Talk:Attachment in children

message: This is part of a modification to the organization of attachment-related pages.  kc62301
Adjusted the comment about securely attached children getting upset when a care giver leaves. It is incorrect to state this: one of the key features of a securely attached child is that s/he doesn't get overly upset when a care giver leaves, but will also gree the care giver positively on their subsequent return.
:In the description of the different types (Ainsworth, M., et. al., Patterns of Attachment) in regard to the strange situation, the securely attached children will express some level of distress upon separation.  Expressing no distress is an indicator of one of the insecure sub-types; the avoidant. DPetersontalk 14:26, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hardly empirical. DPetersontalk 00:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Released June 29, 2006

message: I have removed Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy from this page. This little known therapy has been extensively advertised on Wiki as evidence based, sometimes the only evidence based treatment for a variety of disorders affecting attachment. (Theraplay, also little known and not evidence based has also been advertised in this way.) A range of attachment articles including attachment therapy are currently before ArbCom. In the course of ArbCom it has transpired that of the 6 users promoting DDP and Theraplay and controlling these pages, User:DPeterson, User:RalphLender, User:JonesRD, User:SamDavidson, User:JohnsonRon, and User:MarkWood, the latter four are definitely socks and have been blocked, and the other two have been blocked for one year. The attachment related pages are in the course of being rewritten. Fainites barley 17:54, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: DDP

message: In the context as it stands, this section implies that treatment is
required for different attachment styles. Is this intentional?Jean Mercer 21:10, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Treatment section

message: This article is VERY redundant of what is already written in Attachment Theory.  The scope of this article should be limited to high-level summary of what is written there and issues not covered there.  Does this article have enough meat to justify its existence independent of that article? Although, I do think this article is better written and maybe some of this content should be lifted to improve the other article.  Steve carlson 00:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Whoa Jean Mercer, I just wrote almost exactly the same thing on the Attachment theory talk page.  Please see my discussion there, but I think this proposal makes sense in light of the three major audiences (layperson, student, clinician) who would be looking to consume this information. Steve carlson 00:00, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, considering how much content we have on Attachment in adults, I think it certainly deserves its own article!  However, I do think that each of the other three articles (maybe not the clinical one) should mention that the Bowlby/Ainsworth model has been extended to adults and provide a "Main article" link to the full article. Steve carlson 00:00, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge with Attachment Theory?

message: Attachment is the primary task of the first year of life (infancy).  Through attachment, trust is developed by the infant.  This basis of trust is what enables the infant to have the courage to explore in the second year of life (toddlerhood).  For an infant to learn trust and have an attachment to at least one adult or caregiver is absolutely critical for development.  Professors who teach Infant/Toddler Development would be horrified to learn that attachment is not even mentioned on the Infant/newborn page.  Link the Infant page to attachment theory if you must.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rachelmrobertson (talk • contribs) 05:18, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with Infant page! 

message: What is even stranger is that there is a page called 'Human bonding' and another for 'male' as well as 'female' bonding.
What is the reason for this proliferation of pages on bonding and attachment?
I suggest it is because many people are not aware of the scientific discipline. They write what they see and feel without really knowing about the research that has already taken place.
If pages were merged I believe they would only reappear under slightly different titles as more people want to make a contribution.
I would suggest keep the other pages but redirect, (also removing their content), to the primary page on the Attachment Theory, thus reinforcing the point that all these issues are linked to the same topic.
(Please see the page on Human bonding so see where I am coming from).
Kingsley Miller
KingsleyMiller (talk) 11:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stranger and Stranger, Still! Do NOT merge REDIRECT! 

message: This is a VERBATIM quotation. If you alter or change it in anyway it is no longer accurate. Please leave this section alone and make whatever points you wish elsewhere. KingsleyMiller (talk) 18:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Critique of The Strange Situation Protocol

message: Using brackets in quotations acknowledges the fact that it is not part of the quotation.  The verbatim quote, without context, is misleading and not fully informative.  I have created a separate section so as to honor your wishes although brackets would have offered a much better layout.
MrVain68  —Preceding comment was added at 18:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Rejoinder to the Critique of the Strange Situation

message: The Rutter quote is an opinion in and of itself.  If it is the case that my opinion in the rejoinder should be moved, so should yours.  I clearly state in re: the Strange Situation classifications that they are NOT clinical diagnoses.  Again, if the rejoinder goes in a different section, then it would mean, ipso facto, that the Rutter quote should as well.  After all, they are both opinions--ones from highly regarded theoreticians and researchers.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrvain68 (talk • contribs) 02:11, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Opinions

message: I now see that you have removed the CRITIQUE. This is not simply wrong, it is very wrong. People reading this page should be aware that the procedure has serious limitations. The title '& Beyond' is totally unsuitable and borders on vandalism.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by KingsleyMiller (talk • contribs) 08:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Opinions2

