A Brief Guide to Attachment Styles and What They could Mean for Your Child

If you have been around the therapy or child-development world for a while, you may have encountered terms like “anxious attachment” or “avoidant attachment.” Hearing these terms as a parent may cause worry. Is it possible that a child could get permanently set in a pattern? Or that you’ve done something wrong as a parent? Not necessarily! In this post, my goal is to unpack what these attachment styles look like, and what they can mean for your children. 

What Attachment Styles Tell Us

Attachment styles describe how children learn to manage emotions and relationships based on their experiences with caregivers. They are adaptive responses, not fixed traits. Children can change attachment patterns over time when relationships are supportive and responsive.

Here’s a simple breakdown:

1. Secure Attachment: Children feel safe seeking comfort. They trust adults will respond. These kids can manage emotions more effectively because they know support is available.

2. Anxious (also known as “Ambivalent”) Attachment: Children may worry about adult availability. They often seek reassurance intensely, sometimes repeatedly. This can emerge when care is loving but is perceived as inconsistent.

3. Avoidant Attachment: Children learn to minimize emotional needs and rely on themselves. This may appear as independence or emotional distance, often when caregivers are perceived as less responsive to emotional cues.

4. Disorganized Attachment: Children show confusion or fear in seeking comfort. Often linked to what a child could perceive as a stressful or unpredictable environment. These children can show both approach and avoidance behaviors.

Why Attachment Styles Shouldn’t Be Used As Labels

It’s important to remember that these attachment patterns don’t define a child’s future. Attachment patterns are responses to early experiences. Research shows that with consistent, responsive caregiving, even later in childhood, children can shift toward secure attachment (Cassidy et al., 2013).

Tip for parents: Watch for small moments of connection. Even brief interactions, (examples like reading a book together or simply responding calmly to frustration) can foster security.

Attachment Can Look Different Across Settings

A child may show secure attachment at home but anxious behaviors at school, and that is actually fairly normal. Attachment is relationship-specific and context-dependent. It’s also dynamic; a child’s attachment patterns evolve with experience.

Research Snapshot

• Ainsworth’s “Strange Situation” studies demonstrated that children’s behaviors during brief separations predict later social and emotional outcomes.
  
  

• Longitudinal research shows securely attached children tend to have better coping skills, higher self-esteem, and healthier relationships (Sroufe, 2005).
  
  

Curious to Learn More? 

Recommended Reading

• Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting by Dr. Becky Kennedy

• The Nurture Revolution by Dr. Greer Kirshenbaum

• Parenting from the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel, M.D., and Mary Hartzell

Watching

• Circle of Security parenting videos  from www.circleofsecurityinternational.com
  
  

Other Resources from Post: 

Cassidy, J., Jones, J. D., & Shaver, P. R. (2013). Contributions of attachment theory and research: a framework for future research, translation, and policy. Development and psychopathology, 25(4 Pt 2), 1415–1434. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579413000692 

Sroufe L. A. (2005). Attachment and development: a prospective, longitudinal study from birth to adulthood. Attachment & human development, 7(4), 349–367. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616730500365928