Maryland's Source for
Attachment Disorder Related Information
Oil and Water:
The Attachment Disordered Child and School
CHARACTERISTICS OF SCHOOL THAT DO NOT MIX WITH CHILDREN WITH ATTACHMENT DIFFICULTIES
The primary focus of school is to impart information about the external world. Children with Attachment Disorder (AD) are focused on keeping themselves safe, as they see it. The school's objectives will truly engage the child with AD mostly in those moments when the child perceives the information to be relevant either to his immediate desires or to his longer-term survival. Otherwise, learning is often of little interest to children with attachment insecurities- it is just another of the adults' annoying agendas.
School also typically expects students to organize their behavior around external factors, such as the schedule, curriculum, and demands for performance. This expectation clashes with the attachment child's overriding internal need for control in order to feel safe. Hence children with attachment problems tend not to perform on others’ terms just as they tend not to show affection at home on parents’ terms. In addition, due to early trauma and attachment disruptions, AD children’s skills for regulating their feelings, thinking, and behavior are usually weak. This compromises their ability to adjust to external factors.
A second block to learning comes from attachment children’s emotionally-based belief that they already know everything, a belief that they need to retain to manage their anxiety. Obviously, a necessary condition for learning is the recognition that one does not already know. This, children with attachment disorder generally won’t acknowledge, just as they won’t ask for assistance. They have little or no interest in engaging with an environment that comes to them with a presumption that their knowledge is incomplete.
Much of the motivation for participating in school rests on assumed desires to interact collaboratively with others and to foster one's own individual growth and learning. These factors carry little weight for the attachment-vulnerable child's thinking.
Many of the activities in a school setting are group-based. Having to deal with multiple people simultaneously increases the chances of stimulating the insecurely attached child's anxiety, which will lead to behavioral attempts to re-establish a sense of control.
Most of the sources of gratification offered by school (parent and teacher approval, public recognition of achievement, grades on tests/projects/report cards) are all delayed gratifications. Attachment children's relentless focus on gratification in the moment, and distrust of the future and of authority figures, leaves these gratifications stripped of most of their appeal, and hence, minimally motivating.
Teachers have a dual role: that of dispensers of “educational goodies” (instruction, attention, recognition for effort / achievement, granting of requests, etc.) and that of limit-setters. This dual role will inevitably conflict with the attachment-vulnerable child's personal priorities sooner or later. As occurs at home with parents, no matter how many times a teacher has been an ally or support to an insecurely attached child in the past, the first time that teacher blocks that student's desires, all those past occasions will be forgotten and the teacher will be instantaneously transformed from an ally to a persecutor in the child's eyes. Authority which the student with attachment difficulties sees as unfair, deserves no respect. Now the student will feel entitled to be disrespectful to such a “morally bankrupt” authority figure.
- Because teachers must deal with the numbers presented by a classroom, as opposed to a family, the authority of teachers can appear even more arbitrary and persecutory to children with AD than parental authority. When teachers set limits for the greater good of the whole class, this will seem more arbitrary still, as children with AD have no concept of “the common good”.
- Understandably, teachers may feel attacked and unappreciated themselves at these moments, particularly given their degree of investment; and because these feelings can run very strong, it can be tempting to react. Reacting, however, will only worsen the situation, for the child with attachment vulnerabilities will see the reaction as “evidence” that the teacher is, in fact, a punitive authority figure out to get the child.
CHARACTERISTICS OF SCHOOL THAT THE CHILD WITH ATTACHMENT PROBLEMS "WELCOMES"One of the primary defensive maneuvers that children with compromised attachment rely on to maintain their psychological safety is that of projection. The many people present in the school context offers the child with AD an abundance of targets for his projections. Because of their hypervigilance, AD children are generally quite perceptive of others' vulnerabilities and skillful at striking at those vulnerabilities with their projections. This can make the projections seem very believable to the receiver which can put that person on the defensive.
