Complexity of Multiple Caregivers

Complexity of Multiple Caregivers

As discussed in Module 2, secure attachments to multiple caregivers can have a positive effect on a young child’s development by introducing multiple coping styles and many opportunities for healthy rupture and repair leading to high resilience. Simply put, a child has more than one internal map with which to react and respond to external event. However, the reverse is true with multiple insecure attachments, which place a child at a higher risk for complex trauma.

When a child’s primary caregivers have not allowed the infant/young child to experience the safety of a parent’s protection and attuned caregiving, a child is more likely to be mistrusting of other caregiving attempts and may even view them as intrusive, dangerous, and potentially life threatening. If a child with this history of attachment insults is taken from an “inadequate” environment and placed in a “temporary” environment, where attempts to deliver consistent, sensitive caregiving may not be present, there will most likely be a deepening of the mistrust of caregivers and a greater disturbance in the willingness and capacity to develop a secure attachment.

The child who has suffered inappropriate care to the point of having an attachment disorder (see Module 2, Handout 1 for Attachment Styles) is very vulnerable to multiple attachment injuries. This is because they have less trust and capacity to make additional attachments based on their earlier experience. Without help to understand the disturbance in the child and support to help heal and bridge the trust gap, a child is likely to re-experience inadequate care thus reinforcing the pattern or relationship template of mistrust of caregiving relationships.

Multiple placements for a child translate into multiple traumatic experiences of failed attachments. These traumatic experiences deeply affect children’s sense of self and relationships others. It sets them up for an internal world of disorganized (disordered) sense of self, interactions with others, and the world around them.

For more information on the effects of trauma on early development, go to the Readings and Resources page and check under “Trauma, Abuse and Neglect and Early Childhood Development”.

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