In the first part of this two-part blogpost series, we looked at the four attachment styles: secure, avoidant, ambivalent and disorganised attachment. We explored how they each manifest in babies as well as adults, and the early interaction patterns that can reinforce them. This is a strong foundation to then consider how we can practically shape the culture of baby rooms in nurseries to foster secure attachment.
In this blogpost, I’ll share five things we can work on to help foster secure attachment among the babies in the room. With each of the steps below, there is still work for you to do as an individual and as a baby room team, to think through how this step will look in the day to day life of your specific baby room context. To support with this, under each of the steps, I’ve suggested questions that you can take back to your team to help structure practical discussions around attachment.
1. Treat babies’ emotional distress as a fundamental part of separation
Secure attachment in a baby is characterised by emotional distress upon separation from their primary caregiver, assuming that they are old enough to be experiencing separation anxiety. This means that for a 9 month old entering nursery for the first time, significant emotional distress is more than likely to be part of the experience.
Seen through the lens of secure attachment, the distress makes complete sense. But it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. The distress involved in settling in is upsetting for parents/carers but it can also take a toll on baby room educators.
It is therefore essential that we plan for emotional distress by preparing parents/carers about what their baby is likely to experience and why this is the case. Explain to parents that settling in involves their baby finding new caregivers that they can trust, and that this trust takes time and effort to build. A baby only learns to trust us through our attentiveness and the extent to which we offer appropriate comfort and reassurance at the right times. On a practical level, this means that when a baby is settling in one person needs to be fully focused on that baby and their experience. Settling in more than one baby at a time can make this particularly difficult, making it harder for the babies to build that sense of familiarity and trust.
We also need to recognise that babies respond to emotional distress differently. They might proactively seek comfort and reassurance and quite methodically build up their store of familiarity and trust in others. Other babies though may deal with their emotional distress through more avoidant tendencies. They might want to be completely alone, not allowing anyone to come near them, let alone try and hold them.
While we want to respect the wishes of babies, we also need to be careful not to reinforce an avoidant approach to dealing with distress. Even for a baby who screams when anyone comes near them, we might choose to sit beside them as they cry. We might not directly look at them, but we want them to feel our presence and to know that we are here for them. When we do this, we are offering ourselves as a secure base and as a trustworthy caregiver and this helps to foster a more secure attachment style.
We also need to remember that it isn’t just about settling in. There are hundreds of micro-separations that happen in the life of a baby room. It might be a day where a baby’s key person is not there, and someone else steps in; or the first time they experience the toddler room as you start to think about them settling in there. We need to recognise that from the baby’s point of view, these moments of separation are a big deal. Even for those babies who don’t appear to see it as a big deal – perhaps they don’t cry or show distress – if we can use language and nonverbal communication to show how significant these transitions are, we are helping to foster more secure attachment. We might say something like: ‘Grace isn’t here today, and I can see you looking around for her and maybe you’re wondering where she is. It might feel a little funny today to not have Grace here, but I will be here all day, and we’ll try to have a lovely time.’
Questions for you and your team:
- How do we plan for babies’ emotional distress during separation? Do we do enough?
- What different ways have we seen babies respond to the emotional distress of separation?
- How do we respond to different manifestations of emotional distress?
2. Look at babies’ behaviours through an attachment lens
It isn’t helpful to label particular babies as ‘avoidant’ or ‘ambivalent’, but it can be helpful to notice tendencies in their behaviours and make sense of them through the lens of attachment. Attachment helps us to understand why babies do what they do.
For example, we might have a baby in the room who is particularly clingy. They always want to be picked up; they cry when an adult is not near to them or even when the adult is close but not in physical contact; they find it hard to engage with any of the provocations and activities that are set up for them; they are often anxious and irritable, and even when we respond to them by giving them physical affection, they seem to want something else and might wriggle in our arms.
Looking through an attachment lens, we can think about the baby as asking us a series of questions. If we could translate the behaviours, it might sound something like:
- Can I trust you?
- Can I really trust you?
- Are you absolutely sure that I can trust you?
- Do you love me?
- Do you really love me?
- Are you absolutely sure that you love me?
For a baby who is more securely attached, they are asking the questions ‘Can I trust you?’ and ‘Do you love me?’ but they are not asking these questions over and over again. However, whether or not the baby asks the question once or multiple times, they need to hear just one answer to their questions and that answer is ‘yes’. They don’t need to hear ‘Get over it and stop asking me the question’ which of course we would never say, but we might show through our response (e.g. saying ‘I can’t always pick you up, you’re going to need to be more independent’ and walking away).
Looking at a baby’s behaviours through the lens of attachment isn’t about judging the family and assuming that they have done the ‘wrong thing’ at home. In fact, many babies are not securely attached; psychologists think about 50% of people have a secure attachment style. We also know that attachment comes about through early experiences, but is also probably influenced by other things, like personality. So this is not a blame game – it’s not a chance to say ‘this baby has an ambivalent attachment style and that must be because the parents are not paying them enough attention at home’.