In general, teachers change every year. This provides a model of “short term attachment” which makes minimal to no demands for emotional honesty and intimacy. This circumvents compromised –attachment children’s area of greatest vulnerability, thereby avoiding provoking much of the problematic behavior typically seen at home. This can lull educators into seeing the child with attachment insecurities as more functional than is truly the case.
SCHOOL/HOME SPLIT: Children with AD frequently seek to pit school vs. home in the spirit of dividing and conquering the adults. Typically this takes the form of attempting to set the teacher up as a preferred parental figure and may go to the point of asking the teacher to adopt them away from their parents. These approaches can be quite seductive in their presentation and teachers need to be aware of not forming an opinion of the parents based on such interchanges with the child.
BEHAVOIRS COMMONLY DISPLAYED BY INSECURELY ATTACHED CHILDREN IN SCHOOLThe onset of behavioral difficulties with a child with attachment vulnerabilities in the school setting can be very rapid and often without any seeming apparent trigger. However, there is always a trigger- it just may not be very apparent. It often takes close observation over time to figure out some of these triggers. The more a teacher figures out about an attachment student's triggers, the more effectively that teacher will be in preventively minimizing or avoiding behavioral deterioration.
TEMPER TANTRUMS: Children with attachment difficulties are quite capable of full-blown temper outbursts at school. Such outbursts can consist of any or all of the following: screaming, shouting, throwing objects, use of obscene language, verbal threats, physical threats, physical aggression, and running out of the classroom and sometimes all the way out of the building. Such extreme outbursts usually indicate that the child's anxiety has escalated, and the outburst is a desperate attempt to ward off the perceived threat. Children with AD can get to this level of anxiety in as little 1-2 minutes if they perceive a danger of sufficient magnitude.
REGRESSIVE BEHAVIORS: Children with AD can exhibit a wide range of immature behaviors in the classroom, including: use of a babyish voice, crawling around on the floor, curling up under furniture, pretending to be an animal, noisemaking, perseverative verbalizations, speaking nonsensical language, making graphic sexual and / or excretory remarks, giddyish forced laughter, and others. These regressive behaviors usually signal an upsurge of anxiety in the child, and they function both as a way to get away from the anxiety as well as to remove the child from the teacher's immediate control which serves to lessen the child's anxiety. Though these behaviors can appear bizarre, they usually do not mean that the child is psychotic at that moment.
NUISANCE BEHAVIORS: These are frequently occurring minor infractions, such as interrupting, noisemaking, or asking excessive questions, that disrupt the simplest of everyday interactions. These nuisance kinds of behaviors serve a dual purpose. First, they serve as ongoing reminders that the student with attachment insecurities is not under the teacher's domain. Secondly, nuisance behaviors are “probes” that the child sends out into the environment to acquire information about the situation. From others' reactions to these “behavioral probes”, children with AD begin to piece together who is punitive and who is supportive; who will respond and who will ignore; who is more structured and who is more lax. The student with AD is likely to use the responses to his probes to figure out how to “work” the adults. When the child feels confident that he knows how to maneuver the teacher, the “honeymoon” will be over.
PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR: Like all passive-aggressive behavior, the passive-aggressive behavior of the student with attachment vulnerabilities presents as a compliant appearance that packages a defiant spirit. With assignments, this may take the form of doing some parts while leaving others undone or doing some parts correctly and others purposefully incorrectly. The name may be left off the paper or the wrong date used. Problems might be numbered improperly or done out of order. When given a certain number of problems or sentences, the student may do more or less than the specified number. When speaking, words may be transposed or omitted so as to distort meaning and confuse listeners. When asked to sit, the student with AD may choose to kneel on the chair or slide down into a near prone position. And on and on it can go. Passive-aggressive behavior is designed to allow the student with AD to hide in the “appearance of compliance”, and then challenge any confrontation by authority as “persecution”. This allows the child to maintain a view of adults as untrustworthy and justifies the child’s strivings for control.
PROVOCATIVE BEHAVIORS TOWARD PEERS: Children with attachment insecurities are deliberately provocative towards peers for a variety of reasons. Peers are vulnerable to react, and children with AD will see the reaction as proof of their power to control others. Peers will need support and suggestions from adults to learn to minimize their responsiveness to the provocations. Provocative behavior, from a child with AD, towards peers, is almost impossible to eliminate solely by working with the attachment child.
