Keeping the Bough From Breaking: The Baby Signs^® Experience and Attachment
by Linda Acredolo, Ph.D. and Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D.
C0-Founders, Baby Sign, Inc.

The word “attachment” is becoming more and more common in articles on parenting, but just what does it mean? The term is used by child psychologists to label the emotional bond that forms between children and the significant adults in their lives starting soon after birth.

We’re indebted to a British clinical psychologist, Dr. John Bowlby, for discovering the critical nature of this early bond. Based in part on the emotional damage he had seen among refugee orphans from World War II, as well as on children in his own clinical practice, Bowlby became convinced that the first two years of a child’s emotional life were not only relevant, but absolutely critical to future emotional well-being.

When that bond is positive in nature, enabling children to trust a parent as a source of comfort and safety, the attachment is called “secure.” In contrast, when the bond is problematic, when children do not view a parent as trustworthy, the attachment is called “insecure.”

Forging a Secure Attachment

Obviously, what every parent hopes for is the former, a “secure attachment” bond with their baby. But how does one go about making sure that happens?

Thanks to Bowlby’s colleague, Dr. Mary Ainsworth, we now know that two of the most important ingredients are “Sensitivity” and “Responsiveness” on the part of the parent – in other words, the ability to read the baby well (know what he or she needs) and the willingness to meet those needs in a timely fashion.

The bottom line of the attachment relationship, in other words, is very sensible: Children fall in love with those who meet their physical needs for food and warmth, comfort them when they are hurt, protect them when they are frightened, and, in general, make them feel respected, understood, and loved.

How Signing Helps

And here, obviously, is where signs enter the picture. First, because they make the task of “reading” the preverbal baby so much easier, they help parents provide the baby what he or she needs to feel secure. Second, parents who are intently watching for signs are automatically paying closer attention to whatever the baby does, thus increasing the chance that even non-sign signals will be detected. Third, because they reveal to parents how much smarter their baby is than he or she looks (after all babies do drool a lot!), signs convince parents that there’s truly “somebody home in there,” somebody who is capable of feeling loved and secure or anxious and rejected. That leads to the understanding that it really matters what a parent does. Finally, signs enable babies to share their worlds with their parents, thereby increasing the joy that each takes in the other’s company.

For all these reasons, the Baby Signs^® Program increases the probability of a secure attachment. That’s the formal way of saying (as we often do!) that the Baby Signs^® Program helps forge bonds of love and affection that can last a lifetime.

© 2008 Baby Signs, Inc.

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