317. Q&A: My 5-year-old prefers my husband, does that mean she is more securely attached to him?

Dr. Sarah (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Hi. Welcome back everybody. We are answering listener questions today here Beyond the Session segment of the Securely Attached podcast, and we have Dr. Emily Upshur. How are you?

Dr. Emily (00:55):

Good to be here always.

Dr. Sarah (00:57):

Okay, so this is our namesake question being the securely attached podcast question is about attachment. So this parent writes, Hey, big fan of your podcast, but something I haven’t heard yet is had a repair attachment with a child who has never had the foundational attachment from birth. I’m struggling with my five-year-old daughter. She’s securely attached to her dad, but not me. Must a hard thing to feel.

(01:26):

I also, I have a lot of thoughts about this. One is I feel like we could probably talk a little bit about some misconceptions about attachment relationships because listen, it’s very possible that this parent knows for certain that this is the issue that their child does not have a secure attachment relationship with them, does have a secure attachment relationship, their dad with dad. There are things that can happen that can cause that, I don’t want to deny that possibility, but that is far more rare and there’s usually a very specific thing that we can put our finger on that would be likely to cause that some type of significant separation or rupture that made that attachment relationship unavailable to this child and one parent being able to do it and the other not for whatever reason. So yes, if that’s the case, we can talk a little bit about ways to repair that for sure, but I wager that there’s a higher probability that we might be dealing with parental preference and family dynamics and relationship dynamics and maybe emotion regulation stuff more likely than attachment. And maybe just distinguishing those two things. What do you think?

Dr. Emily (02:48):

Yeah, I mean I definitely think that that’s really, I hear that in this question too. I don’t want to dismiss if there was even a postpartum depression or something that could have to really strain that attachment bond early years. But from this we can only guess. But from this question I’m thinking it’s like there’s a really big difference between the attachment relationship and my day-to-day relationship with either parent and what that might look like. If my kid’s like absolutely only daddy can give me a bath, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a secure attachment to that and not to me, right? Yeah, I think that that is really important and how to differentiate those, the attachment bond using this listener’s words with sort of relationship dynamics.

Dr. Sarah (03:46):

So just to get really clear, I do think this is a common misconception or misunderstanding about attachment. So the idea of when we refer to a relationship as secure or insecure in its attachment, we are talking all relationships have some type of attachment. We’re looking at the quality of that attachment. If it is secure, that child or those two people in relationship with one another who have a secure attachment to one another because also our attachment styles can differ from relationship to relationship, but if there is a parent-child relationship that is considered secure, what we’re likely to see is that when that child is in some type of stress, distress or threat, when their fight or flight system lights up, do they consistently and reliably expect their parent to be a safe harbor for them and do they go to that parent expecting to be soothed seen and made to feel safe? Those are, so I think what people don’t realize is that our attachment systems are actually threat related to our threat systems. They’re like a survival mechanism. So when we’re in danger, do we seek out that secure base, that safe person?

(05:19):

What it doesn’t really mean is you were saying, I’m like in our day-to-day life, do I butt heads with my kid? Do they give me a whole lot of pushback, but they listen to the other parent? Do they save their most frustrating behaviors? For me, actually that could be an indication that they feel particularly safe with you. Actually, we know that kids save their messiest stuff for the safest person in their life. So how well we get along and how much they cooperate with me or listen to me or even just how much they get. Maybe I am struggling with my own frustration with a behavior in the moment that makes me over time someone that they’re like they go to dad because they do think dad’s going to be less either more accommodating or less reactive maybe or less, more predictable. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are not securely attached to the other parent or exclusively securely attached to the parent. They’re going to help them navigate challenges. It’s really about that. If I’m panicking, if I think I’m in danger, who do I run to?

Dr. Emily (06:39):

Yeah, I really like that you brought up the dynamic of getting all the icky behaviors. It can actually be a really secure attachment because I also think maybe that’s a common misconception. You can have a kid who’s really difficult with you and won’t put on their shoes for you or won’t do their homework for you or just gives you all the business, you get all the pushback, all the resistance, or just

Dr. Sarah (07:10):

Pushes your buttons extra because they’re actually looking for a release and they know that if I push on this, I can just release and I feel safe enough to do that with you because I can just act like a total jerk with you and I know I’m being a jerk with you, but I just need to be a jerk. I feel jerky on the inside and I can show that to you.