TEACHER INSTRUCTION: Children with attachment problems often accept curriculum instruction from the teacher on an erratic basis. One day, the student with AD can be focused, taking in information and on-task. The next day, she may seem completely unworkable, which can appear as “spaciness”, “forgetfulness”, “distractibility”, haphazard work, outright defiance, or complaints of boredom and disinterest. Patterns of task incompletion and completion typically reflect rising and falling levels of anxiety or anger in the child with AD. This fluctuating pattern of receptiveness to instruction is one more way the student with attachment vulnerabilities seeks to remind the teacher that he doesn't readily submit to outside authority, particularly when anxious or angry.
Attachment children presume to know the teacher's intention in assigning work- it has nothing to do with learning. To the child with AD, academic tasks are given out primarily as a way to control the child, keep her quiet, and prove to her that the teacher is in charge. Task completion / incompletion is usually a reflection of how secure or insecure the child with AD feels at a given moment. The more confident the child feels about her control, the less problematic "yielding to the teacher" by doing the task, becomes. However, the less the attachment child’s sense of feeling in control, then she is apt to choose to resist the task in order to "defeat the teacher".
WORK PRODUCTION: The child with attachment difficulties most often either refuses to do assignments outright or agrees to do them and does not follow through or does them in a haphazard, perfunctory manner. Occasionally, attachment children will apply themselves and often turn in a credible product when they do so. These seeming "lightning bolts" of intelligence, motivation, and effort are appealing to the adult world of teachers and parents; and that is sometimes their purpose. The child who is poorly attached may dangle these moments of production in front of the adults to tantalize them into a game of trying to figure out what to do to get the student to perform like this more often. Taking this bait and entering this game is tantamount to stepping in quicksand. The more the adults struggle to get the child to perform, the deeper the adults sink into the muck.
- Understandably, teachers and parents often view the attachment child's unpredictable work production, despite having the ability, as pure stubbornness. This is partially correct, but there is more going on than just stubbornness. This is also one more aspect of the attachment child's ongoing need to perceive he is in control to feel safe.
- The attachment student’s not completing work on a consistent, longer-term basis serves another self-protective function for the child in addition to its frustrating impact on the adults. By not turning out enough work so that it can be measured reliably, the child with attachment insecurities cleverly avoids having to confront the disturbing reality that there is ability, knowledge, and power greater than hers. In keeping her true ability elusively unmeasurable, the attachment child can keep her personal illusion intact that she is the smartest person in the classroom. Protecting this perception in school is important for the student with attachment problems to maintain her cornerstone belief that others are not smart enough to outmaneuver her, no matter where she is.
SUPPORT/PRAISE: Children with attachment vulnerabilities commonly have one of three responses to receiving support and/or praise in the school setting: 1} accept the support without any overt reaction; 2} reject the support outright, and 3} accept and then denigrate the support. The student with attachment problems may recycle these three responses in an unpredictable sequence that defies any pattern. This leaves the teacher in the uncomfortable position of never knowing what will come back should support / praise be offered. Meanwhile, the child strategically creates the appearance of being immune to praise and support which is yet one more aspect of retaining control.
- Attachment children rarely, if ever, express any gratitude for offers of support, as gratitude implies dependence and dependence is seen as dangerous by the child with attachment difficulties. Knowing this up front can be a buffer, for teachers, against feeling unappreciated and resentful when their extra efforts go unrecognized by the child.
INTERVENTIONS: WHAT IS LESS LIKELY TO WORK
PROBLEM SOLVING: Traditional problem solving questions such as:
Why did you…?
What could you have done differently?
Children who are poorly attached learn to spin off the "desired answers", but they are meaningless answers.PRAISE: Vague praise, such as “you are handling things well today” is generally seen by the child with attachment difficulties as a manipulative control strategy on the adult’s part. In addition, overt praise for expected basic behavior, such as sitting in one’s desk, is likely to provoke an oppositional appearance of the undesired behavior.
