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Often, mothers ask: Why are children so attached to their mothers? I can’t leave even for a moment, and they cry loudly at the door when I go to the bathroom?
Today, let’s talk about the psychology behind this.
Why are children so attached to their mothers?
1. Infants have an innate desire to connect with others
This starts with the innate “relationality” of human beings. From birth, we are a social existence. Compared to the offspring of other creatures, human infants have virtually no survival capabilities at birth .
Newborns cannot forage for food, cannot regulate their own biological states and rhythms, cannot move freely, and cannot avoid dangers in their surroundings.
Therefore, the more infants can attract strong adults to respond better and faster, the greater their chances of survival. “Evolutionary” selection has made infants relationship-oriented, born for relationships.
Infants, starting from a few weeks after birth, can quite accurately recognize and remember their mother’s appearance, scent, and voice. They are more likely to develop preferences for these stimuli and strive to approach their caregivers. When this proximity is disrupted, they show strong reactions (crying, trying to have physical contact with the caregiver, grabbing the caregiver) to seek to be close to the caregiver again. (Crying, trying to have physical contact with the caregiver, grabbing the caregiver) , in order to get close to the caregiver again.
2. Infants have skills to ensure that contact is established and maintained
In addition to an innate desire to connect with others, infants are also endowed with some skills to ensure that contact can be established and maintained.
When the caregiver leaves, their gaze will follow the caregiver. When they have some mobility, this visual following will turn into physical following (they will crawl or run after their parents to ensure they are by their side). (They will follow their parents by crawling or running to ensure their parents are by their side) .
There are also abilities such as imitation, social smiling, crying, and the ability to have simple conversations with adults, all of which make children real experts in gaining care.
It can be said that from birth, a child’s internal setting is to “stick to mom” and establish a relationship. When a child cries and “sticks to” mom, it is actually him exercising his ability to establish relationships, and at the same time, he hopes that mom will respond to his emotional needs.
These responses affect the child’s confidence in themselves (Do I have the ability to establish and maintain relationships?) , and also affect the child’s sense of control over the world (If I need, can someone respond to me, help me?) . At the same time, mom’s responses affect their emotions, feelings, determining the emotional relationship model in early life, and also determining the quality of their intimate relationships in adulthood.
Studies have found that adverse experiences in early life can even change the neural circuits of a child’s brain, affecting the child’s life. The good news is that this change is also reversible, if the child can still establish a secure attachment model during the growth process.
If mom can sensitively perceive the child’s emotions and respond, these responses can be through language, such as: Oh, you don’t want mom to leave you, you are a little sad, or through expressions, expressing care, affection and other emotions, or some actions, such as touching the child, hugging the child, helping children understand their own psychology and build confidence.
At the same time, because of such responses, the child’s emotions are regulated, and through the mother’s emotional support for the child, protecting, comforting, and taking care of their actions when the child asks to be taken care of, a secure emotional experience is built.
Such similar interactions occur constantly around the child’s daily activities in the early stages of life. When parents care for their children, respond to their children’s unease, take care of and coordinate, the child’s sense of security is established, and the child’s internal relationship model is established.
Will children always be so attached?
When mom transitions from being an external source of comfort and help to the child’s internal security drive, children can allow their mothers to leave their side without feeling anxious or angry, because the mother has become a very certain existence internally for them, and her external presence or absence is predictable to the child.
This may be the first social achievement a child reaches in the process of growing up. However, the achievement of this is actually influenced by many factors. Looking at it from the perspectives of both the child and the mother, there are different factors affecting each.
From the mother’s perspective, an important influencing factor is the mother’s own attachment relationship model. If the mother’s own attachment relationship model is insecure, she cannot provide stable and consistent comfort and support from the outside to the child, and the child naturally cannot internalize it into a stable security drive.
From the child’s perspective, his own temperament dimension type or developmental situation may also affect the child in adapting to the mother’s regulation process, such as children with more intense emotional responses, or children with poorer adaptability, then he naturally internalizes a stable security drive more slowly.
For example, some children with developmental disorders, because of cognitive or social difficulties, find it hard to establish secure attachment, so they have an extraordinary attachment to their mothers or intimate caregivers, and thus appear to be “extraordinarily attached to their mothers.
What can we do?
1. From the mother’s perspective
From the mother’s perspective, it is important to avoid two issues: over-responding and under-responding. .
The core of a mother’s response to her child’s attachment needs is “moderation”. Over-responding is as detrimental as under-responding. If a mother’s response turns into nothing but compromise and satisfaction, seemingly caring for the child, it is not conducive to the child better accepting separation – the child will get used to obtaining everything they want through crying and coquetry. Once faced with separation or unmet needs, they will fall into intense unease, acting more clingy.
At this time, it is particularly important to actively respond to the child’s emotions, which does not mean compromising with the child without rules. Dealing with a child’s “clingy” behavior, while understanding and empathizing with the child’s emotional needs, still needs to implement the previously agreed rules in terms of behavior.