Dr. Emily (07:29):

Or you and I empathize with the parent. I’m often this parent who gets a disproportionate amount of that because it does end up feeling like what is going on? Why do I only get the short end of this stick here? But I do want to emphasize that that can also be secure attachment, that they feel safe enough with you that they can push your buttons and know that it’s okay that they can say no to you. That doesn’t always happen in other relationships. So I do want to highlight that just because your child is either less compliant or less nice or amenable or sort of easygoing with you doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have. It sometimes means you have a very secure attachment with your child. So I just wanted to highlight that point that you made. I think that’s really important.

Dr. Sarah (08:17):

And it doesn’t mean also that there isn’t room to improve your relationship or the quality of your relationship either. You don’t have to have an insecure attachment relationship between you and your child for there to be low hanging fruit to make life day-to-day life in your relationship with your child a little bit easier sometimes. I see this a lot. I mean, I see this a lot in my own house because this is me, but where if you have a kid who can get hot fast or isn’t as flexible and okay, there’s a potential meltdown around the corner, so I’m going to walk lightly and so I maybe will accommodate a little bit more or avoid dealing with something a little bit more, give my boundary a little bit quicker. And I do that. Basically I give a give give till I don’t have anything left to give, and I flip all the way to the other side and I become really, really annoyed, icky, straight up dysregulated, right? And I’m yelling and I’m being annoying and I’m watching myself do it, and I can’t stop that inconsistent like ping ponging can really strain your relationship with your child and it can create these loops that continue to happen because when we show up in that inconsistent way where we’re permissive, permissive, permissive, snap over to authoritarian, what happens is our kids tend to feel a little anxious and there’s this sort of anticipatory anxiety of which mom is going to show up.

(09:57):

Am I going to get the one that does what I really want her to do, or is I going to get the one that yells at me and I don’t know which one? And almost not knowing is worse than getting the mom that’s mean and yelling. So I’m going to push every button I possibly can to just get her to flip over to the mean mom because that will actually reduce my anxiety in a weird icky way. And that happened. I mean this literally, I’m working on this.

(10:23):

I speak this from lived, lived experience. So zero judgment if this is your reality. But I actually feel very confident that I have a very secure attachment with my daughter and we get in this loop all the time. So that’s to me, an issue of family system dynamics and it’s a lot about my bandwidth and my emotion regulation and also my consistency in setting and holding limits when I know it might mean there’s going to be a meltdown and I have to stop avoiding that because I don’t want to deal with it in that moment. I have to sort of be like, I’m going to say no the first time that I know I need to say no and just let you release then instead of trying to dance around it until I lose it, and then you lose it. So all this to say is there may be a genuine challenge you are facing in your relationship with your five-year-old daughter. The woman who’s writing this in, I don’t, I don’t want to say, oh, because you might actually not be talking about attachment, therefore this isn’t really a problem. It genuinely can be really, really challenging and you may still, maybe the solution to this is about looking at family system dynamics and the dances that you get into with your kids rather than really looking at attachment.

(11:49):

So I just want to pose that as a possibility. But I think let’s just say for example, we don’t have all the information and we don’t have this mom here to ask her. Let’s just assume that we’re dealing with a situation where, yes, this parent really does know. Maybe because done some, some family therapy or they’ve had some type of professional assessment done where someone has really been able to say, yes, given your child’s developmental history and your family history and these specific events that occurred during these formative sensitive periods where attachment can take place, there was a disruption. Maybe it was someone was sick and wasn’t able to be, do the secure base kind of attachment stuff that helps form that relationship. Maybe it’s because someone had to go away for a while or maybe your child was sick. Sometimes kids are in the NICU or have medical issues. There’s a million reasons why one could develop this insecure attachment relationship between the parent child. It does happen.

(12:59):

And also the things, the dance that we were describing earlier, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an attachment related issue. If that was chronically happening in the early years, it could result in an insecure attachment that is also part of what can cause that. So let’s just say hypothetically, we know for a fact this mom is accurate in saying she does not have a foundational attachment with me from birth. She does with her father, and I want to repair our attachment bond. Now, what would be some of the things that we would encourage a parent child dyad to start working on to repair that attachment relationship?

Dr. Emily (13:40):

Well, the child is five I think from the question. So for me, we’re always going to start with the slow, cold, calm, connected moments. I’m not trying to win this battle when everybody’s dysregulated, when there’s demand, when something is going on. So just to set the stage of the setting, I always encourage parents, by the way, who are struggling with a real discreet event that happened that disrupted or aren’t or just want to improve their attachment bonds.

