Developing Secure Attachment Through Play

Helping Vulnerable Children Build their Social and Emotional Wellbeing

Joan Moore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367712884
• eBook ISBN: 9781000410242
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Developing Secure Attachment Through Play offers a range of imaginative and engaging play-based activities, designed to help vulnerable young children forge safe attachments with their caregivers.

The book focuses on key developmental stages that may have been missed due to challenging life circumstances, such as social-emotional development, object permanence and physical and sensory development. It also considers pertinent issues including trauma, separation, loss and transition. Chapters explore each topic from a theoretical perspective, before offering case studies that illustrate the theory in practice, and a range of activities to demonstrate the effectiveness of play in developing healthy attachments.

Key features of this book include:

• 80 activities that can be carried out at home or in educational settings, designed to facilitate attachment and enhance social-emotional development;

• case vignettes exploring creative activities such as mirroring, construction play, physical play, baby doll play and messy play;

• scripts and strategies to create a safe and respectful environment for vulnerable children;

• photocopiable and downloadable resources, including early learning goals, a collection of therapeutic stories and a transition calendar

By engaging children in these activities, parents, caregivers and practitioners can help the children in their care gain a sense of belonging and develop their self-esteem. This will be a valuable resource for early years practitioners, adoptive, foster and kinship parents, and therapists and social workers supporting young children.

1

Social and emotional development

Introduction

Neuroscience provides increasing evidence of the damage that emotional neglect causes to children’s social and emotional development. Music (2020: 9) refers to research showing that the consequences are often ‘far more devastating than overt trauma on brains, psyches and relationship capacities’. As the eminent late child psychiatrist John Bowlby (2007) explained, children’s fear of not having their needs met leads them to ‘retreat from the world’ (to avoid upsetting scary parents) or ‘do battle with it’ (to keep the distracted parent’s attention). The child’s instinct is to try every measure to ensure their survival. How children experience caregiving in the early years therefore profoundly affects their capacity to be in satisfying relationships.

Explaining attachment

Attachment theory was developed by Bowlby and concerns children’s need for safety and security in their relationships with their parents and caregivers. It is a model for understanding the bewildering, sometimes anti-social behaviour of insecure children, who experience painful early separation and loss of important relationships consequent to neglect and abuse. Securely attached children self-regulate, show empathy, seek help when they need it and adjust more quickly after threats and upsets. Their belief in their right to be in the world contrasts with that of insecurely attached children, who do not share this conviction and instead can be highly anxious but not always show it. The insecure child might seem avoidant and dismissive, or may be especially clingy, perpetually seeking reassurance. If we recognise these patterns of interaction it becomes easier to meet the children’s needs by giving them the reassurance and nurture they need. Through the safety of play, we can enable them to practice new, healthier ways of meeting the world and enjoying the company of others.

Learning empathy

To enjoy reciprocal relationships requires the capacity for empathy (see glossary) and compassion. We learn this from having our emotional states reflected back to us by our parents. The process starts with the mirroring interactions between parents and infants as described in Chapter 3. This is often referred to as the ‘attachment dance’ (Hughes, 2004), which involves the parent echoing and amplifying the baby’s vocalisations. As the ‘dance’ repeats multiple times, the baby learns of the parent’s deep interest in them and accordingly is reassured. Babies learn to smile reciprocally within a few weeks of birth, although babies of highly anxious mothers smile less because their mothers smile less. By 12 months, infants can distinguish between different expressions and begin to understand that other people have intentions. They start to ‘pretend’ (to feed dolly) and imitate parent’s behaviours (such as ‘vacuuming’, using a push along toy). From around 18 months, nurtured toddlers begin to show ability to respond sensitively to others’ feelings as they develop ‘theory of mind’ – the realisation that others may think differently to them (Baron-Cohen et al, 1985).

All children rely on their parents to be role models and leaders, who organise things for them for as long as this is needed. However, parents have many responsibilities, which include keeping their children safe and teaching them social rules. Therefore, from the moment young children become mobile, they hear the word ‘No’ said to them repeatedly. Schore (2006) found this word being issued approximately every nine minutes of the young child’s waking hours. Such prohibitions have the effect of shaming the child into submission. Of course, children need to be kept safe and need to learn that certain behaviours, such as picking their nose and pinching people, are not welcomed. However, when shame is too prolonged it becomes toxic.

