Developing Attachment in Early Years Settings

Nurturing secure relationships from birth to five years

Veronica Read

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317746027
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Providing an accessible introduction to attachment thinking, this practical book offers early years practitioners' advice on translating attachment principles into practice in their settings. It clearly explains how knowledge about attachment theory underpins everyday practice and highlights the crucial role of secure attachments in young children's learning and development.

Developing Attachments in Early Years Settings examines the importance of emotional' 'holding' and the nurturing of individual relationships within group childcare. The book aims to help you make a real difference to young children's sense of self and emotional security by being 'tuned in', available, responsive and consistent.

With a strong focus on facilitating secure attachments from the beginning and guidance on how to observe young children effectively, this new edition has been thoroughly updated and revised to include:

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• How to make a positive contribution to good practice for Government funded 2 year olds

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• A new chapter on the Emotional Environment and the Developing Brain

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• Expansion of material on the importance of the outdoors, as well as Nurture group practice

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• Additional material about working in partnership with parents and developing positive relationships

Each chapter includes a personal reflection exercise and a positive contribution to good practice section. With its accessible approach, this book is essential reading for both practitioners and students looking for guidance on how to nurture secondary attachment relationships in group care settings.

Chapter 1

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The emotional environment and the developing brain

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Babies are experts at ‘feeling the minds’ (Zeedyk 2011) of the adults caring for them and responding instinctively to love. We might say that from the moment of conception a foetus is programmed for both of these interests. The capacity of the unborn baby to relate to the environment of the womb, and more particularly in the case of twins, to each other, is evident from ultrasound film footage. In utero twins can be seen on scans clearly aware of each other. It is now possible by PET and MRI scans to view twins’ social engagement as they initiate and receive responses from each other, as seen by their jostling for space or a comfortable position in the womb. There is evidence that a foetus reacts to painful stimuli, yawns, moves in order to seek a more comfortable position, sucks and displays rapid eye movement sleep. This unfolding sense of being connected in utero for babies extends to recognizing music heard after birth, which was played to them in the womb. A parents’ favourite soap theme music is often cited as being something a new baby feels soothed by, or enlivened by, upon hearing.

An invitation to the dance

Shortly after birth, being interested in mirroring adults’ facial gestures, e.g. sticking out their tongues in response to a parent doing so, is part of the beginnings of a mutual dance, just as their early smiles are invitations to interaction. Babies are hard to resist and their invitation to the social dance is a source of mutual joy and pleasure for both adult and baby. Levels of vitality between a primary carer and baby are, at best, inter-subjectively initiated, received and sensitively attuned to. This kind of active communication means that infants have a capacity for being social from birth. Infant crying is interactive and relational from the very first hours of life and brings the primary carer closer.

Mothers who have a settled and calm pregnancy offer the growing baby an auditory experience of a regular heartbeat, whereas mothers who become excessively anxious will have an altered and at times raised heartbeat. Pregnancy ideally should offer an opportunity for parents to enjoy their nine months free from stress but this may be a challenge for some in such an excessively busy and driven society. Supporting and extending paternity leave is an important step in this direction as the first few months shared with a new baby offer an opportunity for strong attachments to be made.

Political, social and cultural influences

The external environment and significant one-off events, too, have an influence on the growing foetus. Pregnant mothers fleeing from the area around the collapsing Twin Towers during the terrorist attack of 9/11, developed raised cortisol levels, a stress hormone which impacts on the growing foetus as early as 17 weeks. The babies of those mothers, we might say, felt their mothers’ stress and fear, and when they were born, like their mothers they had raised cortisol levels. Likewise, babies who have had parents who have had an experience of pregnancy which has been stress-free and happy will have felt the benefits of feel good hormones such as oxytocin, dopamine and prolactin. Oxytocin is protective to both mother and baby and is produced during feeding and at other times of mutual closeness and affection. Experiments with female rats which have their production of oxytocin blocked show they turn aggressively on their own offspring.

Research has identified chronic experiences of alcohol and drugs crossing the placenta, maternal stress as a result of domestic violence and poverty leading to low birth weight and other issues as risk factors for the growing baby. By citing these examples there is no intention to hold mothers solely responsible for the emotional and physical health of their growing babies. Some experiences are out of our control as they are linked to certain social, political, economic and cultural inequalities. The gradual process of attaching to a baby that usually begins at birth when oxytocin levels are high requires parents to be protected from the social causes of stress in pregnancy and in the immediate post-natal period.

