they responded to a situation in which they were briefly left alone and then reunited with their mothers.

Ainsworth categorized three major styles of attachment: secure, ambivalent and avoidant.

In the study, Ainsworth found when children were briefly separated from their mothers (caregivers), they displayed minimal distress because they seemed to feel assured that the mother would return. Termed as securely-attached children, they sought reassurance from their mothers when they were frightened because they had experienced comfort being offered when needed.

In contrast, ambivalent attached children became very distressed when a parent left and it was suggested that it was a result of poor maternal availability. These children had learned they couldn’t depend on their mother to be there when in need.

For children with avoidant attachment, they had no preference between a caregiver and a complete stranger and they tended to avoid the parent. This might be a result of abusive caregivers or being neglected and the children were punished for being dependent. These children learnt not to seek help in the future.

Such finding would have been most helpful to many ignorant parents if it is introduced during ante-natal classes. I have observed that many children in my midst are, unfortunately, with ambivalent and avoidant attachments. Most of them have been brought up by neighbours (stay-at-home mums) whilst their primary caregivers work outside the home, child minders at day-care centres who have more than a dozen of children in their care and grandmothers who live in another state.

Further research suggests that early attachments could have serious effect on the children’s later relationships. However attachment styles presented in adulthood are not necessarily the same as in childhood.

Securely-attached children tend to grow up as adults with a healthy self-esteem, maintain a solid romantic relationship and the ability to trust others. They find it relatively easy to get close to others and are comfortable in a give-and-take relationship . They usually don’t worry about being abandoned or someone getting too close.

In contrast, avoidant adults are rather uncomfortable getting close to others because they find it difficult to trust others completely. They have difficulty allowing themselves to depend on others. They get nervous when someone gets too close and they often feel their partners wanting more intimacy than what they could offer. I wonder if some of my friends who purposely choose to remain single and unattached intimately could have been children with avoidant attachment.

Anxious/ambivalent adults, on the other hand, find that others are reluctant to get as close as they would like. They often worry that their partner doesn’t really love them or won’t want to stay with them. They want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away. If you ever hear someone introducing their spouse/partner as their “other half”, you would wonder whether they realize that they could have been an ambivalent attached child.

Interestingly, there are counselors in the UK who specialize in couple relationships using creative arts therapy to have a better insight into problems relating to attachment issues. I was fortunate to have had a first-hand experience with Prof. Monika Jephcott (of Academy of Play and Child Psychotherapy) during the Play and Creative Arts certificate course last year. In an exercise using eight bits of plasticine of two different colours, one of the colour representing myself, I moulded the bits according to four scenarios:
• Me and my primary carer (how she/he might have felt)
• Ideal relationship with primary carer
• Who is closest to me now?
• How would I like it to be?

Through this powerful exercise, I had a better understanding of the Attachment Theory and of my relationship with my spouse. Although I had grown out of my attachment style in childhood to be a securely-attached adult (the third scenario), my last moulded bits were interpreted as a “regression”. It reflected a conflict I was having with my spouse at that time. As it had surfaced to my awareness, I was able to work it through with a lot of self-reflection and sharing with him. It was a potent balm for a deep wound  resulting in a giant leap in self growth.

While researching more about John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, I found the following advice given by Dr Ann Corwin on simple ways to form attachment with your baby. Great tips for new parents; however it is still not too late if your child is above 6 years old or 66!

In the past decade since the birth of my daughter, I have read countless of books and attended courses on parenting and child development. The one that has led me to a new understanding of child development is last November’s certificate course on Play and Creative Arts conducted by Professor Monika Jephcott (CEO) of UK-based Academy of Play and Child Psychotherapy. Being a parent now takes on a whole new direction. Let me share with you the Attachment Theory by John Bowlby and later the role of neuroscience in parenting.

Through his research in the 1950s and 1960s, John Bowlby believed the first bonds formed by children with their mothers/primary caregivers would have a tremendous life-long impact. He said by keeping an infant close to the mother, it would improve the baby’s chances of survival. The central theme of attachment theory is that mothers who are available and responsive to their infant’s needs establish a sense of security. The infant knows that the caregiver is dependable, which creates a secure base for the child to then explore the world.

So what would become of children who don’t form secure attachment in early childhood? Many studies evolved from Bowlby’s theory and there are findings of insecure attachments’ negative impact on behaviour in later childhood and throughout life. For want of labels to help comprehension, children said to have oppositional-defiant disorder, conduct disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder frequently present attachment problems, possibly due to early abuse, neglect or trauma. Psychologists suggest that children adopted after six months old have a higher risk of problems with attachment.

Here I would like to share with you a video summarizing Bowlby’s Attachment Theory. I know it doesn’t do justice to all those years of research but I think it’s enough to give us a glimpse into what are the effects of “maternal deprivation” - as coined by Bowlby himself. Naturally in today’s terms, it would better be referred as primary caregiver (fathers, nannies, etc). Terminology aside, what is important is to understand the core of Bowlby’s message.