How Do We Know If We Are Ready To Offer Secure Attachment?
Offering secure attachment is a task that, if known, can be simple, but if you don’t even know what it is, it will be very complex. So, as parents, we do what we can, but that may be an understatement for children.
It is normal for a mother or father to do all they can for their child. Fortunately, today we have access to a wealth of information to know how to offer secure attachment correctly so that the little one, depending on their characteristics and their level of development, always feels good and evolves in the right direction.
Types of attachment
All parents seek that our children become adults of law with correct values and marked personality. Education plays a vital role here, but also the type of attachment that we use in the formation of the little ones. For this, these four main types are distinguished:
- Secure attachment : it is the one that all parents aspire to and the one that always benefits the minor.
- Avoidant attachment : it is characterized by the lack of importance given to the expression of emotions.
- Anxious-ambivalent attachment : it appears when parents are stressed whenever they have to attend to the emotional needs of their children.
- Disoriented attachment : they are parents unable to attend to their own needs, so they do not know how to attend to those of their children. They tend to present aggressive and violent behaviors.
It is important to know what type of attachment we give, since the child’s personality, as well as its correct development, will depend on it to a great extent.
Are we prepared to offer secure attachment?
It is the situation that many parents believe they are offering secure attachment to their children. However, professionals such as Rafael Guerrero consider that, in many cases, this is not the real situation, and it is possible that, in part or in full, it is acting in a way that offers some of the other types of attachment to children unconsciously.
Sometimes the type of attachment we give to our children depends on what we have received as children. Although we want to practice safety with our offspring, it is difficult to give it if we did not know him when we were little. So, even if we know the theory, if we don’t have adequate training, it will be difficult to attend to the child’s emotions correctly.
So, what traits should we fulfill to offer and give secure attachment to our children? According to Guerrero, we would have to meet these requirements:
- Ability to identify what emotion we experience at each moment.
- Capacity for correct emotional regulation.
- Adequate development of empathy.
- Ability to differentiate between all beings, including us.
- Ability to mentalize ourselves.
- Optimal resilience.
- Proper decision making.
- High self-esteem.
- Leadership.
- Adequate self-concept, elevated, but not outrageous.
- Ability to see error as something natural and fundamental in any learning process.
- Ability to recognize failures and limitations.
Can we give our children secure attachment?
According to the author Rafael Guerrero, if a mother or father identifies with most of the skills described above, they will be prepared to give secure attachment. Now, according to the data offered by the psychologist, the percentage of those who are really ready to exercise this type of parenting does not exceed 60% of the parents.
If a person does not identify with a high number of these characteristics, it does not imply that he is wrong with the child. Mothers and fathers do the best they can. However, they can do more to do better with information and professional help.
However, everything has a solution. Thus, if we consider that we are not prepared to equip our children with secure attachment, there is always the option of seeking professional help.
Guerrero himself affirms that through psychotherapy many parents can receive valuable information that allows them to transform those transmissions that they received erroneously from their parents, so that they can change them for a more secure attachment in the education of their children.
We hope that this information helps you to know if you are prepared to offer secure attachment to your child and, if you consider that you can improve, do so, since our little ones deserve all the love that we can give them so that they develop in an environment that Support them with self-esteem and confidence in their possibilities.
