At the age of two or three years, a period of preferences and attachments begins in a child's life. Even once-beloved grandparents can fall out of favor. But most of all, dads usually get it, who, after a hard working day, instead of a warm greeting, hear only one thing from their beloved offspring: “I want to go to my mother!”

If you were rejected

First and foremost, don't take it personally! Often this behavior comes from the confidence in the love of the second parent, says Dr. Katrina Swanson, a psychologist at the Early Childhood Center in Los Angeles. And who among us does not know how easily children change their preferences. This applies to everything: food, favorite toys, relationships. Children experiment with attachments and test their parents for strength. "What will you do if I push you away?" There should be only one answer: "I will love you just as much."

It is very important to understand that a child requires a mother not at all because he categorically does not like his father. Often dad is not involved at all.

Psychologists believe that there is nothing wrong with the fact that a child of two or three years old singles out one of the parents. On the contrary, this is a sign that the baby is developing emotionally, learning to make decisions independently, and a process of self-affirmation is taking place. A child makes new discoveries every day. He begins to understand that he can influence the world and explore the ways of this influence. What looks like a whim in reality is the first steps in a relationship and an intense learning process.

According to John Bowlby's theory of attachment, the formation of a special bond between the child and the primary caregiver in the first two years of life is a natural and necessary stage in human development. In fact, anyone can act as the main guardian: a grandmother, an older brother or sister, a nanny, but most often it is still a mother. It is she who spends the most time with the baby, takes care of him. The absence of such a strong attachment (for example, if the guardians of the child constantly replace each other) negatively affects his development.

So, a special attachment to the mother is natural and even useful. The most important thing is that the dad who has fallen into disfavor behaves correctly. Children tend to be spontaneous in expressing their emotions. They do not ask, they demand: “I want with my mother!”, “Let my mother do it!”. But this does not mean at all that at this age the child needs only one parent. Under no circumstances should dad go into the shadows. It's when your little one pushes you away that he needs you the most! No matter what the child says, stay close and do not let resentment tear you apart.

Most the right way reclaim baby disposition is to be together. There will always be time if there is a desire to devote it to bathing, walking, feeding and other routine parental duties. Any relationship is built only by labor and constant efforts in simple everyday things. This applies to both adults and children. To find an approach to the child, you need to know him. For a baby, nothing is more important than little things. Or rather, for him, they are not even trifles, but important components of his life. If you don’t know anything about “that very spoon”, and you don’t personally know the hero of the child’s favorite fairy tale, what is surprising in the fact that he is eager for his mother?

The daily repetition of the same actions gives the child a sense of security and comfort. The one who shares them with him every day will be the favorite of the baby. It happens that dads decide to shorten the distance. Buying a child a gift or treat once a week is much easier than spending time and energy on really being with him. All this works only the first time. Only the one who constantly takes care of him can become close to the baby.

Do what you can. Few fathers have the opportunity to share the daily care of a child 50/50 with their mother. Still, little is better than nothing. Brush your teeth with your child in the evenings, go for a walk on weekends, or feed breakfast on Sundays. The main thing is that this happens regularly. Create your own little traditions. Let him associate certain deeds and events with his dad.

However, it is not always the case only in the behavior of the father. It happens that it is worth dad to take up some business with the child, as a stream of remarks immediately falls on him. “It doesn’t hold like that, it doesn’t dress in the right way, and indeed, after feeding with dad, most of the food remains on the child, and not in it,” my mother’s criticism can be understood. Sometimes the elimination of the consequences of daddy's activities with the baby is worth more effort than doing everything yourself. And yet it is necessary!

If the father took at least a partial part in the daily care of the child from the first days of his life, then the attachment is likely to be evenly distributed. And even if at some point you suddenly hear the phrase “I want to go to my mother!”, it is much easier to bring the situation back to balance for dad, who has always been there.

Prepare your baby for separation from mom. Talk to him about mom having to leave and when she'll be back. It is better to do this in advance and it is important that both parents take part in the conversation.

Leaving a child for the whole day with a dad who has never been alone with him for more than an hour is not the best solution. Separation will be calmer if the time of mother's absence is increased gradually.

Don't leave in English. Slowly slipping out the door until the baby sees is a good solution only if the mother is simply not able to leave the house when the baby is crying. In all other cases, you must definitely say goodbye. The kid will be even more upset when he realizes that his mother ran away from him in secret.

It happens that a child is so attached to his mother that no games can distract him from thinking about her. In this case, you can change tactics and vice versa to talk about mom, look at her photos or videos, give some of her things to hold to help the baby feel safe again.

