Healthy Attachment: Practical Tips and Resources for Parents

Illustrations of the four parenting styles laid out in a square, from top left clockwise: authoritarian, authoritative, uninvolved, permissive. Image credit: Joshua Seong in Parents magazine

Many times, parents find themselves in a position of rebuilding relationships with their children after a separation (perhaps from divorce, prison, or prolonged illness), building new relationships with children (such as when fostering), or adapting to maintain closeness as children age.  This article is intended to serve as a short list of best parenting practices that will encourage close relationships between parents or caregivers and their children.  A resource list is provided at the end.  

Part 1:  Parenting Style

Original research identified three main parenting style types: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive, based on parental control, and further research added the neglectful style.  

Recent research confirms original findings that children whose parents have an authoritative parenting style typically have the best outcomes, as they are made to feel supported and loved while reasonable rules are pragmatically enforced.  This article does a good job of describing the different styles and explaining why it is important to adopt an authoritative style rather than one of the other three types.  

Those children who grow up with parents utilizing one of the other three styles, especially authoritarian style, have poorer outcomes (see studies and article linked above).  

    Tips

• Limit rules primarily to safety, as age appropriate.  Young children may do well with 2-3 safety rules, while teenagers may be ready for 4-5. 

 

• Praise for positives.  Catch your child behaving well and compliment them in the moment.  Kids are motivated by your approval.  

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• Keep punishments short and low emotion, ignoring behaviors that you don’t want them to repeat (except in the case of safety issues, which require immediate intervention).  Grounding a teen from their phone for a day is painful enough - grounding them for a month feels endless and can cause them to lose hope that they can succeed, which puts them at risk of giving up.  Keep those redemption goals attainable!

Part 2:  Healthy Attachment Activity Principles

Attachment can be disrupted for any number of reasons.  Some examples include parental substance use; parental mental or physical illness; separation, death, or divorce; parental incarceration; children’s placement in foster care; and adopted children.  However, there is hope to rebuild a strong bond when parents or caregivers are open to change and put in the effort.  

A quick internet search will provide many ideas for activities, so for this article, we’re highlighting the principles that make a good bonding activity.  The Five Love Languages of Children is a great place to start when trying to decide what to do with your kids.  They offer a free quiz on their website to quickly determine the love language of each member of the family.  

The basics of attachment begin with the concept of things we do with newborns.  We gaze into their eyes adoringly.  We hold them, snuggle them, and make sure they are warm and fed.  We tell them how cute they are and how much we love them.  We tell each other, in baby’s presence, how much they look like a family member or which tiny new behaviors remind us of one or the other of the parents.   These behaviors are vital to the baby growing into a safe and happy relationship with his or her parents.  Using imagination, parents and caregivers can recreate these behaviors in age-appropriate ways for their children.  


    Guidelines for Attachment Activities

• Eye contact - Keeping in mind the eye contact we make with babies, adapt this to your child’s age.  Some examples of recreating eye contact with older children and teenagers include playing a game of who can avoid blinking first (might be too intense with some kids - make sure your gaze is gentle, not piercing); seeing who can make the other laugh with funny faces; paint each other’s faces with nontoxic face paints; or see who can wiggle their ears or eyebrows.

  

• Physical touch - Appropriate physical touch from parents/caregivers can be reassuring and enhance a child’s feeling of safety.  If a child is not comfortable with hugs yet, other alternatives include high fives, sitting close to each other on the couch to read or watch a movie, side hugs, or tracing their hand on a piece of paper for them to color/paint/glue colored paper. 

 

• Feeding - There is something uniquely intimate about the preparation, sharing and feeding of meals together which offers a fantastic opportunity to increase bonding.  For older kids, letting them help with each step to choose a meal, shop for a meal, prepare the meal, and eat the meal together with the parent combines both the principle of feeding as well as the shared experience of working together while receiving positive parental attention.  Note that this is only a bonding experience if it is a positive one with praise from the parent for the child’s attempts, not criticism for mistakes.  It is also not an attachment experience if this is a chore assigned to the child rather than a shared activity with the parent/caregiver.  ​​

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• When feeding younger children, parents can arrange meals into animal shapes or faces before serving or let the child arrange snack components on a plate for his/her own or parent’s snack.  Snack time is also a chance for a game of “baby bird” - the child pretends to be a baby bird and the parent places a bite-size snack into the child’s mouth when he/she “peeps”. 

 

• Belonging - Building the child’s sense of belonging not only to his/her parents but also to the larger family unit serves as a protective factor as children enter their teenage and young adult years.  Some ways to accomplish this include comparing family photographs and pointing out to the child ways they look like their parents and extended family; telling stories from the parents’ personal history and the family’s history; and including the child in family religious or cultural practices.

 

• Praise - The importance of praise cannot be emphasized enough.  It is one of the greatest motivating factors for positive behaviors in children and teens, much more so than strict discipline.  Readers may recall the old adage, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice”, or “What are the first three rules of real estate?  Location, location, location”.  When it comes to raising well-adjusted children, it’s “Praise, praise, praise”.   This is not to say that children should never be given correction, but that most of what they hear from parents/caregivers should be positive comments about their efforts to improve themselves (such as with homework) or qualities of good character.  Examples include “I noticed how you keep trying to memorize your multiplication tables even though it’s hard.  Good job!”  “I am so proud of you for taking the trash out without being asked.” “I was so happy to hear that you sat next to the new kid in the cafeteria today.  That was really kind.”  

The guidelines above are a starting point.  Readers are encouraged to use their own imagination and knowledge of their children to create additional activities and to browse the linked resources below for more information and inspiration.  

Resources*
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The 5 Love Languages of Children

Free Resources (from The 5 Love Languages)

Play Therapy Activities: 101 Play-Based Exercises to Improve Behavior and Strengthen the Parent-Child Connection: LaVigne LCSW RPT, Melissa: 9781647391263: Amazon.com: Books

Parenting With Love And Logic (Updated and Expanded Edition): Cline, Foster, Fay, Jim: 9781576839546: Amazon.com: Books

You Can't Make Me (But I Can Be Persuaded), Revised and Updated Edition: Strategies for Bringing Out the Best in Your Strong-Willed Child: Tobias, Cynthia: 9781578565658: Amazon.com: Books

Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents: Gray, Deborah D.: 9781849058902: Amazon.com: Books

Facilitating Developmental Attachment: The Road to Emotional Recovery and Behavioral Change in Foster and Adopted Children: Hughes, Daniel A.: 9780765702708: Amazon.com: Books

99 Ways to Drive Your Child Sane: Clair, Brita St.: 9780970352514: Amazon.com: Books

Healing Parents: Helping Wounded Children Learn to Trust & Love: Orlans, Michael, Levy, Terry M.: 9781587600968: Amazon.com: Books


*We are not affiliated with any of the companies listed, and do not receive any compensation for listing them.  In fact, we’re pretty sure they are unaware we exist.  
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Heidi E. Jameson, LMHC is the founder of The Mangroves Seeds of Change, LLC.  You can read more about her here.

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Four illustrations in a square pattern with the positive model of others attachment styles at the top (secure and anxious with low avoidance) and the negative model of others at the bottom (avoidant and fearful with high avoidance). Image credit: Stock image from Dreamstime