Research on child development confirms that stimulation in the first months is important. No argument there. These are important months. But the baby is not able to understand that the caretaker is an entity apart from itself until later down the line. It needs to learn much before it can comprehend that concept that seems so obvious to us. When it does, it wants to stay close -- because of pleasant interactions. (The "Needs/Trust Cycle," apparently invented by Foster Cline, appears nowhere in mainstream developmental literature.) The notion that things like breastfeeding facilitate an infant's attachment to its mother is popular mythology (or Nancy Thomas' absurd claim that human breast milk is as sweet as condensed milk!). Also, the idea that infant attachment begins at birth or even in utero is nowhere established by research. Which is not to say that young infants are not learning. (Infants adopted soon after birth statistically have the same or better chance of success as those who stay in their biological families.) A number of infant behaviors appear to be confused as attachment behaviors. I recommend the book "Understanding Attachment" (Mercer 2003) or any of dozens of books by developmentalists for a review of mainstream research. Mercer is particularly good because she addresses common misconceptions about attachment in infants. Note that many people use the words "bonding" and "attachment" interchangeably or in error. Bonding is the affection a parent develops at perinatally. Attachment is a developmental stage the infant enters around eight months of age. It can be typically a few months earlier or later. Just as some children begin to walk earlier at eight months.

I'd read Being Attached. I'm halfway through that book and it has a lot of interesting things to say about attachment and how attachment psychology rose up from the ashes of behaviorlism and psychoanalism (grr, I can't ever spell that) Which are both bunk because neither one of them really understands about babies and what they need. Also, babies can tell the difference between their parents and other people at a very young age, much younger than 8 months. It's really not healthy for a baby to be moved from one home to another at a young age, anymore than being left at a hospital away from their parents for months at a time would. They also do not just need routine care, that's been debunked by babies in orphanges who get nothing but routine care by a variety of caregivers and look what happens to them? They need to build up love and trust, and to do that they need to attach to a primary caregiver.

You misunderstand me. I said stimulation for infants in early life is very important. I'm sure we would all consider that part of good routine care. But being able to differentiate sounds is not the same as being attached. It's certainly a skill, among others, that will later contribute to the development of attachments later. Developments occur as infants learn more about their environment and their bodies develop. For example, people wouldn't try to potty train an infant, even though it can excrete and may cry from the discomfort of a soiled diaper. Using a toilet successfully requires the complex coordination of skills and awareness (e.g. GI sensations). Care to give a better citation for "Being Attached"? / / Yes, Bowlby, strangely enough, was a Freudian. However, no one would claim that today mainstream academics studying attachment (and acknowledging Bowlby's contributions) are Freudians. Unlike Freud, these academics like research. / If you're concerned about Freud (who is thankfully losing much credibility), then how is it you haven't recognized his contributions to Attachment Therapy, with its "infantile rage," "catharsis," "repressed memories of abuse," etc.?

If babies don't get attached before 8 months, wouldn't we see no difference in their interactions with Mom versus Dad (given a typical 2-parent family with Mom as primary care giver)? I know my daughter certainly could tell the difference between us, especially when I suddenly disappeared for most of the day when I returned to work after 3 months maternity leave and suddenly it was Dad all day long instead. And of course, she knew the difference between us and strangers long before 8 months and consistently preferred us to anyone else.

I don't really care to talk authors or research. What I do know first hand is that a great deal of brain development occurs in an infant during 0-8 months. Neglect, abuse, malnutrition, and not forming an attachment to a primary care-giver during this time period, CAN, put an infant at increased risk for attachment difficulties, sensory issues, and other problems resulting from faulty early brain wiring, period. An 8 month old infant is NOT a blank slate, they are a reflection, of everything put into them both, genetically and environmentally.

I have heard and experienced that babies know their mommys by the smell of their beast milk from birth. I remember my DD crying in her daddy's arms because she was hungry. He placed her in my arms and she stopped. I know she knew me as her mommy.

mater; you are correct that baby does not recognize his or her caregiver as separate. However if this unseparable part of the baby's self gets taken away, that baby's psyche does get messed up big way. If nothing else, the familiarity of the same caregiver gives the baby sense of safety and stability. To change caregivers means to confuse baby in a major harmful way.