ZERO TOLERANCE: Consistent zero tolerance stances run a high risk of dragging the teacher into a cycle of escalating misbehavior followed by increasingly severe consequences. Zero tolerance does not allow the teacher sufficient creative flexibility to approach the child with attachment problems in a more unpredictable way that can circumvent an emotional escalation.
CONVENTIONAL BEHAVIOR MANAAGEMENT PLANS/LEVEL SYSTEMS: Such plans are based on consistency, and this consistency makes these plans easy targets for the strategic thinking of an student with attachment problems. Attachment children are apt to see a behavior management plan, not as a way to change behavior per se, but as one more thing to learn “how to work” for their own purposes. Their movements up and down the levels and earning (or not) of rewards has all to do with their individual purpose at the time and typically little to do with a success motivation or the earning of adult approval. Children with attachment problems may even use behavior management systems as bait to draw the adults into unproductive discussions about how to sustain progress. The result can be that it is the teacher's behavior, rather than the child's, that ends up getting "managed".
NEGATIVE REPORTS ABOUT PARENTS: Believing tales about horrendous treatment at home by parents and offering “compensatory” support and sympathy to the child for the perceived mistreatment is, in the case of an attachment child, about the worst possible thing an educational professional could do. Teachers then become “unholy allies” in the student’s emotional struggle with his parents.
"REASONABLE" COVERSATIONS: Challenging an attachment child's perspective with "objective evidence" in order to persuade her that her thinking is somehow incorrect tends to be futile. This approach assumes that the teacher and child share a common view of "reality"- not likely true. The teacher's view is apt to make little or no sense to the child with an attachment disorder. In fact, the child is apt to see a reasonable approach as a manipulative attempt on the teacher's part to set the child up in some way.
Setting the parents up to be the “heavies” by leaving it to parents and home to impose consequences for school infractions or work not done, only inflames conflict at home which will eventually reverberate at school.
TEACHER'S FEELINGS: Taking attachment children’s behavior or statements as personally offending reinforces their unhelpful sense of being able to control the emotions of the adults. It is only about “you the teacher” in the sense that you are the authority figure present in the situation. It is really not about “you the professional or you the person” though it can feel very much that way. This is because children with attachment difficulties are unusually skilled at discovering adults’ tender spots and focusing there. So, this takes some practice to learn not to react in an unhelpful emotional manner.
Don’t look for THE answer. There is no “The Answer”. “The answer” leads to doing the same thing the same way every time. An attachment child’s problems will flourish with such an approach.
INTERVENTIONS: WHAT IS MORE LIKELY TO WORKTEACHER'S INTERPERSOAL STANCE: With a student with attachment difficulties, the teacher should maintain a matter-of-fact, task-oriented stance in interpersonal exchanges. Of course, this is not wholly different from a teacher’s generic stance with students. With students with AD however, the teacher becoming friendlier or more distant or bringing more emotion to interactions is apt to trigger anxiety and behavioral deterioration in the student, whereas an average student could manage or benefit from it. Thus, adjusting the emotional tone of interactions, over time, with students with attachment insecurities, should be done in consort with observing for signs of anxiety.
FAIRNESS/UNFAIRNESS: Defining fairness as meaning all students will be treated the same in the classroom, is a serious mistake strategically, not only with children with attachment difficulties, but in general. The child with attachment difficulties will learn to use such an application of the fairness principle to generate tales of unfair treatment which, all too often, start to divide the adults. It is much more effective to define fair treatment as meaning that everyone is treated according to what they need, and thus, comparisons between students are irrelevant. In addition, this subject of fairness is often raised by children with attachment insecurities (and often by children in general) as a rationale to get the adults to either “do” or “not do” something. This can be effectively handled by defining “fair / unfair” as code language for one of the following: 1) “things aren’t going the way I want them to”, or 2) “I don’t want to be held responsible for my behavior”. Fairness then, is often sophisticated wording for pursuing one or both of these agendas. In the big picture, it is highly questionable whether there is any real truth to the concept of fairness in many situations, except as a way to describe a difference of opinion between people. The most unproductive response is to engage the child in a debate about whether things were “fair” or not.