Having said that, there is also an amazing chance here to start a conversation with families about attachment. During the settling in process, we can have conversations with parents/carers about what they see in their babies’ behaviours: what have they noticed about how their baby copes with emotional distress? We might ask:
- ‘Do you find they need quite a lot of attention, or do they tend to be more independent?’
- ‘Do they have a close relationship with other adults besides you? How has that relationship developed over time? Have they been able to build up trust in others?’
This will give us some insight into a baby’s early attachment experiences and the behaviours they’re showing, and this in turn can feed into how we respond when they’re with us in the baby room.
Questions for you and your team:
- Think about the babies you have in the room at the moment. Do any of the babies’ behaviours stand out as particularly aligned with any of the attachment styles?
- Think about a baby’s behaviours in the last few days and try to see it through an attachment lens. Then look at your response to the behaviour through an attachment lens. Looking back, would you respond in a different way?
- How can we bring in more conversations about attachment with parents/carers? Is there an opportunity to understand more about babies’ early attachment experiences?
3. Name the thoughts and feelings that you think babies might be having
Mind-mindedness is fundamental for establishing a warm and loving relationship with a baby, and for fostering secure attachment. Mind-mindedness involves seeing and treating a baby as a human being with thoughts and feelings, rather than as an object to be moved around. It’s a basis for secure attachment because it enables a baby to feel seen and heard.
Mind-mindedness is visible through how we speak to babies. For example, if we say ‘I can see you’re really sad, I think you might be missing mummy right now’, we are being mind-minded because we are recognising the baby’s emotions and the thoughts these might relate to. While that sounds easy, we often work in a context where we use distraction rather than recognition of feelings as the basis for immediate connection. Rather than holding the distress of a baby when they are separated from their primary caregiver, we might instead say: ‘Come on, let’s go and find your friends in the garden, they’re having a lovely time!’ It’s not that going to see friends in the garden is a bad idea, but in responding in that way, we are essentially pretending that the baby isn’t showing us their distress and we are invalidating the very valid reason for them to be upset!
Imagine you’ve just gone through a really bad break-up and you turn up at a friend’s house and you’re already in tears when you arrive. And they open the door to you and rather than saying anything about your emotional state or what you’ve been through, they just say ‘Come on! Let’s go through to the garden and see my tomato plants – they’re doing so well!’ You would probably think that you had an insensitive friend and you would feel unseen, unheard and ultimately unloved. How different would it feel if, on the other hand, they said, while taking you in their arms for a cuddle, ‘Oh goodness, I can see how upset you are, you’ve been through so much and I imagine this feels completely overwhelming… come in and I’ll get you a cup of tea’?
It’s the same for babies. We don’t want to rush to distract them from their feelings – instead, we want to recognise their feelings. Debbie Brace, founder of Baby Talk and Play, explains this beautifully and gives us a practical way to do this: say what you see of the baby’s emotions and then say what you think they might be experiencing. For example, we might say ‘You’re crying and you’re pulling away from me. I think you’re really sad. I don’t think you wanted daddy to go; I think you wanted him to stay with you.’
Sometimes we take the view that we shouldn’t mention ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’ because that will upset the babies – and it may, for a little while, it may be upsetting for them to remember what they’re missing. But there is also validation in finding out that someone else understands what you are going through, and understands that you might have a gnawing sense of separation that makes it hard to play and enjoy the day. If we can help to hold babies’ feelings by recognising them and making sense of them together, we are giving them such a beautiful foundation for doing this for themselves over time. The benefits of this outweigh the momentary upset that a baby shows us when we say ‘I think you might be missing mummy’.
Questions to ask yourself and your team:
- When is the last time that you distracted a baby rather than holding their feelings? What would a more mind-minded response have looked like? When is the last time that you held a baby’s feelings: can you remember what you said and did to hold that feeling that they were having?
- Mind-mindedness is absolutely something you can practice. A great project for your team is to record interactions that you have at different times of the day and 1) spot the things you say that are mind-minded, 2) spot the opportunities where you could have said something mind-minded and share what that could have been.
4. What’s convenient for us isn’t necessarily what’s good for the baby
The reality is that what makes our own lives easier is often not most helpful for fostering secure attachment.
Let’s explore this through a scenario…
A baby is playing on the floor with a wooden pop-up toy. If the baby pushes down the rods into the holes, they spring back up. A baby is trying to get the rods in the holes. One time, they manage to get the rod in one of the holes but the angle and force is just right for the rod to pop back up with quite a bit of force.
Baby A cries out in surprise and looks around immediately to find the adult they most trust in the room. They actively seek comfort and reassurance from their secure base, by crying out and looking at the person whose attention they want. You, as the secure base, approach the baby to check that they’re alright and say ‘Oh my goodness! That was a shock wasn’t it! I think that gave you a shock’. In response to your warmth, they let out a few more sobs and hold their arms out for a cuddle, which you give. After a few moments of snuggling, the baby can either return to exploring this particular toy or move onto something else.
Baby B, experiencing the same thing, shows – if you were looking closely – an expression of shock at what has just happened and they stop exploring for a second, drawing their body back. They do not look around for anyone else and they do not actively seek comfort and reassurance. Most likely, their reaction goes unnoticed even though they had the same feelings of shock and surprise as Baby A. They pause in their explorations for a while and then crawl away to look at something else.
