Attachment and Bonding Build Families

The best advice I can give that I’ve learned in my decades of parenting (and grand-parenting) all sorts of children is that you’ll only influence your child’s behavior if she trusts you to meet her needs. Your child must be attached to you and know, deep in his heart, that you would never do anything to hurt him.
When something is “Attached,” it’s stuck to something else. The two are bonded in a way that makes separating them difficult, if not impossible. Family bonds can endure over time, becoming more and more secure through efforts of each family member.
All children, from birth to adulthood, go through approximately five stages of attachment: (1) Learning to Trust, (2) Learning About Family, (3) Developing Autonomy, (4) Learning about Social Roles, and (5) Maturing into Competency and Independence. Each stage grows out of the one before and must be accomplished before she can move into the next.
The first stage starts at birth and the next two follow during infancy and early childhood. Children cannot successfully progress into the fourth and fifth stages (school and adulthood) without all three.
An experiment conducted 20+ years ago illustrates what I mean. Researchers placed a clear plate of glass between a set of portable stairs and a saw horse. Then they put a crawling baby at the top of the stairs. His mother stood on the far side and called him to her. From the child’s point of view, Mom was asking him to go into empty space and he’d likely fall down. The attached child happily crawled to her. The unattached child wouldn’t move; he just sat there and cried, afraid to go forward.
As you can see from this experiment, your task as a parent is to promote the sort of relationship that allows your child to accept your guidance, without fear.  Sometimes you might think that letting kids do what they want is the best way to earn their love. But little kids, and big ones, too, don’t know what’s good for them–that’s why God gave them parents.
Your baby learns that she can rely on you to take care of her, that she doesn’t have to worry about where food comes from or if it’s safe to go to sleep. She learns to trust you–and by becoming secure in that trust, she will trust others and be able to learn and take care of herself. She figures out who Mom and Dad are, that her family has a special bond. Those family bonds allow her mind and character to develop. Gradually, your baby realizes that she’s a person who can spit out something she doesn’t like, stomp her foot and say “NO” etc. She develops autonomy and begins to understand right from wrong.
All of this learning must take place in a family unit, however: parents and children, bonded, blended and part of a great whole, become something much bigger than themselves, individually.