MEDICAL INFORMATION - Bonding Issues
Introduction A First Meeting Allergies Apgar Score Bonding Issues
Bringing Your Child Home Cerebral Palsy Development Assessment Ear Infections Facilitate Attachment
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Gathering Medical Information Growth Charts Guidelines for Videotaping and Photographing Hepatitis A
Hepatitis B Hepatitis C HIV Immunizations Intestional Parasites
Malnutrition Rickets Scabies Shaken Baby Syndrome Syphilis
Tuberculosis Cytomegalovirus      

The Cycle of Attachment and Bonding
Effects of Institutionalization on Children

Children begin the cycle of attachment and bonding even in the womb, as they must receive sufficient nutrition and be free of harmful substances like alcohol and drugs, to develop properly and be ready to attach at birth. Children who are born to mother addicted to drugs or alcohol often have immature neurological system and can be hypersensitive to all stimulation, like touch, which is important in the early phases of attachment. As a result , their heightened sensitivity and irritability may set them up for further abuse and or neglect as caregivers attempt to nurture a baby who is fussy and upset.

The Bonding Cycle

In the first 18 months of life, infants learn whether to trust their environment or else to find that his/her needs will not be met. In what we call the bonding cycle, children have a need, i.e. hunger, pain, etc. They become angry and demand that their need be met. When it is met (gratification), many times over the course of 2 years, they learn to trust that their caregivers will care for and protect them. This gratification and trust becomes a foundation for development for life. When their needs are not consistently met, the bonding cycle is interrupted, having lifelong implications and causing problems in the following areas:
  • Social/behavioral development
  • Cognitive development
  • Emotional development
  • Cause and effect thinking
  • Conscience development
  • Reciprocal relationships
  • Parenting
  • Accepting responsibility

Children who have been institutionalized often experience interruptions in the bonding cycle. Their needs may be met sometimes, sometimes not; with no predictability, they do no know what will happen the next time they let out a cry. This causes them to learn to lose their expectations that their needs will be met and gratify themselves with self soothing methods. They trust no one besides themselves to gratify their needs and do not learn to identify with others or to develop compassion, empathy or love. These children may use methods to gratify themselves like head banging, rocking, sucking on their hands or pulling their hair. They may appear detached and vacant, desiring no interactions with others.

Attachment to Caregivers

Consistency in caregiving is also a vital part of children's learning to trust their environment and their ability to attach. Children do not necessarily need a parent to attach to, though that is the ideal. Any caregiver who provides consistent care and gratification of the child's needs can be an attachment to her. As children learn to predict their environment and gratification of their needs, even if those needs are not daily routines and know that a familiar caregiver will give them breakfast.

Children who are moved around from one institution to another cannot trust on any given day that a caregiver who is familiar to them will get them dressed or give them their breakfast. They learn to an even great degree not to trust or love and are unable to attach to anyone, causing them to be very resistant to attachment later if they are adopted.

Children who experience this interruption in the bonding cycle, who are unable to attach and who are moved around in their early life are repeatedly traumatized. For those children who are adopted, they come into a family that they do not know, who suddenly want to meet their every need, who hug them and rock them and feed them very predictably and love them unconditionally. These children have never experienced this and it scares them and they are very mistrustful of this kind of environment.

If they dare to love their own parents, or trust that their needs will be met, they are afraid their parents will leave them or send them somewhere else as this is all they have experienced in their lives. These children are angry with their parents, and test them regularly to see if they will leave them. Their behaviors may include:

  • Gratification of own needs (food hoarding, head banging)

  • Protecting himself (lying, being unpleasant to keep people at distance)

  • Expressing anger (destructiveness, cruelty to animals)

  • Keeping the fear away (not letting parents close, rejecting them before they reject him)

Parents adopting children who have experienced abuse, neglect or institutionalize have a long road ahead of them in order to love and be loved by their child. With help, love and much patience, this can be accomplished. Children who experience some degree of predictability and stability in their lives often have not learned as much distrust of their environment. If institutions can provide children with stability and predictability and the same caregivers to form and attachment with, the children will have a much greater chance of attaching to their adoptive parents and being healthy well adjusted boys and girls.

 Kristen Buchannan, MSSA, LISW

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