The Attachment Connection: Parenting a Secure and Confident Child Using the Science of Attachment Theory

Studies in the 1950s revealed that young children hospitalized without their parents respond first by crying for them, then by showing signs of despair, and finally by emotionally detaching from the parents and acting indifferent to their absence. This detachment is hard to repair and highly detrimental to a child's development-most children who feel they cannot rely on their parents grow up to become more emotionally insecure and less self-assured than their peers.

The Attachment Connection sorts out the facts from the fiction about parent-child attachment and shows how paying attention to the emotional needs of your child, particularly during the first five years of development, can help him or her grow up happy, secure, and confident. You'll discover how your child's brain is developing at each stage of growth and learn to use reasonable, easy-to-implement guidelines based on sound science to foster secure attachment, healthy social skills, and emotional regulation in your child.

Ruth P. Newton, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in attachment and affect regulation in the developing child. She is also the supervising psychologist for Child and Mental Health Services at St. Vincent de Paul Village, a homeless rehabilitation center in downtown San Diego, and a training supervisor for master and doctoral-level interns. Newton is on the advisory board for the Attachment Institute at the University of California, San Diego, and is a member of the Technical and Professional Advisory Committee for the First 5 Commission of San Diego, an organization that funds programming for children five years of age and younger and their families. She works with children and adults in a private practice in La Jolla, CA, and is a longtime consultant for SAY San Diego's Extended Day Childcare program. She is a contributing author to Reader's Guide to Affect Regulation and Neurobiology and Play Therapy for Very Young Children.