Dr. Sarah (14:11):

Yeah, these strategies will work whether you have a secure attached, whether your child or not. If you get into loops and dances with your kid, it’ll still help.

(14:17):

Yeah, it’ll still be good. But my first and foremost thing I always recommend is child-led play. And that can be for this child’s five, so that might still be sit down on the floor. But child-led play means actually, really we are not instructing. It is not a teaching moment. We are not directing. We’re not even doing, oh, that car might have gone too fast. We want to be really quiet in our commentary and really listen to what our children are saying in those moments and mirror and echo and reflect and be curious.

(14:53):

I want to just really quick distinction. Child-led play is not the same thing as independent play because independent play can also be described as child-led play, but we sometimes drop the independent child-led independent play versus child-led play with you fully present, fully participating in the space with them, but you are not. We’re going to talk a little bit, I imagine, Emily, but so we’ll talk about what your role is in that play, but you are part of this. It’s a dyadic or parent child. We often call that dyadic intervention where you are setting aside time for the two of you to have present connected one-on-one time where the child is leading the play.

Dr. Emily (15:43):

Right? I mean, that’s really important. It’s really important that you’re in it with them. To your point, you’re engaged. But like I said, you’re not intruding upon it, right? You’re curious about it. Child led, think of it, make a visual. You’re literally following your child’s thoughts, you’re following their behaviors. You’re sort of curious. You’re going along with the ride.

Dr. Sarah (16:02):

You’re tracking them.

Dr. Emily (16:05):

And you’re going along on their journey.

Dr. Sarah (16:07):

Right. I often will say, and I didn’t make this up, I get this from Ry, which is a parenting philosophy that I follow that’s really into this kind of play. But the child is the director, the producer, and the lead actor of the play, and you are just a supporting role. Or another metaphor is if anyone has ever done improv, you are not allowed to say no. In improv, you have to say yes. And so if the child throws something your way, you have to sort of be like, ah, yes, and you can’t shut a thing down in improv, and I think that actually is a nice rule for child led dyadic play also.

Dr. Emily (16:54):

Yeah, no, I love that. You’re definitely trying to stay away from judgment saying no cautionary tales, teaching, containing it in those kinds of ways. That’s a number one. That’s always where I love to start. I also like to not have that child-led play go on for too long. If you’re a parent who loves doing it, great, but I say still even don’t go on for too long. I usually give the frame of about five minutes for a child of five years old, five minutes. That means because it’s actually very hard. This thing we’re saying, stay attuned, stay engaged. It’s not that easy to do that for extended periods of time. So it’s really about quality over quantity.

Dr. Sarah (17:34):

Especially starting at a very low, low baseline. We’re talking about because using this in this context, you can use this at any point in your relationship with your child, and it’s going to be a nice fill up connection building time. But if really using it specifically as an intervention to repair attachment ruptures, we have to remember that we’re starting with low reliable trust and safety in my ability to be seen soothed and made safe with you. So we actually want this to be small bite-sized increments.

Dr. Emily (18:17):

And we want it to be successful.

Dr. Sarah (18:18):

Exactly. That’s why we want it to always end on this. Not always, but we, as much as possible, we want it to end on a high note.

Dr. Emily (18:25):

We want to end on before what we call spoils and kids. There’s all sorts of things that can make that go left, but your tolerance for any behavior is really high. As the parent, you’re in it for a short period of time. The time you prep your child with the time limit, we’re going to sit and play for five minutes. It doesn’t have to be a surprise. I like it to also be routine. So typically at the same time-ish of day, that’s a really nice added piece of this. The consistency, again, the quality and the consistency are the most important pieces of this. So you want to be able to do it with the frequency and a clip that you can keep up. I don’t want this to be something that you do once and you’re done. The thing you’re trying to build with your child is that predictability, that routine, and so you really want to be able to show up with that consistency so that they can start to rely on that and their nervous system relaxes into it.

Dr. Sarah (19:33):

How long would you prescribe this to a family?

Dr. Emily (19:38):

Yeah, I mean it’s a little bit tricky because it depends on how it’s going. Sometimes I’ll say, I want you to start with three minutes.

Dr. Sarah (19:45):

Right? I mean, for how many weeks? How many months?

Dr. Emily (19:48):

Yeah. I mean, it really depends on where we’re starting, where we’re going. Typically, it’s a long time. I want you to be doing this for eight to 12 weeks. That’s probably, that’s where I would see real change. So you’re planting this seed, we always say here, and you’re putting a little water on it every day, and so you really need to be patient building, attachment, rebuilding or building connection with your children. It takes time. You got whatever happened or the discrete events or big events that happened in this family happened over the course of five years or to some extent have been reinforced. So it takes a little bit of time and consistency to start to change that, move that needle.

