Parenting is one of the most rewarding and challenging jobs even though we may feel like we are permanently in an intensive workshop. Many parents are trying to cope alone without support. It can be especially challenging when there’s a sense of something missing in the connection with their children. It’s a little known fact that children who are securely attached want to please their parents. There may be an unresolved event in the past that can leave us feeling less than fully connected. Sometimes our own attachment style can be getting in the way of us connecting more fully with our children.

Outcomes of This Support Are

• Deeper levels of attachment and connection
• Growing some new attachment resources that are easy to use
• Freedom from attachment behaviors learned in our family of origin
• The ability to consistently apply attachment behaviors day-to-day

Interruptions to bonding and attachment can cause ongoing problems for children that can make it harder to parent them. There are many life experiences that can compromise secure attachment from the womb onwards. E.g.

1. Medical birthing practices that separate mom and baby at birth, which is sometimes necessary, but can interrupt the natural attachment process right after birth. Many post-birth medical procedures can be done whilst baby is held by one of the parents.

2. A mom who convinced herself she was having a girl discovered later in the pregnancy it was a boy. She disconnected from her unborn baby for two months as she processed the new gender information and then she reconnected. After birth her son needed some help with his feeling that he wasn’t ‘the right one’.

Parents’ attachment challenges and dynamics can affect how they parent and may be preventing them from becoming their best parenting self. Supported parents means happy relaxed children! Children know when their parents are getting support, they can feel it and it allows them to let down inside themselves. Children can be carrying family stress in their systems and then when support comes in they don’t have to carry it alone any more.

Attachment issues can sometimes result in an alpha child, one who is very difficult to parent because s/he is ‘in charge’ – see my Are You Parenting An Alpha Child article. Alpha children and their parents do well with some support to get their family back in balance and move the authority back to the parents.