message: Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. The most common types of vandalism include the addition of obscenities or crude humor, page blanking, or the insertion of nonsense into articles.
Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not considered vandalism. For example, adding a personal opinion to an article once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated. Not all vandalism is obvious, nor are all massive or controversial changes vandalism; careful attention needs to be given to whether changes made are beneficial, detrimental but well intended, or outright vandalism.
Committing blatant vandalism violates Wikipedia policy. If you find that another user has vandalized Wikipedia, you should revert the changes and warn the user (see below for specific instructions). Users who vandalize Wikipedia repeatedly, despite warnings to stop, should be reported to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism, and administrators may block them.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by  (talk • contribs) 08:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia & Vandalism

message: Can the material not be amalgamated into a section on limitations, critiques, further research etc on Strange Situation? Attachment is a relatively young and developing field. There is no one definitive answer. Could you also both remember to sign yourselves with four of these ~ as the argument gets a little difficult to follow.Fainites barley 20:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion

message: [[User_talk:Fainites|barley] Thank you for this kind intervention. This section is primarily on the Strange Situation Protocol. This particular form of measurement has a number of limitations so much so that there are many alternatives which are featured on the WIK page Attachment measures. contribs) seems to have a vested interest in the Strange Situation Protocol and has taken exception to the clarification I have made at the end of the page on Attachment in Children. His criticisms of myself are unfounded. He has accused me of altering the his content when all I have sought to do is add the quote from Rutter.
I should also like to point you to the page on Attachment measures. I feel my paragraph adds to the article. As you are aware I have included extracts which compliment other pages. However the REJOINDER has no place and should be amalgamated as you suggest.
I do not believe the extract from Rutter should be withheld from 'Attachment in Children' as most professionals working in the field now agree the procedures should not be used in isolation but only to compliment other procedures.
I include the section I added below;-
Critique of the Strange Situation Protocol
However it should also be noted that there are professional reservations regarding the use of the The Strange Situation Protocol as a definitive measurement of attachment. Professor Sir Michael Rutter describes the procedure in the following terms in 'The Clinical Implications of Attachment Concepts' from the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 36 No 4, pp. 552-553, (See also the video clips, 'Bonding - The Attachment Theory' and 'The Strange Situation Procedure'),
"It is by no means free of limitations (see Lamb, Thompson, Gardener, Charnov & Estes, 1984). To begin with, it is very dependent on brief separations and reunions having the same meaning for all children. This maybe a major constraint when applying the procedure in cultures, such as that in Japan (see Miyake, Chen & Campos, 1985), where infants are rarely separated from their mothers in ordinary circumstances. Also, because older children have a cognitive capacity to maintain relationships when the older person is not present, separation may not provide the same stress for them. Modified procedures based on the Strange Situation have been developed for older preschool children (see Belsky & Cassidy, 1994; Greenberg et al., 1990) but it is much more dubious whether the same approach can be used in middle childhood. Also, despite its manifest strengths, the procedure is based on just 20 minutes of behaviour. It can be scarcely expected to tap all the relevant qualities of a child's attachment relationships. Q-sort procedures based on much longer naturalistic observations in the home, and interviews with the mothers have developed in order to extend the data base (see Vaughn & Waters, 1990). A further constraint is that the coding procedure results in discrete categories rather than continuously distributed dimensions. Not only is this likely to provide boundary problems, but also it is not at all obvious that discrete categories best represent the concepts that are inherent in attachment security. It seems much more likely that infants vary in their degree of security and there is need for a measurement systems that can quantify individual variation".
For a fuller discussion of this subject see Attachment measures.
KingsleyMiller (talk) 09:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion2

message: Fainites,
Once again thank you for this. However the Strange Situation Protocol is unusual because many, I would say most, professionals working in this field would suggest NOT using this technique in isolation. Many would advise against it saying that it should be used in conjunction with another form of measurement for verification purposes. In other words they dispute its reliability.
I do not think you are from a Social Sciences background therefore I hope you don't mind me making further points.
Why do people get so upset when the Strange Situation Protocol is criticised?
To answer this question you must look at your own postings on 'attachment' which suggest that it has an ethological or biological basis, a la John Bowlby.
Well, if this is TRUE then there should be a STANDARD response from ALL babies. 
In reality the response is different!
If you see my video clip on the Strange Situation Procedure you will see that as well as Japanese children, Aborigine children, do NOT respond in the same way as Bowlby's theory predicts thus questioning the original premise. 
Why is my addition to the page on Child Attachment so obnoxious?
Because the person who wrote the original page spends a lot of their time going through this procedure with parents. He has set himself up as an expert on the back of this Wikipedia page. He does not want somebody like myself coming along and putting the seed of doubt in clients minds. It is bad for business.
But it is not bad for children to know the limitations of the Protocol and that is the reason I have included the quote from Rutter.
kipKingsleyMiller (talk) 16:40, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: My postings generally relate to attachment theory - which is Bowlby. There are other views on attachment. There is a criticism section on the Att. theory page but nobody's put much in it yet. I don't think its right, Kip, to accuse others of bad faith. After all, attachment theory is pretty mainstream stuff and its more likely that people who believe in it do so because they think Bowlby got it pretty much right, rather than for financial motives. I kind of think that if making money was your primary motive you wouldn't choose to become a Strange Situation procedure coder! I agree that there ought to be a description of the limitations of the SSP, as does Mrvain68, and the ongoing developments of further measures/diagnosis methods. its just that they ought to be written in a comprehensive encyclopaedic fashion, rather than like an ongoing argument. Fainites barley 22:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Mountebank