Try to keep your child busy while mom is still at home. If at the moment when she leaves, the baby will be carried away by a game or a book, the separation will be calmer. And even if he cries, it will be easier to calm him down.

It seems that the baby is carried away by the game and you can safely go to dinner, but as soon as you leave the room, the child immediately begins to look for you, and then - crying, hysteria and again playing together. Or you urgently need to run out to the store, and the child is throwing a concert, that he will not stay with his dad, he only needs his mother. What to do when the child is too attached to the mother? How to loosen a child's grip?

It is worth treating the strong attachment of the baby to the mother with understanding. After all, quite recently, just a couple of years ago, you and your child were one whole, in his first year you constantly came to cry, the second year you didn’t let go of yourself a single step, protected the little one from possible troubles. Therefore, such a strong love of the baby for his mother should be taken with great joy. In the near future, he will become embarrassed to show his love. And to everything else, it has been proven that children who are strongly attached to their mother in early age, subsequently become independent much faster.

The initial stages of independence

Many child psychologists advise teaching a child to be independent in early childhood. To do this, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bgames and knowledge, you need to remove all dangerous objects (sharp scissors, small parts, medicines, etc.), close sharp corners with overlays, install latches on the boxes, and blockers on the doors. First of all, all this is done for you. So you can be calm that the baby will not get hurt, and during the first movements of the crumbs around the apartment you will not worry about his safety. Of course, you will watch the process, but very, very quietly and imperceptibly.

AT maternity leave mothers devote themselves to the child. And it is right! But it is worth considering that at the age of three the baby will go to Kindergarten, and it will be very difficult for him to get used to a new way of life without a mother. In order not to face the crisis of adaptation and the immense affection of the baby, it is advisable to leave the child with one of the relatives for a short time. First for 15 minutes and gradually increasing the interval. Before leaving, talk with an adult child, explain why you are leaving and what time you will return, calm him down. But! It is important not to delay the breakup, otherwise the baby may simply not let you go, but burst into tears.

As my practice with relatives shows, everything is very, very ambiguous. My child has been left alone with his grandparents since he was a year old. He hardly noticed my absence. He let me go calmly, met me as if I had never left. Frankly, it upset me almost to tears. Well, how so, I'm a mother! After a year and a half, he already began to run to meet me, but he left just as cheerfully as before. But after two, a possessive attitude towards me appeared. "My mom", "mom, let's go", "mom?" - basic vocabulary. The kid does not want to go anywhere without me, he constantly checks where I am, demands my attention, although I am next to him almost 24 hours a day: I play, entertain, teach, develop, feed, and the like. While he is awake, my time is completely dedicated to him. And now soon in the garden, and it's hard for me to even imagine what awaits us. Therefore, I can say that all children are individual, and there is no panacea for children's affection. But there are some tips for solving the problem or at least weakening the child's grip.

Parenting Tricks

Some children become more attached to their mother, seeking protection from outside world. Therefore, it is so important to create an atmosphere of calm and comfort in the family. It is desirable that all family members be friendly to each other. Children, like a sponge, absorb all the emotions of adults and then give them to us in double or triple size.

Involve your child in communication with peers in the yard or in development centers, at creative workshops or holidays. Communicating on an equal footing with other children, the baby learns the charm of "freedom" from the adult world, learns to do without a mother.

Returning home, even after a fleeting absence, hug your child. Be sure to tell the little one how much you missed him and thought about him all this time. The kid needs to know that you love him, even when not next to him.

If, even after everything that has been tried, the child does not want to part with you, maybe he is simply not ready for this. And you need to delay your return to work. The main reason is that your baby needs you right here, right now. Your absence, especially a long one, 8 hours, can become a serious psychological trauma for the baby and lead to problems in the future.

Or maybe you yourself do not want to part with him? Watch yourself. Maybe you try to always be with your child and even during your absence call several times in half an hour to find out how he is doing? Or do you have a Skype video conference to make sure he doesn't get hurt? If so, it will be very difficult for your child to learn to leave you and cope with negative emotions about your absence.

The main rule says: be attentive to your children and try to act according to the situation. All children are attached to their mothers to one degree or another, some more, some less. But in almost all toddlers, with age, such a manifestation of love disappears. And, perhaps, soon you will dream that your baby will hug you, kiss you, or just sit on your arms for three minutes. Appreciate every minute spent together.

Photo Legion-Media.ru

For some children, the period of hyper-attachment passes fairly quickly and is almost painless. But here are some babies, usually between the ages of 10 months and up to 2-3 years,. Going to the shower, to the next room, or going out to the store is always accompanied by deafening crying. The child grieves, does not let anyone near him, and then does not leave his mother for a long time after her return. Increasingly, the baby requires mother's attention and closely monitors all her movements around the house.

