Breaking the cycle
All it takes, sometimes, is just one look.
From the moment they entered the world, Amy Robinson’s children spoke to her.
They told her when they were happy or sad, hungry or sick, tired or playful – long before they voiced their first words.
Now, even with just a quick look or gesture, Robinson can communicate with her kids, imparting to them a feeling of love and security that often can’t be conveyed by words alone.
Bonding is the natural process of falling in love with your child.
It happens when a mother gazes into her newborn’s eyes, when a father smiles as his baby coos, when a caregiver picks up a crying infant. It occurs through subtle motions, during moments when parents have no idea it’s even happening.
According to decades of research, the quality of that connection between parent and baby – especially the lack of it – can help or hurt a child well into adulthood.
Robinson didn’t know a thing about bonding and attachment when she gave birth for the first time seven years ago. She was 15. She also was homeless. Robinson had little support. When she was 10 years old, her mother left the picture. When her baby, Faith, was 3 months old, Faith’s father also abandoned them.
The odds certainly were against her. Because of the poverty and neglect she experienced as a child, Robinson was at risk to repeat the cycle. Determined not to, the young mother made some changes. She got a job at a downtown restaurant. She found a cheap but safe place to live. She worked toward a GED at Crosswalk.
In addition, Robinson also took a parenting class for teens – a course based on a locally developed, award-winning program now recognized worldwide for improving the relationship between caregivers and young children.
It’s called the Circle of Security Project – an early intervention program that teaches parents how to bond with their children in order to build “secure attachment,” a relationship in which caregivers provide the support for children to explore their environment.
Established in Spokane about a decade ago by three psychotherapists – Glen Cooper, Kent Hoffman and Bert Powell – along with Bob Marvin at the University of Virginia, the Circle of Security is based on more than 40 years of research in the field of attachment and bonding.
The connection between baby and caregiver not only influences brain development, according to Circle of Security founders and other studies, but also affects children’s ability to trust, their self-esteem and the way they view the world.
These early interactions also teach kids how to control their emotions while providing them with their first model for intimate relationships.
By helping parents connect with their infants, the Circle of Security Project hopes to prevent problems down the road as well as create lasting social change, Hoffman said, who has spent 12 years teaching bonding and attachment to teen mothers and fathers in Spokane.
“Parents are hard-wired to be successful as parents. It’s how we survive as a species,” said Hoffman. “When we don’t fall in love with our babies, when we don’t provide the security that is in our nature to provide, it is a sign that something has gotten in the way. …
“Our work is to help parents find out what gets in the way so that the natural tendency to fall in love can happen.”
Recognizing ‘shark music’
Robinson, who was juggling work, school and parenting alone, began taking Hoffman’s class when Faith was just a few months old.
“I can remember times when she’d throw fits and it would stress me out,” said Robinson. “It’s really hard. If you don’t know how to calm them down, you can end up hurting them.”
Through the class, which she attended once a week for two years, Robinson said she learned to recognize her “shark music” – that fearful state of mind that triggered the urge to walk away from Faith.
From her work with Hoffman, Robinson learned that it was her experiences in the past that caused her to withdraw emotionally from her little girl.
Her anger, she realized, wasn’t caused by her baby; it was the result of being abandoned by her own mother as well as Faith’s father when she was most vulnerable. What Hoffman and other therapists call “unregulated affect” became known as “shark music” to Robinson and other young mothers at Crosswalk. That state of mind – their feelings of helplessness and fear – clouded the way they viewed a particular situation, which then affected their reaction.
“We see that child abuse is most often tied to the parent seeing a child’s difficult or negative behavior as intentional and deliberate,” Hoffman said. “Even when a child is several weeks old, parents who abuse will think that child is crying ‘on purpose, just to get back at me.’ This, of course, is a distortion of reality.”
In their work with parents, the Circle of Security founders have seen that in every case, these parents “have much that is unresolved in their own history regarding painful feelings and memories from an adult who was difficult or frightening in their own childhood,” Hoffman said.
As parents become aware of this, they realize their babies are seeking connection, not mere attention, Hoffman said. This knowledge spurs them to change their behavior. By tracking their shark music, he said, they can then recognize the triggers that cause them to be angry or neglectful of their children.