In addition, this is the principle of consistency. Often, a mother’s constant satisfaction leads to her own exhaustion and may suddenly become refusal at one time, which also plunges the child into uncertain anxiety, not knowing when the mother will satisfy them and when she will not. To avoid “being ignored” and to test “will it work this time”, they will keep clinging to their mother.
In fact, a child clinging to their mother is a normal psychological development stage in the growth process, a necessary process for children to seek security and establish parent-child attachment. As long as guided properly, as children gradually build enough security, they will naturally pass this stage as they grow up.
However, if this stage is unusually long and the child’s clinginess exceeds the normal range, and the mother is exhausted, it needs to be clear: this is not a problem of a single party, it cannot be completely attributed to the mother’s response method, nor can it be simply considered the child’s “willfulness”, but it requires looking for reasons from both the child and the mother, and adjusting targeted to better alleviate this situation.
From a professional perspective, adults with anxious attachment and fearful attachment types indeed find it more difficult to form a secure and stable parent-child attachment relationship with their children.
A child’s attachment relationship comes from the influence of both parents’ attachment relationship types. A reliable, stable, and always-present father is an important support and buffer for children who “stick to their mothers” and mothers. He can share the mother’s parenting pressure, allowing the mother more space to adjust her own state and better respond to the child. He can also provide a different source of security for the child, helping the child learn to connect with different people, reduce excessive dependence on the mother, and gradually develop a more balanced and healthy attachment pattern.
But this does not mean that parents who have experienced attachment trauma cannot develop a secure attachment with their children. The key lies in how parents view their past experiences – compared to “what happened”, “how to interpret this experience” has a greater impact on the parent-child relationship.
Parents can try to adjust their cognition: when their child’s dependency reactions make them feel threatened or worried, they might as well tell themselves that these negative feelings are not brought by the child, but are emotional marks left by their own past experiences. The child’s needs themselves are separate from these negative feelings and should not be confused.
In addition, such parents often need more external support – such as understanding from family members, professional psychological counseling, etc., to help them reorganize their past experiences, gain new emotional experiences, and thus gradually improve their parent-child relationship with their children.
2. From the child’s perspective
Two situations to consider:
The child has the normal ability to establish relationships
The child has the normal ability to establish relationships, but the temperament type is that of a sensitive, high-demand child or the child is just at a normal age for separation anxiety.
The following methods may be helpful for the child, such as:
Spend more time accompanying, and focus more on responding to the child’s emotions and feelings during the process, rather than focusing on cognitive games.
When you need to leave, say it in advance. If the child cries, you also have time to comfort the child and respond to their emotional needs. Of course, some parents only leave when the baby agrees. But it is more appropriate to simply say goodbye and comfort, and then the mother can leave, without necessarily having to get the baby’s agreement, because it is not something the baby should decide. And “just right frustration” is beneficial for children to adapt to the conflict between their own thoughts and reality, and adjust themselves.
Arrange a fixed daily routine, and if there are changes, prepare the child mentally the day before.
Often play role-playing games with your child, especially scenes where the mother leaves the child.
What should be particularly avoided is leaving without saying a word, which makes the child feel that the mother’s disappearance and existence are uncontrollable, which can increase the child’s anxiety.
Children who lack the ability to establish normal relationships
In this case, it is necessary to pay attention to whether there are abnormalities in the child’s development and behavior, such as some children on the autism spectrum, who are unusually attached to adults, if these are accompanied by phenomena where the child’s other abilities are also lagging, it is necessary to seek medical attention in time. .
What they need is not only to solve the problem of “clinging” to mom, but also early identification, early intervention, and helping children’s lagging abilities to improve.
Some people may ask, why don’t children cling to dad? Because most children are taken care of by their mothers from birth, and have a natural connection with their mothers. But some are taken care of more by nannies or elderly family members, so the object of the child’s attachment will also change. If dad takes care of and accompanies more, he can also be the object of the child’s attachment.
Another phenomenon is that some mothers find that they actually don’t take care of their children much, and most of it is taken care of by the elderly at home, but the child still clings to them. This is because in the child’s world, the one who understands her inner state and knows how to take care of and support her emotions is the one truly worth attaching to.
Finally, the famous psychoanalyst Winnicott said: There is no such thing as a baby (there is no such thing as a baby) . This means that when you see a baby, you must also see the mother who takes care of him. And the child who “sticks to” mom when they are young is actually preparing to “leave” mom better when they grow up!
Peer Review Expert Zhong Le
Distinct Pediatrics Doctor, Doctor of Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Visiting Scholar at Yale University School of Medicine
References
Content Editor Luka
Disclaimer: The purpose of the article is to provide general health information. For personal medical issues, please consult a doctor. To reprint the article, please contact: medicine@distinctclinic.com.