Reasons for child attachment

I'm not talking about situations where the baby was left with a stranger, for example, with a new nanny, or those cases when the child was very scared. Here we will consider situations in which the child categorically prefers his mother even to very close and well-known relatives with whom he had an excellent relationship until recently.

A two-month-old child is much easier to leave with a grandmother even for the night than, say, a one-year-old. The kid just needs care and he doesn’t care who provides this care. But a one-year-old specifically needs a mother, and his grandmother may not suit him: she will whine and call for her mother.

The reason for this behavior lies in the child himself, because he actually only began to realize himself as a person separate from his mother. And since mom and he are two different person, then this means that mom can leave for good. Here the baby is afraid of losing her, because for him there are no concepts of time and space yet. Therefore, the child perceives even her short-term departure as a tragedy of a universal scale: he does not understand that his mother does not leave him forever, but only for a certain time.

In addition, there are several other reasons that can provoke such behavior of the baby.

Firstly, such a painful attachment of a child to his mother can be provoked by excessive mother's guardianship. In this case, the child feels that he is surrounded by danger from all sides, and only person who can protect him is his mother.

Secondly, a child can demonstrate such behavior if any tragedy has occurred in the family - or the death of someone close. If one of the adults significant to him suddenly disappears from the child’s field of vision, then he may develop a strong fear that his mother will disappear in the same mysterious way.

Thirdly, excessive attachment of the child to the mother may arise due to the indifferent or cruel attitude of other adults towards the child. If, for example, the father of a child now and then shows the baby “who is the boss in the house,” then by such behavior he provokes the child to become excessively attached to his mother.

What to do with child attachment

Depending on the situation, there are several ways to solve this problem. If you feel that you are going too far with guardianship, let him, as far as possible, know the world on his own. personal experience. Praise him for any manifestation of independence. He put on his pants, hat, socks - what a fine fellow you are! He himself ate porridge or soup - wonderful! I removed the toys on my own - that's what an assistant grows with my mother!

If your family has recently experienced the loss of someone close, then you need to convince the child as often as possible that the mother will not go anywhere and will always be there. Gradually, the child will get used to the fact that the mother, leaving, always returns. In this case, it is absolutely not worth leaving the house by deception: if the mother leaves without saying goodbye, secretly from the child, he is even more frightened when he discovers that the mother has unexpectedly disappeared for him.

The father, or other relatives who treat children harshly or indifferently, must be convinced that the child, nevertheless, due to his age, is not yet able to understand and accept the necessary rules of behavior. Therefore, if a child is guilty of something, it is not at all necessary to punish him, because you can simply explain his misdeed in words.

I thought that my daughter would throw a tantrum and not want to go to the garden. At the age of 2, she was terribly afraid of strangers - to the point of tantrums, from the mere glance of a stranger. But she went to the kindergarten very calmly, after 3 days she stayed for daytime sleep, and after a week for a full day. The first months she kept apart, but then she learned to be friends and play with children, she stopped being so shy from adults.

Try to bring the baby out more often. Try to find him friends with whom he will be interested, go to visit and invite guests to your home. Let the child know that the world around is not only mom, dad, grandmothers, but also. Enroll your child in a developmental center, in this way you will achieve two goals at once: you will spend time with your child in a fun and beneficial way, and at the same time you will find new friends.

Walk with your baby more often in new, interesting places - in neighboring yards, in a park or a forest. Let the baby see how huge, interesting and diverse the world around him is.

If the baby is sensitive to the care of the mother, then you need to show patience and wisdom. The most important thing is that you don’t need to scold the baby for his tantrums and screams. Have pity on him - after all, he is just very afraid that his mother will leave and not return.

Personally, I accustomed my children to my absence gradually. For example, in between times she said that I needed to leave for a while, and left the apartment for literally a couple of minutes. As soon as the children began to show anxiety, she immediately went back. We hugged them, as if after long separation, I praised them for their stamina and courage, told how I missed them, and after that we continued to go about our business. After a while, I could already calmly, knowing that they would not cry about my absence. And, of course, when I came home, I always brought my kids some kind of toy or treat.

Be patient, and sooner or later the child will understand that you should not be afraid of the mother's departure, because she always returns to her baby.

