After I wrote my post, “Relearning to parent “Attachment Parenting” style,” my mother, who is a third grade teacher, asked me how the attachment theory works for teachers.
I am certainly not an expert, but from what I’ve read, “the baton” of attachment needs to be passed on to whoever is the caregiver at the time. So when the children go to school, they need to be strongly attached to their teachers so that they will feel secure, safe and motivated to please and do what the teacher asks. Each time there is a separation between the child and the caregiver, the attachment needs to be re-established through eye connection, a greeting, a smile, a hug, etc.
The great thing about my mother asking me this question, was that it made me realize that I needed to actively foster or “prime” Isabela’s attachment to her teacher. So this week, everyday before she went into her classroom, I told her,
Ms. Becky loves you so much. She can’t wait to see you and say good morning to you. Seeing you each morning is the best part of her day. She wants to get to know everything about you so she can take care of you. She loves you so much.
Amazingly, truly amazingly, I have had my first week of successful school drop-offs with Isabela by priming her attachment to her teacher in this way. It’s not a completely fool-proof method because it didn’t work yesterday (I was throwing up all morning before dropping her off and her instincts were telling her, something is wrong! I need to stay with my mom right now in case things get even worse!) But other than that day, Isabela has spent only about 2 minutes outside of her classroom door instead of her usual 20 minutes. Hooray!
According to our parenting therapist, it takes children until they are about 10 or 11 years old (or even older) before they can actually “hold on” to their attachment to the parents or the teacher when there is a separation from them. So each day at the beginning of school for teachers, and at the end of school for parents, the child needs to be “collected” and the attachment needs to be re-established.
In my previous post on attachment I mentioned that I was worried about losing my children to peer attachment, but our therapist reassured us and said that as long as you can collect them at the end of each school day and re-establish your attachment, then they are truly yours and peer attachment will hold little power over them.
Ah, sigh of relief.
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October 10, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Debby Hastings
Your loving and supportive words to Isabela about her teacher were really moving. It’s amazing that her attachment to you could help her attach more strongly to Ms. Becky. Do let her teacher know; I’m sure she’d love to read this entry. I’m going to share this with my colleagues at school.
October 12, 2008 at 2:35 pm
radicalchange
This is really great stuff. It seems to me that the attachment theory also hold for adult relationships where there is a leader who is supervising others. I think that maybe the thing with adults is that when you are in a leadership role, being attached to those you supervise is everything, but when you are the one being supervised, the goal is self attachment because you can’t expect the leader to be attached to you. It also seems to me from what you have written that children start becoming caregivers when something is off with the primary attachment figure such as when you become really ill and zone out. Then they start assuming the role of parents which takes them away from their primary role which is to be learners. Thanks for sharing this info.