Babies are born into the world dependent upon their parents for their very survival. It is most often the mother, but can be another loving, sensitive caregiver, who initially provides food and comfort for the newborn and to whom the infant develops a primary attachment. The baby and mother experience an intimate connection that gives the infant a sense of security. For infants, having a primary adult who is caring for them in sensitive ways, one who can perceive, make sense of, and respond to their needs, gives them a feeling of safety.
The sense of well-being that emerges from predictable and repeated experiences of care creates what the attachment theory pioneer John Bowlby called a “secure base.” This internal model of security enables children to develop well and explore the world around them. Secure attachment is associated with a positive developmental outcome for children in many areas, including social, emotional, and cognitive domains.
Attachment research points to the importance of the parent-child relationship in shaping children’s interactions with other children, their sense of security about exploring the world, their resilience to stress, their ability to balance their emotions, their capacity to have a coherent story that makes sense of their lives, and their ability to create meaningful interpersonal relationships in the future. Attachment lays a foundation for how a child comes to approach the world, and a healthy attachment in the early years provides a secure base from which children can learn about themselves and others.
ATTACHMENT, GENES, AND DEVELOPMENT
An individual’s personality develops from a transaction among a child’s innate, constitutional temperamental characteristics (such as sensitivity, outgoingness, moodiness) and the experiences that the child encounters as he or she develops within the family and with peers. The genes that children inherit have a large impact on their development, influencing the inborn characteristics of their nervous systems and shaping how people respond to them.
Genetic factors can directly shape the way the brain functions and, in this way, have a direct impact on how we behave. These factors are both the genes themselves and the “epigenetic” molecules on the chromosomes that control when, which, and how particular genes will be activated and create the proteins that shape neural structure. Because these epigenetic factors are shaped directly by experience, the activation of our genetic machinery is influenced by what we experience.
Experiences directly shape children’s development and can influence the specific activation of genes and the sculpting of the connections that make up the structure of the brain. As you can see, the nature-versus-nurture “controversy” is misleading because nature (genes and their regulation) requires nurture (experience) for a child’s optimal development. It is not one or the other. Genes optimal development. It is not one or the other. Genes and experience interact with each other to shape who we are.
So what can we do? The great news is that you can shape neural growth and function, and even epigenetic regulation, by the experiences you provide! And so here we will continue to dive deep into the specifics of what you can DO to optimize development.
Attachment refers to one very important aspect of the experiential forces that shape a child’s development. The human infant is one of the most immature of offspring, having a brain that is quite underdeveloped compared to how complex it will become as the child grows. Also, we as human beings are exquisitely social: our brains are structured to be in relationship with other people in a way that shapes how the brain functions and develops. For these reasons, attachment experiences are a central factor in shaping our development.
Some people worry that the findings of attachment research indicate that our early years create our destiny. In fact, the research shows that relationships with parents can change and as they do the child’s attachment changes.
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