The words ‘attachment’ and ‘bonding’ are often used interchangeably within therapeutic parenting, but technically their definitions are distinct but linked. Understanding the difference between the terms may be helpful when we think about children who previously have not been able to have safe and/or loving relationships with a parent. It also may be helpful when working with birth parents or understanding how parenting poorly attached children may impact foster or adoptive parents.
The main difference between attachment and bonding regards who does what. Put simply, the parent bonds and the child attaches.
What is Bonding?
Bonding relates to the feelings a parent has for their child and their emotional connection to them. A bonded parent is able to be emotionally available to their child and develop attunement to their child’s needs. They can be ‘in the moment’ and feel emotionally rewarded by the relationship they have with their child.
A parent can provide a child with wonderful care but if they aren’t emotionally connected then they aren’t bonded, and this will impact their child.
What is Attachment?
Attachment is about the way a child responds to the parental relationship available to them. If children feel emotionally safe and loved when with their parent they will develop a secure attachment to them. If they don’t do this, their attachment will be insecure and they will engage in a number of behaviours aimed at helping them to feel safer in the moment.
When it works well, a parent and a child can be said to have a healthy attachment-bond. However, it may be more accurate to call it a ‘bond-attachment’. This is because the parent bonds first (often during pregnancy) and then the child attaches accordingly. Children cannot securely attach to parents who cannot bond.
Thinking about Bonding AND Attachment….
I’ve now asked over 2000 foster and adoptive parents attending my training courses if they’ve had specific attachment training. Most have or are signed up to do so. Some have done a huge amount of learning on this topic. I’ve also asked them if they have ever had training specifically on bonding. So far, no-one has. I think this is a huge mistake.
Exploring a child’s attachment issues only gives us half of the picture. We need to stop thinking of children in isolation and move from child-centred practice to relationship-focused. This means exploring the thoughts, feelings, behaviours, physiological and situational issues of both the parent AND the child.
My passion is for honouring, exploring and validating the experiences of foster and adoptive parents. These are too easily overlooked which is hard to understand given that it is the parent who is the great source of hope for the child who wishes to heal.
To explore the child’s issues with attachment, we first need to explore the parent’s issues with bonding. I intend to do this with you over the next two weeks. My next post will consider the barriers to bonding that may be experienced by a birth parent and the following will explore bonding barriers for foster and adoptive parents.
It’s important that we do this from a position of curiosity and compassion. Parent’s don’t overcome their bonding issues by being shamed into doing so. With that in mind, I reassure you that whatever age a child is, there is always hope for the attachment-bond.
So, check back in with me next week for more on the topic of bonding. Or why not subscribe to have the next blog post sent straight to your inbox? (you’ll get a free 5 day email course on my 3B’s therapeutic model too!).
Until then, I wonder how much attention you give to the experience of the parent? And I wonder how many parent’s feel it would be helpful if this were taken into consideration when making plans around meeting the needs of your fostered or adopted child?
Leave a Reply