In Need of a Hug

There’s a Monty Python sketch which I still smile at long after I last saw or heard it. A mother and her best friend are admiring the mother’s son, something like this: “Ooh, hasn’t he grown? Can he talk? Can he talk?” says the friend, and the son replies “Yes of course I can talk: I’m Minister for Overseas Development”. “Oh he’s such a clever little boy!” says the friend, who then explodes.

I was at a feeding-frenzy of a workshop yesterday in which among other things we discussed brain development and then Attachment Theory. We in the audience were loving every minute of this feast of, for us, mostly new knowledge.

In the midst of a quick fire burst of video clips in which children were abandoned in varying creative ways after the fashion of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, the lecturer said something that I only partly heard, but which caught my attention. What I heard was ‘I’d be very worried if a parent said “oh our child hardly ever cries” for that’s a sign of …”

I was on the hook, for throughout my life I’ve been the ‘clever little boy’ who while other children were demanding attention, according to my mother “oh, we never knew we had him”. But the lecturer was badly behind and couldn’t take any more questions until the end, so I sat patiently.

Not crying for attention, it turns out, is an indicator of ‘Avoidant Attachment’ (and as if anticipating my assumption, I was told that it’s just one indicator). Avoidant or Insecure Attachment is when children show few signs of distress at separation. In fact I can remember as a very young child sitting at the top of the stairs when my parents went out, waiting for them to return. I also remember getting lost on a beach and having the nous to approach a policeman, but resisting all offers of sweets to calm me down.

Then again, I also remember calling a teacher ‘mum’ and being embarrassed at the gaffe that this person was seemingly more approachable than my mother. It turns out Avoidant Attachment may also lead to children demonstrating no particular preference for either parents or strangers.

If I think that Attachment Theory holds useful clues to my adult behaviour, I’m going to have to wait on the help of an expert on the theory. Meanwhile, I think I need to watch out when I’m in a group that is so enervated by what it is hearing that some sort form of mass hysteria makes one grab at explanations without applying reason.