message: Had a quick look at page in question.
If you look at my page on Maternal Dep or PSM Rutter at the bottom of each page you will see some significant differences in the Attachment theory identified by Rutter. Perhaps these need to be incorporated in the AT page?
kip  —Preceding unsigned comment added by KingsleyMiller (talk • contribs) 09:23, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fainities2

message: My reference was to your own comment.
See either of the 2 pages I refer to above.
KingsleyMiller (talk) 00:33, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fainities3

message: Kip,
This is not the case.  You are assumming.  I do in fact as I have mentioned see the limitations of the Strange Situation on a daily basis.  Children between 12 and 20 months of age are not going to understand the limitations of the Strange Situation anyway...they don't have the cognitive capacity yet to understand something like that.  Your addition is not obnoxious.  I never said it was.  In fact I welcomed it.  I just think that by allowing the Rutter critique to stand alone, you are misrepresenting the limitations.  In fact, one of the weaker points Rutter notes is that they are classifications.  Continuous measures of security derived from the Strange Situation have been used for quite some time.  Consult van Ijzendoorn et al. as you seem to be fairly well-read.  If you feel then that I should organize the response to the Rutter quote in a more encyclopedic form, then I will without a doubt.  But clearly you appear to be pushing your own agenda with the Rutter quote as much as you claim that I am working with clients (I'm not clinical) and other assumptions you make in re: my page.  "I set myself up as an expert on the back of my page" not sure if that is quite accurate partner...I simply say that I have an interest in attachment theory.  In fact, you seem to have set yourself up as an expert just becuase M. Rutter looked at a book you sent him. On a more convivial note: can you add the Lamb reference Rutter quotes to the references section? Mrvain68 (talk) 17:42, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Not Quite

message: The changes made here and elsewhere represent a significant step forward in bringing a better understanding of Child Psychology to readers.
KingsleyMiller (talk) 09:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Change

message: Would it be possible to change the references from mother to caregiver?
KingsleyMiller (talk) 09:16, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Mother to Caregiver?

message: I think this article ought to be renamed "Attachment patterns in children" or "attachment styles in children". Fainites barleyscribs 07:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Name

message: What is wrong with the see also's I added.  They seem relevant to the topic. SultanOfFaint (talk) 00:52, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: See .Fainites barleyscribs 10:05, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: links

message: This information is widely known.  Much of it can be found in Bowlby, Attachment, Chapter 14, and in various college textbooks addressing child development, primates and brain development.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Margaret9mary (talk • contribs) 19:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources for first paragraph 

message: I propose that this article be renamed "Attachment patterns in children" as that is essentially what it is about. Fainites barleyscribs 22:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Rename

message: Attachment is the ability to sustain long-term close relationships with others.  
All attachment behaviors in humans begin with the foundation of the first relationships in infancy.
Attachment theory is an interdisciplinary study that doesn't just consider infant attachment in modern western cultures, but throughout the world and throughout history.  Humans are extremely adaptable--some grow up in extended families of 30-100 people who they see on a regular basis or they may grow up seeing only 1 or 2 people.  Whether their world is urban or rural, rich or poor, temperate climate or extreme--what are the things that all babies need?  And what are the constants--the patterns of behaviors that continue to exist despite our modern way of life?
 
Attachment in infancy concerns first relationships.  This is a time of pattern formation--laying the foundations for all future relatedness.  It's an extraordinary time for brain development--post-natal development of the brain in humans is far greater than in animals.  The human infant is born with a minimum amount of wiring for behaviors--but instead has behavioral systems for learned behavior that must be activated and developed.  The human infant brain doubles in size in the first year.  This is like growing a new brain!  Programming is established that is a result of what the infant experiences.   The relationships an infant has in the first year will literally shape their brain and it's programming.  Perceptions and emotions, emotion regulation, empathy--the capacity to perceive others as equally human as we are--develop during this time, and a baby's first communication is pre-verbal. 
Bowlby spoke of our human EEA--environment of evolutionary adaptedness--the circumstances in which humans developed social and cognitive behaviors which was originally that of small band of hunter-gatherers.  Making the connections between what Bowlby wrote and what is known in other fields outside the field of Attachment theory about infants and infant developmentneeds to be considered.Margaret9mary (talk) 21:37, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infant Attachment--(anthropology, physiology and child development)