The phenomenon of the attachment of the child to the mother has become the subject psychological research in the 40s. 20th century and took shape in theory in the 50-60s. 20th century as a kind of opposition to Freud's orthodox psychoanalysis. An important external impetus to the development of the theory was the events of the Second World War and a large number of children separated from their parents and lost them. The unfavorable and sometimes pathological mental status of these children prompted the World Organization health care to address the issue of their mental health. The study of the problem and the report on this topic were entrusted to the English psychoanalyst John Bowlby (Fig. 3.2). In 1951, the text of the report was translated into 14 languages ​​and became the starting point for rethinking the essence of the "psychological work" that a mother does when raising a small child.

Rice. 3.2.

In the completed version of Attachment Theory 1, Bowlby, an ethologist, evolutionist, and psychoanalyst, defined attachment as follows: “Attachment behavior is one of the instinctive behavioral systems of the child, the functional purpose of which is to seek and achieve intimacy with someone who provides him with security.”

Bowlby insists that the mother is primarily a support for a sense of security, and not a source of satisfaction of nutritional needs (Bowlby ironically calls the orthodox analysis of the mother's importance for the child the "buffet theory"), since a well-fed and well-groomed child in the absence of a mother equally experiencing severe stress, leading to severe maladaptation. Langmeyer and Matejczyk 1 showed that children who were bombed during World War II but stayed with their parents were less neurotic than those who were evacuated to safety during the war but separated from their parents.

Stages of Attachment Development. Although attachment behavior is exhibited by many species of animals and is considered instinctive, it does not have a form of “ready” behavior at the time of birth. Attachment behavior is realized by neural structures "experience-awaiting" and depends on the specific experience (specific stimuli) that the infant encounters. This consideration is critical for Bowlby, since he believed that the behavior of an infant cannot be independent of real experiences that he encounters.

Stage 1 Undifferentiated targeting and signaling to any person begins at birth and lasts up to two to three months. Orientation forms are directed at any person and are manifested in the reactions of tracking with the eyes, grasping, clinging, smiling and laying.

Stage 2 Targeting a certain person (or person) and addressing him (them) signals lasts three to six months. At this stage, the child begins to single out the mother or the one who takes care of him from those around him, and it is to this person that the most behavioral reactions are directed, on the basis of which the future behavior of attachment will be formed.

Stage 3 Maintaining a close position to a specific person using locomotion and signals begins at the age of 6-7 months and lasts throughout the second and third years of life. In children who have not had close contact with the main person, the onset of this stage may shift by more late dates and begin after the first year of life. The first signs of the formation of attachment behavior - maintaining eye contact, smile, stretching arms and screaming, expressing joy when the mother arrives anxiety and crying as a reaction to her departure - are formed in the period of 4-6 months. By 6-9 months, 3/4 of the children observed were showing distinct attachment behavior. A month after the child began to show signs of attachment behavior to the mother, he began to show signs of attachment to one or more other people. Most often to the father, sibling or other caring adult, while the strength of attachment to the mother did not weaken. By the end of the first year of life and throughout the second year, children show stronger attachment: they cling to the mother, crawl (follow) her and loudly protest (shout and cry) at the threat of separation, greet her and crawl towards the reunion. Clinging becomes characteristic when the child is anxious or unwell.

The strength of attachment, however, is not only a consequence of maternal behavior, but is determined by the degree of activity of the child himself, who initiates the interaction, his demanding and persistent behavior strongly influences the form of contact that the mother shows. Mother becomes at this age base, serving as a support for the child in his exploration of the world around him. A child at this age makes "little journeys", moving away from the mother, then returning to her, to make sure that she is in place. During the second, but mostly the third year of life, attachment behavior appears with no less force and no less frequency than before. As the child becomes more and more familiar with the situation around him, he begins to better recognize the harbingers of an impending separation from his mother, for example, situations when the mother begins to prepare to leave, and reacts with protest to a wider range of situations when he may be without her.

Stage 4 Forming a partnership based on the awareness of the goals of the other. The most important acquisition in mental development the child becomes a complication of his cognitive map of space, in which the mother receives the status of an independent object, whose movements “in space and time” can be more or less accurately predicted, there is an understanding that her “movements in space” do not depend on him, but they can be predict.

After three years, there is a dramatic change in the behavior of the child, when he learns to endure the temporary absence of his mother, without losing a sense of balance and peace. Bowlby calls this moment of transition the "threshold of maturation" 1 . Most children become able to feel safe at this age if three conditions are met. Firstly, a person replacing the mother must remain with them, secondly, the mother and this person must be familiar and the child must know this (for example, he saw them together before, saw how they talked), and, thirdly, the child must know where his mother is and must be sure that contact with her can be renewed at his first request.