UNPREDICTABILITY: A degree of intentional unpredictability on the teacher’s part is very useful in navigating around the attachment child's array of avoidance maneuvers. An adult that is entirely consistent is an adult a child with attachment insecurities can predict, and an adult an attachment student can predict is an adult an attachment student is likely to “work”.
EYE CONTACT: Students with attachment problems tend to be eye-contact avoidant. Eye contact is a key nonverbal component of developing interpersonal trust and attachment children’s avoidance of it helps to perpetuate their mistrust. Thus, it is important to encourage eye contact when speaking with them, and moreso than the average student. Some flexibility here on the teacher’s part is important as an absolute demand for eye contact in all instances will only degenerate into a power struggle that the teacher cannot win. Prompts on an intermittent basis and expressed appreciation when the student gives eye contact, is the optimal balance.
REWARDS: Make some rewards absolute and not contingent on anything. This effectively subverts attachment children’s strong tendency to sabotage themselves and thereby prove to the adults that the adults can’t “make them succeed”. Non-contingent rewards puts the child’s succeeding under the control of the teacher.
CHOICE: Teach the concept of choice. Choice is an idea that is often absent in attachment children's thinking. It is not simply that they refuse to accept responsibility- the idea of people making choices and having responsibility literally makes no sense to many children with attachment problems. They need to have it pointed out to them, matter-of-factly, over and over, that they are making choices all the time. Connect their behavior on an ongoing basis, as products of their underlying choices, for better or worse. This helps to block the predominant pattern of students with impaired attachment to attribute all of their behavior to external factors. When choices are in the poor category, avoid the temptation to encourage better choices in the future. This is quicksand. The teacher cannot elicit improved choices the child does not wish to make. Simply continue to hold the student accountable for the choices she does make, good and bad.
OMNISCIENCE: Like the concept of choice, challenging the attachment child’s belief in his omniscient knowledge will require many repetitions to achieve results. This belief needs to be challenged at school, at home, and in therapy. These challenges need to be gentle and not heavy-handed, for there is much anxiety held in check by this belief. At school, such challenges should occur in contexts of semi-privacy and not in the middle of the classroom. Such challenges can take the form of wondering whether the child himself really believes he knows everything vs. directly telling him that he doesn’t. That will only generate defensiveness.
RULES: Approach children with impaired attachment in a matter-of-fact, firm, no nonsense, but not hostile, tone of voice. Directions should be phrased as directions and not as questions (Example: “Do…” vs. “Would you…”). In addition, directions, as well as classroom guidelines, should be stated in proactive, concrete behavioral language vs. vaguer, catch-all phrases like “relax” or “settle down” or negative directions like “Don’t…” or “Stop…”. Rules need to be stated proactively because the unconscious mind does not process negatives. Negatively stated rules actually increase subconscious focus on the behavior being prohibited. This increases the future probability that the undesirable behavior will reoccur. Rules need to be communicated with the expectation that they will be learned and followed. This is best conveyed with a matter-of-fact tone of voice that is free of any emotional edge. (Example: “Have a seat at your desk and finish your math.”). Thanking the child in advance for his cooperation can improve compliance. The interaction should be broken off after the teacher expresses gratitude for expected compliance. In addition, establish the ground rule, ahead of time and always in effect, that the student with attachment problems needs to ask what the rules might be for anything that has never been discussed before. This removes efforts to avoid responsibility, by way of ignorance, from the attachment child's repertoire. Teachers are also well advised to be skeptical of the attachment student’s plea of not knowing or having forgotten a rule that has been previously defined. Most such pleas fall into a category of being strategically “dumb on purpose” for purposes of avoiding personal responsibility. In such instances, rather than excuse the student from the rule (usually a significant mistake), it is preferable to suggest to the student, without sarcasm, that she learn to listen and remember better in the future. That leaves the responsibility for change square in the student’s lap.
