6 Ways To Tell If Your Child is Securely Attached To You

Aug 10

As a child, I was babysat often and then thrusted into public school while my parents worked for a large part of the day. I remember loving them so much but only getting to have them for nights and weekends.

I know my parents were doing the best that they could with what they had and what they thought was right for the family but they were limited in their actual hands on parenting because they were both focused on providing and we were separated often.

Because of the little bit of time I spent with my parents and the attention that my peers gave me, this drives children closer to their peers and farther from their parents, creating stronger bonds between friends over family. A child’s brain is not able to have two different groups competing for the main spot of influence in their life, so what happens is a lot of kids become mainly influenced by and loyal to their peer group over their parents.

This makes parenting tougher, instead of the smooth teamwork that it should be. In this blog, I tell you the 6 ways you can tell if this has happened with your child and then you can head over to read about the 4 ways to repair this shift in orientation!

What is Peer Orientation

Attachment parenting may be the new talked-about craze but there is evidence, throughout generations, to support the notion that by being your child's main attachment and offering them a relationship that is safe, secure, reliable, and warm, you are positively influencing their present and future interactions, experience, and behavior with you.

When your child does not have you placed in their top spot of attachment, they can become peer-oriented, thus pulling them farther from you over time.

Peer orientation happens when your child is more loyal to, interested in, and concerned with their peers rather than you. Most often, the values of parents and peers conflict and therefore one attachment must take precedence over the other in the psyche of a child.

A host of issues can crop up for peer-oriented children including:

inadequacy, feeling like they have to measure up
giving into peer pressure
isolation, feeling cast out
confusion about oneself leading to anxiety and depression
false sense of confidence
pride, having to mask vulnerability
mimicking peers in ways unnecessary and even dangerous
not fully feeling the unconditional love their parents may have for them

It’s not the child’s fault that they end up prioritizing immature peer attachments. These kids are simply moving the way nature built them and searching for a secure attachment when the parent is not offering the connection needed for secure attachment.

Is My Child More Loyal to Their Friends?

Here are the six (6) ways kids form attachments, as laid out by Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D, and Gabor Maté, M.D. in their book, Hold Onto Your Kids. Reading these can help you determine if your child is securely attached to you or their peers:

1. Senses

This is simple to see with infants who feel safest and most secure being close in proximity to their parents. As our children grow, if we notice they would rather the company of peers and seem to have no desire to be in our company, then they may be peer-oriented. The problem with this is that with attachment lost too soon in a child’s life, with it goes our power to parent them. We lose our influence as their natural guides.

2. Sameness

We see this naturally in how a toddler imitates parents and close influences as they grow to learn habits and attitudes. We also see this imitation through language and the transmission of culture. If your child is closely imitating or emulating their peers and not interested in emulating you, then they may be peer-oriented. By prioritizing and being intentional about attachment parenting, you can hold onto the role of main cue giver for your children.

3. Belonging and Loyalty

You want your child to want to “belong” to you because you know your love is unconditional and they can rely on you. The problem with peer-oriented children and belonging is that their space within their peer group is not secure. Jealousy and possessiveness can spring from this attachment need. Naturally, children are fickle and fuss over who’s who, which is likely to lead to insecurity in children regarding their placement in their peer circle.

Loyalty follows this sense of belonging and being loyal can show up through keeping promises, keeping each other’s secrets, doing each other’s biddings, and taking each other’s sides. When your child is attached to you instead of their peers, you should receive this loyalty. If the child makes you feel like a foreigner in their peer group and cast out of their circle, then there is a high chance that this child is peer-oriented.

4. Significance

To “feel we matter to somebody” and “to want to be significant to someone is to suffer when we feel we don’t matter to the special person. Seeking someone’s favor leads to feeling wounded by signs of disfavor.” A parent is less likely to continue to hurt their child’s feelings in this way and perpetrate feelings of insignificance or unworthiness. If your child places a great deal of concern on who of his peers likes him and who does not, then this can be a sign of peer orientation.

5. Feeling

Attaching in this way turns to love. Physical proximity and being close (as was discussed with “senses”) is the “short arm” of attachment and so feeling would be the “long arm." Through feeling deeply for the other person, we are able to bear separation from that person because we trust in the security of the attachment. We love them and we are vulnerable enough to feel this emotional intimacy. “Some people never develop the capacity to be emotionally open and vulnerable.. and vulnerability is something peer-oriented children seek to escape.” If your child resists showing vulnerability with you, then their peer attachments may be their stronger connection.

6. Being known

Being seen and heard in a psychological sense rather than just the physical sense. If your child is comfortable sharing secrets with you and they feel most comfortable sharing their vulnerabilities with you, this means they want you to know them and they want to feel known by you. This is a good sign for securing your attachment and you should foster this connection and share with them aspects of yourself that help them to feel closer to you. Make them feel like a special person in your life.

Ultimately we cannot rely on peer attachments to tend to our children and raise them into the strong, independent, forward-thinking adults we know they need to be to survive as individuals in this society. With each child relying on the next for cues on how to behave, respond, and act, there is always an immaturity and insecurity that pervades, as one cannot learn true independence and vulnerability from peers who are only influenced by other peers.

Why Should I Bring My Child Back Under My Wing?

Children will naturally want to listen to you and make you proud when they are oriented towards you, their parent. Children will be open to learning from you because you are their safest place, whereas with peer-orientation, children are more hesitant to learn from you because of their built loyalty to their peers and they become more willing to learn from their peers. This is clearly wrong and risky because peers and other young children are not yet ready to be making mature enough decisions and they are not meant to be leaders. This is meant to be a parent and adult job.

As your child grows, peer-orientation will have them going to their peers with their problems and leaning on their friends when they could be leaning on you, their parent instead, as nature would have intended. So how do we help our children to stay connected to us, learn from us, seek our counsel, and show their love to us?

Find out the four (4) simple steps wooing your child back under your wing, as nature intended.

“The ultimate gift is to make a child feel invited to exist in our presence exactly as he is..”

Each quote incorporated into this post comes from the book Hold Onto Your Kids.