Dr. Sarah (20:35):

Yeah. I also find that if I’m working with a family that really has had significant attachment ruptures and they’re being early on and they’re being maintained to some degree over the course of many years, in this case, let’s assume the attachment relationship for this child was interrupted sometime in the first year because that is also often when that’s that sensitive period, maybe the first three years we could call it a sensitive period, but then there’s another two years of it being maintained for whatever the dynamic was. I find that parents, the parent who is in this dyad is often very under-resourced in terms of their emotional energy and bandwidth. So I’m always very, very, I really try to dial in with the parent, how are you making sure that you are getting your basic needs met? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you getting, I call it the six basics, sleep, hydration, nutrition, sunshine, sunshine and fresh air movement and connection.

(21:46):

If you are low on any of those six places, then it’s going to be really hard for you to work on something as global as your relationship with your child, like this attachment relationship because it is going to take, like you were saying, Emily, Emily, what’s more important is not the individual exchanges you have, but the consistency and longevity of those exchanges over time. So this is like you’re in it for the long game, and if you’re going to do a marathon, you need to have a lot of physical resources to be able to sustain that effort because it’s not light. And also you might be dealing with feelings of guilt, feelings of anxiety, feelings of grief. If you assuming that there has been a significant enough attachment rupture, again, that’s not just about the child, it’s about the parent. They might be having to process their feelings.

(22:53):

Maybe there was a trauma that they also need to process that has a connection to why this attachment relationship didn’t get securely solidified early on. Birth trauma, postpartum mood and anxiety disorder related trauma, separation trauma, old stuff you have from your past that could be being kicked up by parenthood or motherhood. That could be part of why this might’ve been interrupted. All of that stuff is we carry that with us into parenting. So I’m always, in addition to the actual interventions that I encourage parents to do with their children, I’m always wanting to make sure that that parent is doing some of their own personal sort of work to figure out how to process their feelings about the past, about the present and maybe even the future. They’re very anxious about what’s going to happen, that they have a place for that. If you’re not working on that stuff, it’s going to keep showing up in your relationship with your child.

Dr. Emily (23:58):

Yes, you really have to tend to yourself. I think that’s really important and tap in and see what’s going on with me that I’m feeling detached from my kid, what’s happening in me, and really explore that with support or through listening to podcasts or really doing self-exploration. I think that’s a really important piece of this. It takes two, right? The diad means the two people, yourself and your child, and we want to make sure we’re getting that from both sides.

Dr. Sarah (24:27):

And it could also be done through family therapy. If this dad has a different type of relationship with this child, that could also be a resource to bring in. It could be a stressor to bring in. So it depends again on the family, each unique family, and sometimes this happens in families that are not currently living together, raising the child together, in which case family therapy might be adding a lot of unnecessary stress to the situation. But in families that are intact and you’re just seeing this in the home, then having the other parent be part of this can also help almost serve as a bridge. So if the dad in this situation, if the dad has the secure attachment relationship with the daughter and mom and dad are still a nuclear family unit, and then allowing the dad to kind of facilitate the daughter’s relationship with the mom, he is also helping the daughter transfer some of her attachment that she has with him over to the mom, right? He’s basically signaling to the daughter, she safe, this is her as safe, and so you can see her as safe, and that’s part of this repair as well. And so I think family therapy can be really, really leveraged well in situations like that too.

(25:46):

But yeah, I hope this answers your question. I mean, we had to kind of take it in a couple of different directions since we weren’t exactly sure about all the details. But hopefully that means we helped a number of different kinds of people who are going through this kind of is tough, even if whether it’s for short attachment issue or you just suspect it, or maybe after listening to this you realize maybe that’s not what I’m dealing with, but I’m still dealing with something really hard. This is hard. So there are definitely ways to support this and repair attachment relationships and just parent-child relationships. And if you have more questions about this, send ’em our way. And you can also, if you want actual therapeutic resources, you can go to Emily and my group practices website up brand.com because this is something that we do a lot of. And if we aren’t able to work with you in New York State, we can also help you find resources outside of New York state. So thank you. Thanks Em.

Dr. Emily (26:49):

Awesome. Love it.

Dr. Sarah (26:49):

Bye.

(26:49):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.