How Our Relationship Attachments Affect Our Children
© Racorn
You can take dozens of personality profiles, but if none of them discusses how you relate to other people, you might nevertheless feel misunderstood. Why do you struggle in intimate relationships and perhaps friendships and collegial ones as well?
The answer could lie in your relationship attachment style. These patterns develop in childhood based on how you and your parents related. Those who struggle to connect positively with others can experience a host of adverse effects on their health and personal lives.
What Are the Four Attachment Styles?
There are four basic attachment styles — secure, dismissive-avoidant, anxious-preoccupied and fearful-avoidant. You can take an online quiz to discover your type.
If you have a secure attachment style, your relationships tend to be more open, satisfying and honest. While your life may not be rainbows and butterflies all the time, for the most part, you get along well with your partner, friends and colleagues. You feel supported in your endeavors and have people you can turn to when you have a problem.
However, those with one of the other three attachment styles tend to struggle. If you have an anxious-preoccupied attachment style, you can overwhelm your loved ones with clinginess — and smother your children. Think the quintessential helicopter parent.
Those with fearful-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant styles can struggle to get their needs met. Dismissive-avoidant types value independence and tend to view relationships as stifling to freedom — a perpetual bachelor.
Those with fearful-avoidant styles may behave erratically because past trauma left them scarred. They desperately want a connection, but they hesitate due to struggles with healthy boundaries and tend to lose themselves in their relationships.
The healthiest attachment style to model for your children is a secure one. However, if you aren’t there yourself, your inconsistencies will manifest in skepticism, even mistrust from your kiddos.
You — or you and your partner, if hitched — may benefit tremendously from couples or individual counseling to work through your wounds. Think of the children if you or they are reluctant to call for help. Doing so will help your kids become mentally healthier.
How Your Attachment Style Affects Your Children
If you remain unconvinced that your attachment style impacts your child’s development, here’s a deeper dive into the consequences of ignoring this dynamic.
1. You Model Their Adult Relationships
You tend to model the relationship style of your parents. Some psychologists note that people tend to marry their parents — not literally, which is illegal. However, they do tend to seek out someone with similar characteristics.
Therefore, if you feel trapped in your relationship, but you refuse to leave or speak up, your children will learn that preserving their romantic connection trumps everything else. Unfortunately, this dynamic is dangerous and leads many to remain in unions that turn toxic, even abusive.
Conversely, if you flit from partner to partner like a hummingbird but bolt the second the other person mentions commitment, your children will learn that they shouldn’t trust or depend on their future romantic interests. They may never marry, or they may wed and split more frequently than some celebrity couples. This constant disruption and drama cause significant distress, and unless they have the bankroll of an A-lister, the latter scenario can have dire economic consequences.
2. You Could Become Overprotective
You might claim you don’t want to be “that parent” — the one that dresses their child like a mini-me and accompanies them everywhere. However, if you have an anxious-preoccupied attachment style, you risk hindering your child’s development by overprotecting them.
Sometimes, you should listen when your teens say, “but everyone else is doing it.” While you should say no to unchaperoned parties, refusing to let them attend a supervised school dance out of fear that they may flirt with another student their age is extreme.
3. You Could Also Leave Them Feeling Neglected
Conversely, if you have a dismissive-avoidant attachment style, your child could feel neglected. This scenario can lead to significant neuroses. Some children may become overachievers in hopes of impressing you — and feel utterly crushed when they bring home straight A’s that go unnoticed.
Eventually, some children choose to act out to get the attention they lack. Such behavior can have severe consequences. At best, they may lose scholarship opportunities due to failing grades. At worst, they could end up in legal trouble or develop a substance abuse disorder.
4. Or Give Them the Confidence They Need to Thrive
The best reason to get to a qualified therapist without delay if you manifest any attachment style other than secure is that healing your past wounds can help impart the confidence your children need to thrive. If your kids see that you take positive action to correct a problem, they will notice — and respect you for your efforts.
It can be challenging to accept that you need help, especially if you or your partner have a dismissive-avoidant style. Because you value independence so highly, you might think, “I don’t need help from anyone.” Please, swallow your pride — maybe you get along okay, but your children may not.
Learn How Your Attachment Style Affects Your Children and Raise Mentally Healthy Kids
Now that you know how your attachment style impacts your children, please consider taking the requisite steps to improve your relationships. Addressing any underlying issues you have can help your kids develop into well-adjusted adults.