A child must walk before they can run.... likewise, a child must consistantly and persistantly have basic needs met, INCLUDING the nurturing of a primary caregiver, in order to establish healthy attachments. When my husband and I adopted newborn infants, they KNEW that we were different, and responded in kind. However, with the help of Dr. Sears (who, by the way, is a biological and adoptive father) we were able to focus on the nurturing that developed the need/trust relationship, which resulted in healthy attachments formed - WAY before 8 months of age. Cognitive awareness and memory is not the same as emotional awareness and memory. However, both have an effect on people. While babies may not remember anything of their first 8 months, they are nonetheless deeply and profoundly affected by what occurs to and around them.

Bowlby wasn't a Fruedian. His theories were totally against the whole Oedipal thing and focused on day to day interactions, not the unconcious and things like that. And it is true that babies are affected by what happens to them at an early age. Even brain scans of children from neglectful institutions vs children who as babies had most of their emotional needs met would show you that. Ainsworth's experiments come to mind.

This is off the topic of this post, but I wanted to let you know that I've learned a lot from your blog. I'm a newspaper reporter and have considered doing a story on reactive attachment disorder in my area. I've done some research because I wanted to understand more about what adoptive parents deal with and what attachment therapy does. I'm also simply interested in the topic. On a personal note, I also wanted to say that I had a jolt of recognition when I looked at the childhood and adolescent pictures of your daughter Amy. I'm not adopted, was never abused and was loved by my family. I grew up with both of my biological parents, who are still married and who I love very much. However, that expression on her face is very similar to mine in a lot of childhood photos and probably even now. I still don't smile at all easily. I don't see "empty eyes" when I look at her. I see fear, apprehension, inhibition, maybe shyness and introversion, maybe a bit of anger. Her eyes are filled with emotion, even if they're primarily negative. I really hope you don't really view your daughter as the "onion" or incapable of being salvaged. I don't think that's true of anyone. I was sorry for both of you reading these posts and I hope that you'll be able to reconnect at some point. I don't know your daughter or your family or share your circumstances, so take this with a very large grain of salt, but I'd say your daughter was depressed from early childhood on and it may not have all been related to attachment problems. In one of the posts you wrote last spring, you asked one of your respondants how it feels to be depressed and if the person has any control over their actions. I don't think you got an answer. I'd describe it as a gray fog or like being smothered in cotton wool. It blurs and blunts your emotions. Sometimes it's physically hard to make yourself move or want to do anything. Sometimes you're too easily irritated and snap at anyone who speaks to you or tries to make you do something. At one point I was diagnosed with dysthymia, or chronic mild depression. I've had it for as long as I can remember, but it probably worsened when I hit puberty at about age 8. When I was a teenager, I developed more severe depression on top of the dysthymia and had a lot of crying jags in class, felt like the world was hopeless, wondered if I'd still be alive the next year, etc. I remember telling my mother that I wanted the gray cloud to come back because the major depression hurt too much. I had a lot of problems with my parents and brother, at school and with relationships because of this, all throughout my childhood. I did come out of the major depression eventually, partly with the help of a counselor, but chronic depression is just that -- chronic. I still battle with it and the negative effects it has had on my life. I also hope you realize that this is an illness, one that is frustrating for the person suffering from it as well as for the people around her. It is controllable to an extent, but there have been a lot of times when I faked a smile or a laugh at a family gathering. Fake it until you make it was the advice my counselor had. I'm not always good at it, but I've made the attempt. From the research I've done, I think dysthymia has something to do with lower serotonin flow in the brain. They've done some studies to back that up. By nature, I'm also reserved, inhibited, and very shy. It is still hard for me to talk to strangers and to make friends. Even after more than 15 years as a reporter, I have to psyche myself up before I go to do an interview. That's why I'm a reporter, actually, because I felt that it would be far too easy for me to retreat from the world if I didn't force myself to meet people. I don't enjoy crowds or being around too many people or talking too much. I have to have a lot of alone time to recharge. It sounds to me like your personality and that of your biological children is quite the opposite from that, loud and outgoing and physically active and that your daughter Amy might be naturally introverted, which might have been another part of your problem. No one's fault, really. I'm lucky in that I'm similar enough to my parents (or, at least, to a couple of the shy, ornery, inhibited uncles on each side of the family) that they understood where I was coming from and didn't insist on pushing me into things I was temperamentally unsuited to do, no matter how exasperated they got. This may well be completely irrelevant to your circumstances. Feel free to ignore my unsolicited opinion! I wish you all the best with your family.