It is becoming clearer that there is much happening of influence below the surface and out of sight, and in society at large prior to birth. The importance of good emotional and psychological well-being is an advantage in terms of being able to attach to one’s baby even before birth. Initiatives in pregnancy such as ‘Talk to your Bump’, consistent ante-natal care from one key midwife or health visitor for young single mothers and early interventions for those vulnerable to post-natal depression can support and lead to better outcomes. We might say that from the point of conception the foetus is influenced politically, socially and culturally through the maternal context.

Early interventions, such as the government-funded places for vulnerable two-year-olds, to close the gap in terms of low and high socio-economic outcomes are examples of the current political commitment to the above. However, poor practice in group day care may also put babies and young children at risk. Babies who are not attended to promptly and responsively when crying and who do not get their needs met adequately tend to give up. They may go on to develop a relationship to the world which is unresponsive and avoidant in terms of trusting others. Likewise, toddlers may become falsely compliant, in the absence of attuned affection, in order to please adults. Or they may ‘act-out’ aggressively and protest until they get the attention they require, in the hope that the environment will change to meet their needs. A child-centred environment with reflective adults will entertain this possibility and be curious about how a child’s needs may be better met and their anxiety lowered.

Continuing the heartbeat rhythm in early years settings

The establishment of a ‘heartbeat rhythm’ (Thomas 2013) for babies and young children in group day care settings poses significant challenges for the adults caring for them and is a priority in terms of offering experiences which reflect back to them adult self-regulation. Nurturing environments are best achieved by practitioners reflecting on their body language, pace of movement and tone of voice. It is important that practitioners notice when their own anxiety rises in relation to an infant’s distress. Excessive stress in adults caring for groups of children will result in ‘fight/flight’ responses. Being able to regulate one’s own internal responses and rhythms may in turn increase the adult’s capacity to respond and sooth children with gentle back patting and rocking. Raised stress levels in staff may lead to misattuned responses such as overly talkative adults who prematurely distract young children. In an effort to distance the distress staff may be personally in receipt of daily at transition times, what is often forgotten is the need to absorb children’s sadness and anger.

The benefits of attending to one’s emotional well-being and for example practising the principles of meditation are widely accepted in the field of mental health now as being beneficial in the treatment of anxiety and depression, too. The need for young children to have time at regular intervals to stretch out and ‘to be’, especially when socially fatigued, contributes to young children feeling supported in their developing capacity to ‘organize their feelings’ (Cooper et al. 1998). The singing of nursery rhymes and songs whether in utero or in the world is a link back to that human pulse rate and the familiar tonal qualities of the maternal voice. ‘Before birth, the foetus reacts to music with changes in motor activity, and infants respond to music and can imitate simple rhythms before they develop speech’ (Goddard Blythe 2004: 77).

Activating the brain so that attachment can occur

Research into brain development has established the fact that a newborn baby’s brain produces 250,000 cells every minute. By eight months old a spaghetti-junction-like network of a 1,000 trillion synapses (message carriers) have connected to the 100 billion brain cells which they were born with. Raised levels of the hormone cortisol produced at times of prolonged stress can create a toxic wash which has an effect on the development of these synapses. Each time a baby is held, rocked and soothed with a calm tone of voice and responded to with small reassuring gestures, further connections are being made.

The reptilian brain is unchanged in the last 250 million years and remains the centre of our fight/flight mechanism as well as controlling our temperature, heart rate, breathing and balance.

We are born with a mature ‘reptilian brain’. This is essential for keeping us alive but is cold and unfeeling without the post-natally developing ‘mammalian’ brain that develops around it. This is the ‘limbic’ centre of our brain. It adds an emotional level to our experience. Later still will develop the ‘rational brain’, the cortical structures which are involved in many complex brain functions such as memory and attention. These parts of the brain help us to understand and be fully aware of the world around us. They support our ability to think, use language and reason.

(Hughes and Golding 2012: 23)

Traumatic early experience means that children are often unable to become lost in play or be relaxed in the company of others. They have become wired to expect the unexpected, so making them anxious and hyper-vigilant. Severe neglect can make parts of the brain reduce in size.

The actual circumference of the brain of a severely neglected child is often much smaller than the norm, although actual brain circumference will recover for those adopted sufficiently early. Experience affects the brain, particularly very bad experiences such as of severe trauma or neglect

(Music 2011: 93)

It is important to remember that the brain of a baby is still work in progress and the size of a nine-month-old brain makes the actual birth physically possible. At the point of birth, the development of the frontal cortex that has started in utero continues at a rapid rate during the first two years of life. This window of opportunity, as it is often referred to, is a time when a baby’s pre-wired abilities need to be sensitively supported and protected if further early development is to be maintained at an optimal level.