CONSEQUENCES: While it is generally true from a behavior management perspective, that consequences should be imposed when inappropriate behavior first appears, it is essential for children with an attachment disorder, if they are to develop any trust in the teacher. Children with attachment problems will not come to trust any adult they can effectively navigate around; and in the absence of trust, these children will not perform academically with any reliability. Multiple warnings, negotiated bargains, motivational pep talks etc. are usually viewed by the student with attachment problems as opportunities to turn an inch into a foot if not a mile, thereby erasing the possibility of developing the trust in the teacher that is important for educational success. However, children with attachment difficulties are also very prone to perceiving discipline as intentional humiliation by the teacher. This generates shame and anger which obviously sabotages compliance. The teacher defensively clarifying his intentions will not help. Instead, acknowledge that receiving the consequence will be difficult for the student and might trigger anger. Nonetheless the teacher has faith in the student’s ability to handle the consequence and expects the student to honor it.
APPRECIATION/PRAISE: After an AD child makes a cooperative choice, appreciation is often a better response than praise. Appreciation puts teacher and child on the same level for that interaction. Praise, on the other hand, can suggest that the one offering the praise (teacher) is the more powerful one, and therefore able to pass judgment on the less powerful one (student). Praise is, after all, every bit as much a judgment as is criticism. Praise can run the risk of the student feeling the teacher is rubbing his face in “the teacher having won”. This can generate resentment which may undo the cooperative decision right then, or may fuel oppositional behavior in the future. Appreciation can avoid those risks and can strengthen the teacher-child relationship. Linking the appreciation to the specific behavior that is its focus is preferable to a generic expression of appreciation.
ASSISTANCE: Never offer an AD child help or advice without first asking the child if she wants it. This question forces the AD child to take some responsibility for stating what she wants in order to get it- this is priceless practice. Additionally, it helps teachers avoid the frustration of offering assistance only to have it rejected out-of-hand because the child wasn't interested in solving the problem in the first place. If the child says she does not want advice or assistance, do not offer it anyway. Just drop the subject and move on. This holds the child accountable for her negative answer. When the child gives teachers orders, as AD children may do, politely inform her that you did not ask for her advice and when you do want it, you will be sure to ask ahead of time. This can work better than reprimanding the child for being rude or disrespectful.
TASK COMPLETION: Attachment children’s erratic task performance can be very frustrating for teachers. It is important (and a bit heretical from an educational perspective) for the teacher to be less invested in the attachment child’s academic success than the child is. It is best to emphasize the child’s accountability for better and worse choices regarding work and behavior and the results related to each. Describe how the results flow from the attachment student’s choices so it is clear that he is the creator of his own discomfort and not someone else’s victim. One-liners can be useful here. This approach has a better chance of leaving anxiety with the student, where it may be helpful, rather than with the teacher which will most likely benefit no one.
TEACHERS AND PARENTS: Teachers should follow the parents’ lead in matters of behavior management. Parents will almost always have seen behavior far in excess of anything the school will ever see. This gives parents irreplaceable experiential knowledge about working with their child’s behavior. The school needs to partner seamlessly with home and parents in order to undercut the AD child’s considerable strategic wilyness. However, school and home should be kept separate in some matters. Incidents at school should be handled at school and not referred to the parents to provide consequences at home in the evening unless this is part of a collaborative plan arrived at beforehand. In general, parents SHOULD NOT be expected to be intimately involved with nightly homework and should not be pressured about undone homework. That only takes the responsibility off the child, and when that occurs, AD children are likely to use “homework” as a stage to play out their attachment related conflicts and everyone loses.
MOTHERS: Mothers are generally the primary targets of an attachment disordered child’s fear distrust, and rage, a fear and rage most teachers will never experience. A supportive teacher, to a mother, is a resource precious beyond words.