Which is the more convenient response? In the Baby B scenario, it isn’t clear that we are needed and we get to carry on with whatever else we were doing. Perhaps we were busy clearing up from snack or laying out another activity, and with Baby B’s response, we can carry on doing that. In the Baby A scenario, we’ve been interrupted and we’re more likely to feel that we need to stop what we’re doing to respond to the baby’s visible upset.
When we look at it through an attachment lens, Baby A’s response is generating a stronger attachment to their responsive caregiver. They are testing out their secure base, and getting the feedback that it works – you will respond with warmth and reassurance! The internal working model of secure attachment (‘I can trust the world’, ‘People give me the love and care I need’) is strengthened. On the other hand, with Baby B, the scenario feeds into their avoidant approach. They work on the basis that there might not be a secure base that they can draw reassurance from, and because no adult gets involved and responds to their emotions, this view of the world is reinforced. An avoidant internal working model of attachment (‘I can’t depend on others’) is strengthened.
What Baby B needs to counter their avoidant approach is something that is wholly inconvenient to us! They need us to be close enough to recognise the moment of upset and confusion when the toy pops up. Even though they are not looking actively to us for comfort or reassurance, they need us to respond with: ‘Oh dear! That was a bit of a shock wasn’t it…’ and try to make eye contact about what has just happened, showing them that their emotions and thoughts have been seen and heard. In doing this, we are inserting the secure base back into their internal working model and the voice that says ‘I can’t depend on others’ is challenged. In this scenario, we need to be so close and attentive that the option of clearing away a snack or setting up another activity isn’t there.
In the next section, we’ll explore this from a planning perspective because of course, in reality, someone needs to be clearing away snack and setting up the next activity. So we need to think about how to balance these needs with the fostering secure attachment through this more intensive approach to providing a secure base.
Questions for yourself and your team
- Think about the babies in your room – do you have any Baby As and any Baby Bs?
- What is your vision of the secure base? Is it someone who is there when needed, or does it go further than that, actively looking for thoughts and emotions as they come and go and are fleetingly expressed?
- What do you do when you notice that a baby has been upset but they haven’t actively sought your comfort? Can you think of a time when this has recently happened?
5. Plan with the secure base in mind
Let’s build on what we talked about above: you need to balance being available as a secure base (even to those babies who do not actively seek a secure base during exploration) and getting things done in the room that need to be done. So how does this work?
You can approach planning with this balance in mind…
If you’re on a baby room team, for each part of the day think about who will be doing what and who will be the secure base for the babies. The person acting as that secure base will be low to the ground, at the level of the babies, and attentive to what the babies are showing us through their facial expressions and utterances (even when these are not directed at anyone else).
If you work in a very small team, or maybe you even work alone, you’ll need to think differently about being the secure base. You will need to move between times when you are getting done what needs to be done and other times when you are fully present as the secure base with the babies. This is more effective than always half doing one thing and half doing another, for example, trying to be alert to the babies while at the same time getting the nap area ready for after lunch.
You can also plan around the particular babies that are in your room. Perhaps you have a baby that you know will seek your attention and reassurance when they need it, so you can be more flexible as a secure base in relation to this baby. On the other hand, if you have a baby showing avoidant tendencies, you’ll need to be closer to them to see what is really going on and opportunities to offer comfort even when they aren’t demanding it.
When you set up new provocations and activities, think about them in terms of the secure base. For example, if you’re setting up an outdoor creative provocation, you’ll want to think through where you will be as a secure base for the babies. If you have some of the younger babies lying on their backs and looking up at the sky through the leaves of the trees, you’ll want to think about lying or beside them so that they can feel your presence and physical warmth. You can talk or sing gently as a way to remind them that you are there as the secure base to return to.
Questions for you and your team:
- How do you plan with the secure base in mind? How could you bring the secure base more firmly into your planning? Is there a way to divide up the roles and responsibilities among the team, dynamically, so that there is always someone in that secure base position? Or can you divide your time more explicitly so that you’re clear about the times of the day where your priority is to act as the secure base?
- Look at your daily routine, and think about the day from the perspective of a particular baby in the room (choose one of the babies actually in your room to make it feel more real). As you think about each part of the day, can you identify who would be their secure base at each time and how accessible and close this secure base would feel?
- Are there particular babies that you’d like to support to become more proactive in their engagement with the secure base?
Making a commitment to action
There’s been a lot to think about in this blogpost! Choose one thing to share with another person, and choose one thing that you’d like to do differently. This can be a tiny thing – perhaps you’ll make a commitment to spend 10 minutes of your day with a baby who doesn’t often proactively seek comfort and reassurance while playing, or perhaps you’ll ask a parent/carer of a baby who is settling in how they are with seeking comfort at home. Remember to keep coming back to your learning around attachment, because this stuff never gets old! The most significant and positive impact we can have on babies while they are with us in the baby room is through taking opportunities to foster more secure attachment.