Questions for reflection

• How do you understand Bowlby's saying: "There have always been people who knew that a child was the father of an adult, the beginning of an adult"?
• Is there a relationship between culturally accepted traditions of caring for a small child and a “modal” personality type?
• What, in your opinion, explains the following stereotypes of caring for a small child: “a child must be fed by the hour, you can’t break the regime”; “you can’t take the child in your arms all the time - his back is bent”; “It is useful for a child to scream, it develops his lungs”?
• To what consequences for the individual can the described practices lead?
• Have you changed modern traditions baby care? How?

Attachment development in subsequent age periods.

During the next fourth and fifth years of life, attachment behavior manifests itself in moments of danger, children's quarrels, and when the child feels unwell. AT adolescence attachment behavior weakens, but does not disappear completely. New relationships are formed with a wider range of people, the first signs of romantic attachment to a peer or peer appear. During this period, representatives of social groups (professional, political, religious) fall into the sphere of attachment.

Attachment behavior continues to be found in all age groups. However, representatives of the older generation, for whom it is no longer possible to turn to even older ones as a support of attachment, attachment is found to younger people, but in comparison with them, from whom they seek protection and security. Bowlby believes that no form of human behavior is accompanied by such strong feelings as attachment. People to whom affection is directed are loved, their appearance is welcome, the threat of losing the object of affection causes anxiety, its loss causes feelings of anger and acute grief. Bowlby, in particular, believes that patriotism and love for the "monarch" are derived from a person's childhood affection. This can be confirmed by the president's speeches to his people at moments of particular danger or internal tension in the country. The President's annual messages can also be seen as a response to the manifestations of the adult population's need for affection. "Name the behavior of attachment in adult life regressive, - writes J. Bowlby, - actually means not to see the exceptionally important role that it plays in a person's life from birth to death” 1 .

Attachment to inanimate objects a special form of attachment behavior, which was first noticed by the British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, and later by J. Bowlby. These are special "property items", most often Stuffed Toys, which the child can hug and cuddle in moments of danger, objects that help children calm down, fall asleep or endure separation from their mother. The loss of such an object generates a negative violent emotional reaction and may be accompanied by symptoms of acute grief.

case from practice

“Roy's mother told me that if Roy falls, he doesn't wait to be reassured, but always asks for "Sey" - that's what he calls his rag. The other two mothers told me that when their sons came to their senses after the operation, the first thing they asked for was items. One of these boys was Mark, who had his tonsils removed when he was 6 years old. Recovering from anesthesia, he asked for his wooden “Squirrel”, and having received it, he calmly fell asleep.

Attachment to inanimate objects is formed from the age of nine months, but most often between the first and second years of life. Winnicott calls these objects "transitional objects" and believes that attachment to them reflects the stage of transition from "object relations" with a particular person to his symbolic substitutes, i.e. stage in a child's cognitive development. Bowlby believes that there is no reason to think that such attachment is indicative of a violation real relationship attachment of the child and his mother. He agrees that some components of attachment are redirected to such objects, but they still do not play a significant role in cognitive or emotional development child. Empirical analysis of the relationship of the child with inanimate objects allows Bowlby to say that in the case when the child interacts exclusively with a toy or an object that replaces it for a long time, ignoring the adult, it can be assumed that attachment behavior with real objects is disturbed.

Touching upon the topic of attachment to inanimate objects, one cannot help but recall that throughout all periods of the development of human civilization, a toy accompanied a person’s childhood (starting from the Paleolithic) and obviously performed many functions in the development of his psyche and adaptive behavior. It is impossible not to recall in this connection the Waldorf doll, the production of which is an important part of Waldorf pedagogy, Alan Milne's epoch-making story "Winnie the Pooh", where the toy plays a much greater role than the direct interactions of the child with the parent, and many other cultural anthropological materials confirming the importance inanimate objects in the mental development of the child.

The concept of "internal working model" - the most significant concept of Bowlby's theory, since it is in it that the main meaning of attachment theory is concentrated, and in addition, it is an impeccably psychological concept, since it speaks of a neoplasm in the human psyche. An "internal working model" is a cognitive representation of a child's experience of interacting with the outside world. This is a mental, psychic construction that is formed in experience and influences behavior in the environment. Bowlby uses the concept of "working model", which is semantically closer to the dictionary of terms of management theory, while he deliberately avoids unreasonable psychological interpretations, but points out the similarity of this concept with E. Erickson's term "basic trust", since basic trust can be understood as one from the types of "internal working model". In fact, each type of attachment has its own “internal working model”, which determines the configuration of behavior based on it. The "working model" is not realized by the individual, but through it he perceives and realizes himself and the world around him.