TRIANGULATION: This is probably the most destructive hazard that teachers encounter with students with attachment difficulties. Students with attachment difficulties reliably on the lookout for other adults to playoff against their parents so as to make their parents look deficient in some way. Teachers are a favorite choice. Students with attachment problems often present their optimal side at school, a side the parents rarely see at home. On the other hand, when the parents describe home behavior that the teacher has likely never seen, teachers are often incredulous. It is tempting, on the surface, to ascribe the difference to faulty parenting. With attachment children, that conclusion is almost always incorrect. With the adoption of the perspective of blaming the parents, the teacher steps onto the Rescue Triangle. This is a dynamic that commonly occurs in human relationships, and it is always destructive. The Rescue Triangle has three participants. One is in the role of “victim”, one is in the role of “perpetrator”, and the third person arrives as the “rescuer”. This is the role the teacher plays. In attempting to “rescue” the child, the teacher unwittingly joins with the child as a co-perpetrator to victimize the parents. Now the initial roles have shifted. The child has gone from victim to perpetrator, the parents from perpetrator to victim, and the teacher from rescuer to perpetrator. This is the nature of a Rescue Triangle. The roles are always shifting over time. Nothing really changes. No healing happens. No one learns anything. It is essential for teachers to learn to recognize the invitation to enter a Rescue Triangle and decline it. What would be much more helpful for the child would be to ask how it is that the child’s behavior is so different at home vs. school and even to suggest that the parents, teacher, and child all sit down to discuss this difference. This sends a message that the teacher won’t allow the child to play “victim” and divide the adults. Of course, in denying the child with attachment problems, the role of “victim”, the teacher will likely become a “perpetrator” in the child’s eyes. But this is the nature of the game at hand- any adult who refuses to support the child in the victim role, becomes a perpetrator by virtue of their refusal. This is part of the box the parents are in. This game can only be broken up by the adults not blaming each other, but supporting each other in exploring the attachment child’s choice to be so very different with different adults.
TRICKS: Use of the word “trick” to describe attachment children’s strategic behavior works better than the more loaded words like manipulative, lying, etc.
NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR: Become a good observer of attachment children's nonverbal responses {facial expressions, body position and movements, eyes, voice tone}. There are several qualities to the appearance of the eyes (clear/bright, dark, empty, steely/piercing, mirrors). These are the most accurate signs of what is going on inside the child. If you listen only to what children with attachment difficulties say, you are likely to go in circles.
PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR: Initially, teachers need to learn to recognize these behaviors as disguised intentional noncompliance and not as “accidents” or “innocent mistakes” or “forgetfulness” or “sincere attempts at compliance”. However, it is a mistake to then to initiate a conversation that is designed to unmask the defiance underneath the superficial compliance. This will quickly become a “quicksand conversation”. Instead, with partially or incorrectly completed tasks, recognize that which has been done and add a reminder that the expectation is completion without specifying what remains to be completed. The child with attachment problems knows. With behavior, the teacher can choose ignoring or the imposition of consequences, depending upon the form of the passive-aggressive misbehavior. No explanation required- again students with attachment difficulties know what they are doing.
TEACHER AND HISTORIAN : Act as an historian for the child with impaired attachments. Since children with attachment difficulties live in the moment and lack a sequential, linear sense of time, they need adults to remind them of past events and choices the children have made that have led both to successful and unsuccessful outcomes. This supports the child’s coping skills in the present. This role of historian can be particularly useful in helping the child with attachment insecurities bridge the delay in time between completing academic work and later recognition for the effort. The teacher can again remind the AD student of having waited in the past for approval that was enjoyed. Additionally, the capacity to wait can be defined as something that makes people stronger as this may well appeal the attachment child’s intrinsic valuing of strength as a means of self-protection.
TEACHER ABSENCES: Because of their histories of broken attachments, children with attachment vulnerabilities tend to perceive separations as abandonment. Teacher absences, particularly extended ones, are apt to be seen this way. Anxiety and anger are the emotional results. The behavioral outcomes are likely to be experienced by the substitute teacher, whom the student with insecure attachments may well view as being at fault for the teacher’s departure (parallel to how adoptive parents are blamed by the child for having brought about the birth parents’ abandonment of the child). Problems can be minimized by the teacher being clear beforehand, about her absence and return date, and communicating this to parents so they can follow-up at home. With an extended absence, it can be useful to have a calendar in the classroom with the teacher’s return date identified (at least approximately) and to again, share this with parents so a matching calendar can be posted at home. It is also helpful for the teacher to take the student with attachment disorder aside privately, and reassure the student that she will be returning, that she understands her time away may be difficult, that the student has nothing to with her leaving, and that the substitute has nothing to do with the teacher’s leaving. Therefore, the teacher expects the student to handle her time away without taking it out on the substitute.