Sensitive parents counter its impact by quickly re-attuning, giving the child explanations and reassurance: ‘I don’t want you to hurt yourself, I love you too much!’ However, parents who have not experienced much sensitivity or nurturing in their childhoods are likely to be far less intuitive in this respect. They may not think of issuing the reassurance their child needs. The child raised in an emotionally negative or hostile environment comes to expect people to be unkind and mean. His ability to tolerate his own and others’ feelings relates to his capacity to bear pain. The most far-reaching effect of neglect and trauma is the inability to self-calm when he is feeling anxious.

Key messages

• Notice patterns being repeated in the play.
• Allow the child’s expression of negative and positive emotions.
• Echoing the child’s phrases emulates the attachment dance.

Case examples

Steven, aged 3

The parents of Steven and his brother squabbled and fought so much they were unable to think about what their children needed. Their father was sent to prison after which their mother died in a house fire. The boys were placed in foster care, but in different homes due to Steven’s brother’s special needs. Social workers identified an adoptive family for Steven, who was being prepared to meet them. Having already lost his parents and been separated from his brother, Steven was about to experience the loss of his foster family with whom he had built his first trusting relationship. His behaviour alternated between running off and hiding, and demanding attention. Going between the two extremes indicated a pattern of disorganised attachment, whereby the betrayed child does not know how to go about getting his needs met. Play helped Steven make a safe transition to adoption. In the play kitchen he saw (toy) knives and immediately announced, ‘This is a dangerous place!’

How Steven’s foster parent helped

Steven’s stories featured fires, which he insisted could never be put out. He buried toy people in sand to keep them safe from anticipated scary predators. Steven was offered a calming activity of making pictures with collage materials. Alighting on a bag of pasta shapes, he shook out the pieces of pasta and covered them in multiple layers of sticky plastic. Then, on finding the dressing up bag, he adorned himself in layer upon layer of clothing. This process of layering appeared to be Steven’s way of expressing his need for protection (from harm as well as the cold), unconsciously. In puppet play, his characters were repeatedly heard saying, ‘I’ve had enough of you!’ – a phrase that Steven had often heard said to him. Permission to express his rage and frustration in the safety of the play context enabled him to attach to his new parents. Steven settled satisfactorily in his adoptive family.

Carly, aged 4

Carly had multiple episodes in foster care between being returned to her mother from whom she was eventually removed permanently. A plan was made for adoption. Her early years practitioner (ELP) tried to prepare Carly for this move and realised Carly was feeling unsafe. In one-to-one play, she engaged Carly in a game of Pass the Parcel with dolls but Carly’s manner was flat, expressing how powerless she felt being passed from one caregiver to another. She took her characters on a journey in a carriage that in her words kept ‘shaking you up’. The central character didn’t know where she was going and why. Carly proceeded to bury (toy) people in sand to protect them from a scary creature threatening to ‘come and get them’. These buried people were then abandoned, their plight unrecognised. Anyone who tried to escape was caught, tied up and held captive (echoing Carly’s past experience).

How the ELP helped Carly

On seeing dolls of different sizes Carly was enticed to experiment at how she might grow up to be a ‘big girl’. Entranced by the doll’s house, she set up scenes in each of the rooms. She had the dolls watch various programmes on the (toy) television and make ‘telephone calls’ to arrange social get-togethers. Carly appeared to be exploring the social roles and mores, which she sensed would be expected of her when she moved into her adoptive placement.

Activities

The following activities will enable parents and early years practitioners to emulate the playful mother-infant relationship – the ‘attachment dance’ – that most neglected children typically miss in their early infancy.

Feelings chart

Make up a chart of happy, sad and angry faces – there are plenty of these charts online. Add symbols to illustrate feelings – such as tears to show sadness; heart for ‘love’; storm cloud for ‘worry’ and a jagged mouth to express ‘anger’.

Invite the child to point to the chart and show you which face matches his or her feeling. This can be done before the guided play session and at the end, as a means of enabling the child to show you if and how their feeling changed.

Early Learning Goals

ELG01: Listening and attention – in mirror play the child learns to listen, anticipate what the adult will do next, and respond with the same actions.

ELG03: Speaking – children learn to express themselves, develop their own narratives and explanations and connect ideas.

ELG08: Self-confidence and self-awareness – this is gained from learning to follow rules, cooperate and be sensitive to others.

Shop play

Items needed for playing ‘shops’ are easily substituted. For example, if you don’t have a till, a shoebox will suffice. Cut out ‘bank cards’ and ‘bank notes’ from ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Social and emotional development
• 2 Trauma
• 3 Parent-child mirroring
• 4 Object permanence
• 5 Cause and effect
• 6 Physical development
• 7 Language and speech development
• 8 Separation and loss
• 9 Transition
• 10 Identity
• Appendices
• Glossary of terms
• References
• Index