Neurological research reveals how a child’s brain develops differently depending on the stimulation provided by the physical, sensory, social and emotional environment in which a child grows up. The patterned, rhythmic activities associated with sensitive, attuned parenting produce a well-organized, functional brain.

When the regions of the brain are in receipt of good emotions like empathy then it is preparing the brain to be able to feel empathy for others. The prefrontal area of the brain, as well as mirror neurons, have an important part to play in the transmission of empathy. ‘Mirror neurons in the brain fire when we perform an action. These same neurons also fire when we see another perform an action, hence the term mirror neurons’ (Hughes and Golding 2012: 179). One of the best examples of this is when we feel like we want to yawn when faced with someone yawning! This is how we are neurologically wired to the experiences of a significant primary carer. The significance of these and other neurological events in the infant and young child’s brain demonstrates the foundation upon which responsive, attuned interpersonal relationships can continue to be built. We now know from neuroscience and imaging that the way a baby is treated plays a crucial part in determining the kind of adult they become (Gerhardt 2004).

Regulating the effects of stress: the important challenge for early years group environments

Babies and young children spending increasingly long periods of time in group day care settings may at times experience a disjunction between what they need and what is actually available. These early experiences create a set of templates for the child’s brain about what a carer is able to offer. Are they responsive, consistent and predictable and a source of comfort, and pleasure? Or are they unpredictable and a source of stress and daily feelings of loss through disconnection?

The negative effects of stress in infancy when focused specifically on stress in group day care highlight some of the concerns expressed in the recent debate about staff/child ratios; in particular, how difficult it may actually be to meet the needs of a group of children however qualified the practitioner. Research in America (Belsky et al. 2007) found that children in day care for over 10 hours before four and a half years old, despite showing readiness for school, had a predisposition to behavioural problems before school age. In order to maintain a sensitive and responsive environment for children’s developing brains, consistent key person attachment figures need to be available to meet their emotional and psychological needs. Vermeer and van IJzendoorn (2006) found that most studies showed that young children in group day care have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol than their peers cared for at home. This effect is particularly significant for the younger children (under 36 months).

The experience of a prolonged insecure attachment, whatever the cause, has long been suspected of producing ‘invisible damage’. New methods of measurement in neuropsychology and neurobiology have been able to quantify this damage in terms of brain growth and activity. In short, we now know that parental rejection, abuse and neglect not only cause grievous developmental harm, but also grievous bodily harm.

(Cameron and Maginn 2008, p. 1159)

In this book we explore the role of the adult as a key resource for children and the need for a key person approach to be well established. Where there is a recognizable and established key person or co-caring philosophy in a setting, research indicates staff members tend to stay longer in their jobs, therefore allowing young children to establish secure, settled attachment relationships.

The revised Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) highlights the emotional and social building blocks necessary for young children under three years old to be able to proceed to the next stages of forming good social and learning relationships. However, the EYFS Practice Card 2.4 (2007b) remains the most comprehensive and cohesive guidance for the role of the key person (now a statutory requirement) in terms of building positive relationships with young babies and children.

This book explains the developmental needs of babies and the very young. It explores how important the emotional and psychological foundations of childhood are for establishing and sustaining the confidence to explore, build relationships and manage emotions personally and socially. It is, therefore, the intention in this book to detail how secure attachments and love are critical for developing a template for satisfying relationships and positive citizenship later in life. A child who feels safe and secure will exhibit the following seven confident thoughts:

•  The world is a pretty safe place.

•  I can cope with most things.

•  Bad things do not usually happen to me.

•  Bad things do not usually pop up out of the blue.

•  I have some control over things that happen to me.

•  People are pretty nice really.

•  Other people respect me.

(Cartwright-Hatton 2010)

These positive thoughts about the world our youngest children are entering can be achieved through secure, loving relationships offered by secondary carers and indicate the success or failure of the emotional environment on brain development and personal and social development.

Chapter 2

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Beginnings

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A practitioner’s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Preface to the second edition
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The emotional environment and the developing brain
• 2. Beginnings
• 3. The strange situation: Understanding about secure and insecure attachments
• 4. A unique child
• 5. Positive relationships: Why the key person approach really matters
• 6. Enabling environments: How the wider context and its living web of relationships influences the core of early years practice
• 7. Learning and development: Attachment, emotional growth and learning
• 8. Endings: Arriving back where we began
• Appendix
• References and further reading
• Index