Children who enter school with attachment problems are less likely to engage in school. They cannot trust adults to care or be dependable, are less likely to value or respect their relationships with teachers, and eventually become detached and cease to care. Which means they are less responsive to teacher influences and more likely to harm others. Consequently, they fail to value or pursue the achievement goals or the character traits schools seek to promote. Therefore, an early focus on creating and maintaining secure attachments must be the school’s highest priority.
The essential role of attachment in school success.
I will bet you $10 that I can walk into any 3rd grade class in Chicago, Baltimore, or Washington DC and pick four boys, three of whom will serve time in prison before age 30.
Easy bet to cover, you say, given the rates of crime in the inner city? Of all kids who start school in Baltimore, 50% don’t graduate and 60% of dropouts do prison time. Ok, that means a blind man will be right 30% of the time picking boys at random. But I am guaranteeing to be 75% correct. Where am I going to get the other 45% when I know nothing about family history of drug use or criminal involvement? That would certainly aid in my selection, but I don’t even need to know those facts to pick my four leading candidates.
Witnessing delinquent behavior would be a good predictor? If I saw one of the kids in the act of stealing while the teacher’s back was turned, that would certainly get my attention and likely my vote. But I am not assuming there are any thefts while I am watching. So how will I spot them?
Let’s pick a normal class activity. The teacher is reading a story to the class. The boys who are paying close attention and raising their hands to volunteer ideas about what will happen next in the story are clearly ruled out. They seem interested, curious, and engaged and that does not bode well for dropping out of school and becoming involved in crime. Now there’s a possible candidate. He’s got a couple of straws that he’s linked together and he’s getting the kid next to him to swat at the imagined bug in his hair. Now that’s a little delinquent for you.
Ooops, he just got busted. The teacher just gave him the briefest look and … he flunked my preliminary assessment. The boy obviously cares what his teacher thinks and the fact that he was doing something that disappointed her. And, to seal the deal, he stopped doing it after she gave him her attention.
So who are my candidates? They are the four disengaged boys. Disengaged from the story, but more importantly, from the teacher. She is reading a book about a lion cub who is lost and is going from one animal to the next asking, “Are you my mother?”. This reading to the class is not only for enjoyment, but to let them hear the story before they read the book themselves.
Some of the kids are worried about the cub not finding his mother. Others laugh at the cub for asking an obviously different looking animal if she is his mother. The teacher asks the students questions, such as, “How do you know that this animal is not his mother?” or “Where do you think he should look next?”.
The four boys show no interest in the story nor are they intrigued by her questions. Many inner city kids lack the background knowledge to appreciate hearing stories or being able to comprehend what they are trying to read. These boys have probably never been to the zoo and probably could not tell you what distinguished an elephant or a zebra. But lack of background knowledge is one of the reasons the teacher is reading this particular book and stopping to explain and explore along the way. She has the attention of most of the other kids, many of whom have not been to a zoo either.
My four targeted boys are not only disengaged, they are detached. Second and third grade kids care about their relationships with their teacher. A few may worry that their teacher doesn’t like them or that she is too strict, but they care what she thinks and most importantly, what she thinks of them. These four boys do not care. One has his head down, looking tired. Another is scratching an ever increasing slit in the floor with a paper clip. The other two are about to come to blows’, fighting over who was entitled to sit on the rug instead of the cold floor. The teacher looks don’t even catch their attention. Her warning of punishment if they continue also fails to stop the jabs and arm-twisting. These boys will not stop unless they are physically restrained, obviously undeterred by verbal warnings. None of these boys seems to care. Most likely they could tell us the rules for behavior in the classroom, but they do not care. A number of the kids needed prompts about their behavior but they were responsive to her limit setting.
The central characteristic that distinguishes these four boys from their classmates is their detachment from the teacher. They no longer care about having a relationship with this adult. They do not care about school or the people who run it because they have no reason to invest in relationships with these adults. Their experience has taught them not to trust in relationships. These boys arrived at school with a much greater deficit than lack of educational enrichment. They arrived with a deficit in their ability to attach. Unless this problem with attachment is addressed, their detachment from school will increase to the point they drop out or are thrown out or simply ignored, as two of the boys already seem to be in this classroom.
