Go Away! Not Far Away! Healthy Attachment in Families

When my daughter arrived into our family through adoption at 13 months old, she earned the sweet nickname of Koala. Chubby arms wrapped around my neck and ever-strengthening legs clung to my torso as she learned to trust this new world of strange voices, smells, and faces. Her clinging grasp loosened over that first year of our love affair - the second year of her life - until she was finally a toddler and would run away from me with a sly little laugh, thrilled at her budding independence.

My son, her older brother, had previously entered those toddler years with a similar yen for freedom. With him I first learned that dance of separation and reunion. In a moment of small-person frustration, when I had challenged his budding ego, two-year boy would snap at me, “Go away!” And then, in a moment of horror, he quickly added, “Not far away!” He was spooked by his own power, that his temper might will me out of existence. My raging toddler son was learning a critical key to healthy independence: we are fundamentally connected to but separate from every other person. Healthy existence demands that we navigate self in relationship, that we trust that the ties will hold even as we practice identity.

Both my kids - now young adults - know the dance steps. Their dad and I are practicing too. We all currently shelter at home because of this global virus threat. But I know that if son and daughter had their way, plane tickets would be purchased, GPS maps would be navigated, adventures would be planned, and my children would be stretching out to far-off places. Not out of temper tantrums, but because they are launching into very normal years of take-off. And if this were any other year besides pandemic 2020, their dad and I would stand in the driveway with brave faces, watching them back out and press the gas pedal. (A little part of me is delighting at the extra months we have gotten with them! And then, the dishes pile up in the sink and I remember how good and right it is for offspring to spring off! “Go away! Not far away!” I want to yell in a tug-of-war with their growing independence.)

The importance of human attachment was made famous by 20th century psychologist, John Bowlby. According to attachment theory, the quality of our infant and childhood relationship with primary care-givers plays a key role in all subsequent relationships and in the forming of self. “A securely attached child will store an internal working model of a responsive, loving, reliable care-giver, and of a self that is worthy of love and attention and will bring these assumptions to bear on all other relationships” (Holmes, Jeremy, 1993). According to attachment theory, the challenge of the caregiver is this: hold tightly enough so the child experiences anchoring care during the storm, but not tight enough to cut off the circulation of her budding identity. Children suffer under two extremes. On the one hand is the parent who does not offer the anchor. This parent is inaccessible, perhaps because of mental illness, addiction, limited parenting skills, or lack of support. On the other hand is the parent who strangles the independence of the growing child. This parent struggles to separate, becoming enmeshed with the child, often themselves anxious of the launching.

In my work as a family therapist, I see at play both cut-off and enmeshment, the two extremes of attachment struggle. The parent of the 14-year-old forbids the purple hair because, at some level, this signifies “leaving my values.” This anxious parent demands allegiance to multiple rules and roles. Ironically, this parent who struggles with a drive towards conformity often ends up motivating the child towards cut-off. The parent’s need for closeness backfires. The child pulls away, or only engages through arguments that escalate with the parent’s growing anxiety. Unlike this tug of war, parents and children in healthy relationships are learning to be connected to but separate from each other. At the core of the relationship is a struggle for trust: can I trust you to still love me even when we differ? Even when I walk a different path than you did? Even when I make a terrible mistake? Even when I fail? And don’t all parents, children, spouses, siblings step out of line in one way or another? In the healthy relationship, the attachment ties weather the storm of the missteps.

A well-worn children’s book sits on a shelf in my study. Mama, Do You Love Me? by Barbara M. Joose used to stay on the floor of the nursery, too busy to sit on a shelf. Night after night I read it to the little ones. The book is of an Inuit tale about a naughty little girl who explores, makes mischief, and sometimes tantrums. The rubber band of attachment is stretching between mama and daughter. The little child is testing the elastic.

Mama, what if I carried our eggs – our ptarmigan eggs! –

and I tried to be careful,

and I tried to walk slowly,

but I fell

and the eggs broke?

Then I would be sorry.

But still,

I would love you…

What if I threw

Water at our lamp?

Then, Dear One,

I would be very angry.

But still,

I would love you…

What if I ran away? Then I would be worried.

What if I stayed away and sang with the wolves

And slept in a cave?

Then, Dear One, I would be very sad.

But still, I would love you.

Long before my work as a family therapist, when I was a minister, caring for people in a different way, I was asked to officiate the funeral of a person I did not know. The 45-year-old man was the son of church members. I believe that the family attachment had been challenged over the years. At some point long ago grown-up son had cut off. His parents had grieved his addiction to struggle and to hard liquor - a lifestyle that had finally killed him. At the time I was well familiar with the Inuit tale. I was reading it every night to my own children. So as I prepped for the funeral, I tucked the small book in my brief case. Somehow I knew it needed to be read at the service.

As the story winds down, as daughter has tried every trick in the book to distance herself from her sturdy, stable mom, mother ends with these words of attachment, “I will love you, forever and for always, because you are my Dear One.” I read those words in a funeral, in the context of a broken relationship, in the sacred space of a chapel, to a grieving mom and dad. For even though the elastic between parents and son had worn thin, the family was still trusting their child into arms of Eternal Love. They trusted that all of the missteps of parents and children for forty-five years were still not enough to separate them from the love of God.

Attachment is known in the flesh and blood relationships between parents and children. But it seems to me that there is something even more primordial in the bonds that we carry between ourselves and each other. There is some Grace that holds us together, that enables us to trust where we cannot see, that helps us to apologize and to forgive, to honor relationships and to risk growing in them. Whether we like it or not, we are attached.