Bluestocking, thank you for your post. I will be digesting it more, and posting more of a response over the next few days, but I did want to say a few immediate things .... Amy did get a diagnosis of dysthymia early on ... and we tried several antidepressants but she wouldn't take them. Yes, we are a boisterous family, and someone once described our situation as "dropping Amy in the middle of the Kennedys." Not sure I like the analogy, but I get the drift. But years ago we arrived at the point where if she was motivated to do ANYTHING and happy to do ANYTHING we were happy. There was no expectation that she achieve greatness or be carbon copies of her older sibs ... simply that she take some responsibility for her own life, her own happiness, and show some interest in the people who shared the planet with her. I haven't written her off. I am discouraged, to be sure. Very discouraged. And I have managed to box my hopes away pretty securely ... as I can't bear to be disappointed again and again and again any more. But hopeLESS? No. I'm too much of a mom. There will always be hope, but I dare not dwell upon it.

"Bluestocking" is on point. I am struck by how depression is a major theme among people involved in Attachment Therapy. On this blog, people frequently talk about feeling drained and exhausted. Children are reported to have flat affect and be unmotivated. There appears to be considerable pressure on children to trust, love, and even be "fun to be around" -- an unreasonable demand on children who may have much about which to be depressed. (Pardon me, but I find this verging on equivalence with the man who expects an evening of rumpy-pumpy merely because he bought his date dinner.) What happened to gentleness and patience with wounded creatures? How reasonable is it to assume that all foster/adoptive parents are loveable, or even compatible themselves? I fear this Attachment Therapy programme has the potential to make family relationships even more difficult by creating a demanding, adversarial environment that gets everyone down sooner or later. For my part, I would really like to hear what the children/adult adoptees have to say about this from their perspective. I recommend to Bluestocking Nancy Spoolstra's comments on the APSAC Task Force Report on Attachment Therapy, and the report itself: http://www.attachmentparenting.org/pdf/taskforcepaper.pdf. There are also several organisations (online) that have less enthusiastic things to say about Attachment Therapy and parenting, e.g.: http://www.childrenintherapy.org/ http://www.kidscomefirst.info/ http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/at.html

I have a friend whose daughter came to their family at 4 months old. Their home was this little girl's FOURTH placement. She had already begun to pull away. She refused to make eye contact with mom during feeding. My MIL also did research about prenatal music exposure and what kids pick up in the womb. They played one particular type of music through the mom's belly. When the baby was born they put sensors on the baby's feet. If they turned one foot it played the music they heard in utero. The other foot played a different type of music. Every child turned the foot that played the music they heard pre-natally, even if that wasn't their "dominant" side. Attachment starts before birth!!!

As I said, I'm very, very sorry for both of you and I don't think depression can be used as an excuse for completely screwing up your life, though it can be one explanation. You said you had your daughter on antidepressants. I was told at one point by a psychiatrist I saw in college that dysthymia is notoriously difficult to treat, much less cure, and I could try taking an antidepressant but it probably would not be effective. Now THAT was a downer. I didn't like him, didn't find him at all helpful, and preferred not to view myself as damaged goods. On the other hand, after awhile the counseling sessions felt like being transfused with sugar. I'd read too many self-help and psychology books not to see what they were trying to do a mile away, which probably didn't help. I covered the hospital beat for awhile and delved into the malpractice suits and psychiatric histories of some of the psychiatrists in the town where I live. I found that several of them had criminal or psychiatric histories themselves. Others are, of course, very helpful and well-intentioned. Sometimes the screwed-up shrinks are the best at curing other people. What I discovered, though, is that it doesn't work unless the psychiatrist and the patient are a good match. I don't think I ever had a good match, though I do credit the counselor I saw in high school with being pretty helpful. I did try an antidepressant at one point in my late teens, didn't notice that great a difference one way or the other, and went off it. I decided to deal with the problem in other ways -- long walks, long talks with my mother or a good friend I made in college, throwing myself into work or classes or burying myself in the library. I stayed away from drugs and alcohol, thank God, because I had a feeling that it would be fairly easy for me to become addicted. St. John's Wort, interestingly enough, seemed to help. I notice that I was less irritable and had fewer low moods when I took it. It's used to treat dysthymia in Germany and is, of course, available over the counter here. I've also supplemented my diet with B12, tried to add sources of Omega 3, and make sure I eat a balanced diet. That's the best advice I have to offer on ways of dealing with the problem. It's important to realize, though, that it's an illness, probably one with a physical cause, and not necessarily a character flaw.