DESCRIPTION VS. EVALUATION: Understanding the difference between description and evaluation is an important tool for fostering change. Description is painting a picture of behavior in clear, observable terms, somewhat like a sportscaster describing the play-by-play of a game. Description answers the question, "What happened?" Example: (staring down at the floor, not talking or moving). Evaluation includes placing a value judgment on behavior and attempting to explain “Why it happened”. Value judgments usually break things down into two opposite categories such as "good / bad" or "appropriate / inappropriate". Evaluation also includes drawing conclusions about behavior and its motivations. Examples of common conclusions are: "attention-getting behavior" or "manipulative behavior". Evaluation, whether it be a value judgment or a conclusion, tends to block change. Evaluations oversimplify. This greatly limits the possibilities of change. The behavior of children is too complex to be accurately captured by "either / or" categories. Conclusions, on the other hand, are too often accepted as true without having been carefully tested out. Change strategies, based on untested conclusions, not only may not help, but may make things worse. Description, on the other hand, creates opportunity for change. It clarifies things. It doesn't label. It reminds that behavior is dynamic, not static, and therefore change is always possible. It does not feed into a negative-based identity (“I am bad”). If you catch yourself being evaluative, stop and shift into a descriptive mode.
RESTITUTION: Children with impaired attachments generally have little or no understanding of the concept of restitution, and this is a very important relational skill for them to learn. When an insecurely attached child has a negative impact on another (child or adult) at school that warrants more than an apology, having the child carry out an act of restitution can be effective and likely more useful than a prolonged conversation about the incident. Define what is to be the act of restitution and have the child just carry it out without further conversation. This can be considered the consequence, but should not be framed for the child that way. Making restitution is an act of competence and can positively affect self-esteem.
COMMUNICATION/QUESTION: Four questions to almost never ask children with attachment problems:
”Did you...?”
”Why did you...?”
“Do you remember...?”
Children who are insecurely attached are usually skilled at composing eloquent answers that mean absolutely nothing, as part of their self-protective skills. Question to an these children are too often invitations to trick an adult. It works much better to phrase statements as guesses and let them react to the guess. (Example: rather than “Did you break your pencil ?” try “I think you broke your pencil to get out of doing your work.”). Attachment children’s reactions to guesses often tell you much more than their answers to questions.COMMUNICATION/ONE-LINERS: Children with attachment difficulties often invite teachers into murky conversations from which there is no useful outcome or reasonable escape once the subject has been engaged. This is particularly likely if the subject matter is something about which the teacher lacks any direct knowledge. To avoid such “quicksand conversations”, one-line responses can be a useful tool. Some suggestions are listed below.
“You can make an appointment with me to discuss that later.”
“What do you think I think about that ?”
“That’s an interesting way to do that.”
“That’s an interesting idea. How did you figure that out ?”
“I might have a hard time believing that if I said it myself.”
“I’m glad I don’t let myself get bored.”
“I never would have thought of that. Hope it works out.”
“Hope you get over that.”
“Do you have a plan ?”
“If you don’t understand why you have to, after you’re finished, I’ll be glad to explain.”
“What do you think you will do ?”
February 4, 2010
Attachment Disorder Maryland
lbsmith@md.net
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The information presented on this site is for informational purposes and is not intended to replace an assessment by a mental health professional. Nothing on this site constitutes medical, legal or other professional advice and Attachment DIsorder Maryland assumes no liability or responsibility for any diagnosis, treatment, decision made, or action taken in reliance upon information contained on this site.
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February 4, 2010
