Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. This is the first installment of our Attachment in Action Series. In this episode we focus on attachment in the infant stage. We underscore the importance of assessing for the emotional and relational context at the time of birth and the infant stage, and we provide overview of caregiver responding to baby distress signals.   All Aboard !

1:20. Assessment is about taking a developmental history that includes the contextual, emotional and relational attachment history.

2:50. This Attachment in Action Series and the accompanying conversations are taken from the content in the book called “Attachment and Family Therapy” by Patricia Crittenden, Rudi Dallos, Andrea Landini, Kasia Kozlowska

4:30. Baby/Newborn/Infant stage means that there is joy, and loss because there is change. 

5:30. A developmental history needs to include talking about birth because birth can bring death or trauma or loss.

6:50. When a baby arrives, there is change and the arrival of conflicting needs. Where there is change, there is inherent loss. When there is change, we may see distress and distress means that coping strategies may emerge/become visible.

8:55. Family contexts to consider: Siblings; Non-birthing parent or Non-Primary Attachment parent/caregiver

12:30. Consider other contextual factors for families such as covid.

22:30. Infants are learning to regulate arousal/distress. Parent needs to see the arousal/distress signal from the baby, problem solve about what does the baby need, and respond to the need, so that the arousal/distress will then reduce. So, baby goes through arousal and calm, over and over. This then determines the baby’s internal state of managing their arousal. So the baby experiences and creates a physiological model of managing arousal. Joint, dynamic input from the beginning.

30:25. Winnicott said, “there is no such thing as a baby. There is no such thing as a ‘mom’. There is only a nursing pair”. Life starts as a dyad/pair because the baby is 100% dependent on the caregiver. 

31:40. If a baby never experiences arousal, then the baby never has to learn how to regulate their internal arousal. Or, if a baby gets aroused, and there is no responsiveness, or responsiveness is too slow (temporal lag between arousal and caregiver response) or responsiveness is intermittent/inconsistent, then the baby won’t learn the “contingencies” and the baby does not experience and create the physiological model of arousal regulation. Thus every baby needs to experience arousal so that the internal physiological model of arousal regulation gets created.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

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