The ability to relate to others and the desire to relate to others, these are fundamental building blocks that must precede all else. Many of us take a mother’s love and reliability for granted, so the experience of these four boys is completely foreign to us. A child will not value what his teacher values, if he does not value the relationship first.
Not feeling cared for and eventually not caring about others is a recipe for someone who commits crimes without caring about his victims, who only stops when he is physically forced to stop.
Until the issue of attachment is addressed, engagement with school will be a losing battle. Disinterest in school and what teachers have to offer; and disrespect and defiance will increasingly characterize their behavior. In the process, these children will become even less likeable and “manageable”. Their interactions with teachers will only reinforce previously held perceptions of what the other (teacher or student) is like.
Having to start fresh with a new teacher every year. Having to take a three-month break in his relationships with school and the people who do care. This is the structure that only reinforces their problems with attachment and assures that relationships will be lost or undermined.
If a child comes to school with an attachment history characterized by loss, abandonment or neglect, then a focus on creating and maintaining a healthy attachment between teacher and child should be the top priority. That means matching the child with a teacher with whom he can stay connected for years, not months. Within the context of a successful attachment, investment in school and learning can take place. With children like these, assigning teachers according to subject matter or grade level specialization needs to take a back seat to a focus on creating and maintaining a healthy attachment between teacher and child.**
Attachment 101
Everything begins and ends with Attachment. A secure attachment to a parent sets the stage for forming satisfying relationships in life. It allows the child to explore and learn, knowing he has a safe base to return to when needed. This child enters school capable of loving his teacher, wanting to please her, and learning what she has to teach. At the other extreme is the child who cannot trust that an adult loves him and will dependably be there for him. No one has fanned the flame of his genuine interests. By third grade, that child will not care about what his teacher wants him to learn, because he has detached. He has no desire to please his teacher. And his behavior makes it hard for his teacher to truly care about him.
Every child longs for a connection to someone. But for some kids it is hard to trust that someone cares or will stay. Curiosity and learning take a back seat to finding and holding on to a relationship. The anxious clinging child is unwilling to venture out and explore. The detached child who has given up on connections will care little about what his teacher wants him to learn.
Ideally a child’s motivation to learn in school arises from his natural curiosity. But much of that desire also comes from his wish to please his teacher or imitate his teacher.
Grade school begins when the child is five. He spends nine months with a teacher, takes three months off, and then starts another school year with another new teacher. A securely attached child will adjust to these changes in relationships, tolerating the mismatches and cherishing the best ones. But the child who lacks that secure base will struggle to settle in and trust and then will face a series of losses that will make it hard for him to trust and commit – let alone learn.
It’s the relationship, ________! No learning is going to get done if the child does not feel cared for and secure. Attachment is a precondition for learning. A school that ignores that will have children who are either behavior problems or absent, because they will not care. They don’t trust that anyone cares about them.
When a child, even an adolescent, believes that a teacher genuinely cares about him, he will listen.
Investment in learning depends upon wanting a goal and believing it is attainable.
** Before you pay me the $10, you might want to ask, “Aren’t some students of color inappropriately labeled because their (often white) teachers do not know how to communicate well outside their culture?”. If you are really reluctant to part with your money, then you might follow on with, “A bad teacher can make well adjusted students seem detached.”
Since I will not want to leave without your money, I would respond with, “You are right. We should not make a judgment about a child based on one classroom, one teacher, or one assessment. These boys deserve to be observed in a different setting with a different teacher and assessed by different means (that are tested and valid). We should employ a multi-modal, multi-method approach to determine whether there is convergent validity for my classroom hypothesis.”
Have I left you feeling hopeless about the plight of these kids? These third grade boys may be reluctant to trust, but they are not unreachable. They still care what adults think of them – at least somewhere in their lives. Those who work with them will need to keep the development of trust and Attachment as the center pieces of all their efforts, however.
Key words: grade school education; attachment; motivation to learn; curiosity; engagement; relationship; relatedness