“People often don’t know how to empathize with other people, let alone their kids,” Robinson said, recalling how she discovered how her own past affected the way she took care of Faith. “They tell their kids, ‘Knock it off’ or ‘Go to your room,’ instead of asking, ‘Why is my child sad?’ … If everybody knew what their shark music was, they’d be able to raise their kids better.”
Turning to parents
Although she had the best intentions for Faith, Robinson didn’t always understand her child or know what to do when the baby cried or sought comfort.
She wasn’t even aware of her own reactions to Faith until she saw herself on video.
As part of their work with parents, Circle of Security founders videotape parents as they interact with their children in a room with toys during an “Ainsworth Strange Situation.” Named after attachment pioneer Mary Ainsworth, the situation involves the caregiver leaving the child for a few minutes with a stranger then coming back into the room. How the child responds to the caregiver’s return determines the type of attachment that exists between the two of them.
According to the Circle of Security Project and other research, 55 percent to 65 percent of children nationwide are securely attached to their caregiver. That means they have confidence in their mother or father, who communicates and empathizes with them while providing the needed support and security for the child to explore his or her environment.
When distressed, a securely attached child will seek comfort from the caregiver and then be able to use the comfort to calm down and return to play or exploration, Powell explained. “A problematic attachment would be one in which, when the child is frightened, instead of coming to the parent they either run away from the parent or simply freeze and do not know what to do even though their parent is available,” he said. While this happens once in a while to everyone, it becomes a problem when children consistently cannot turn to their parents for comfort.
About 20 percent to 25 percent of parent-child attachments fall under the category of “avoidant,” which is characterized by a lack of physical and emotional contact. The parent encourages the child to be independent but doesn’t provide the comfort and support when the child is crying or in need of closeness.
About 10 percent of the attachments are described as “ambivalent,” because the caregiver doesn’t provide consistency and a secure base for the child, forcing the child to become overly emotional and dependent.
“Disorganized” attachment is when the caregiver is either frightened of the child or frightening to the child, or both. According to Circle of Security research, only 5 percent to 15 percent of the population falls under this category, but that percentage skyrockets to 80 percent among maltreated infants.
“Parents who have secure relationships with their children usually know how to foster healthy relationships without knowing that they know,” Cooper said. “Parents who grew up in secure relationships may simply pass on their experience. Some parents with secure relationships with their children have had to learn how to foster healthy relationships because security was not part of their own childhood.”
Families that are considered high-risk – those who suffer from poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence, mental illness and other factors – tend to experience lower rates of security, he said.
By watching a video of herself and Faith, as well as those of other mothers with their kids, Robinson discovered a completely different way to relate with her firstborn.
She used to focus on the basics – feeding Faith, getting her dressed, making sure she was clean and safe, she said. After taking the parenting class and watching the videos, she became aware of the good things she had already been doing, as well as the ways she could improve as a parent.
“I never looked her in the eyes,” said Robinson. “If you can’t look your child in her eyes, they’re missing a piece of trust that they will carry on with them as adults.”
Widening Circle of Security
Robinson’s experience isn’t universal, of course, but studies have shown that Circle of Security can make a difference in the lives of families.
A recent case study involving 65 parents and their children enrolled in the federally funded Head Start program in Spokane showed that only 20 percent of them had secure attachment. After the caregivers learned about attachment theory and Circle of Security protocol, that percentage grew to 53 percent.
These results, among others, have since generated both hope and excitement in the research and clinical arenas.
Cooper, Hoffman and Powell are working to find ways to make Circle of Security more available to parents in Spokane. Although the three are heavily involved in research and training, other therapists in the area have received training in the Circle of Security model and protocol. Community-Minded Enterprises, a nonprofit catalyst organization which facilitates and enhances community well-being, is also seeking funding for a six-session DVD training series on the Circle of Security Project that could be distributed both locally and nationally.Years after taking Hoffman’s class at Crosswalk, Robinson still applies the lessons she learned to the way she parents Faith, now 6, and Joshua, who’s 17 months old.
By becoming aware of the neglect she suffered as a child and her issues with abandonment, Robinson resolved not to make the same mistakes with her own children. She will always love her mother, she said, but she wants to be a different kind of parent.
“It should be easy, but it’s not,” said Robinson, a stay-at-home mother who’s been married to Joshua’s father for two years.
“It’s not just teen mothers. A lot of people don’t know how to take care of their children.”