Want to Create Secure Attachment? Look in a Book

What does it mean to bond with your children? A bond is the attachment you have with one another. Studies show that bonding, also known as secure attachment, is essential to your child’s healthy development. Feeling attached to their parents helps children trust others, build self-confidence, and develop empathy. It sets them up for successful relationships in the future.

If you’re looking for an attachment building activity, look no further than your bookshelf. Reading to your children is a sure way to build attachment. Children love stories and they love parental attention. Combine the two and you’ll have the perfect recipe for creating strong bonds, fond memories and good feelings that will last a lifetime. Reading to your children while being physically close, like holding them on your lap or right beside you, are interactions that create emotional intimacy. When your children claim they need to be the one who sits right next to you so they can see the pictures, don’t be fooled! Their real desire is to have physical contact and proximity to you.

Have you ever wondered why children love books written in rhyme like those by Dr. Seuss? Your baby spent nine months in your womb hearing the steady rhythm of your heartbeat. As infants, you cradled them in your arms and rocked them, another type of rhythm. Rhyme also provides rhythm, a familiar pleasure they’ve experienced with you before.

Although reading is a simple activity, it is fertile soil for deep bonding—a critical part of all healthy family systems. While reading for its own sake has value, the golden nugget is the emotional closeness that develops through the conversations generated by the story. Hearing your children’s thoughts gives you entry into parts of their mind that you might not have had before.

Reading to your children also gives you an opportunity to build their emotional intelligence. Use the emotion in the story as a springboard for deeper connection. As an example, Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman, is a book about a baby bird who gets lost. Share a time when you got lost and what that felt like. Ask your children what they feel. There are no wrong answers.

Be expressive when you read. Telling the story is very different than reading the words on the page. Firstly, it lets your child know you are truly present and connected. Secondly, using your voice to demonstrate empathy, sadness or excitement will evoke that feeling in them.

When you use reading as a transition from one part of the day to the next, it is comforting, especially when reading is part of their bedtime routine. This gives children a sense of security. The day is ending, they are going into their own beds (hopefully!) and will be separating from you. It reassures them of the emotional attachment you share. 

Once your children memorize the story, you will develop a routine where you stop half-way through a sentence and they complete it. Why do children like this? One reason is they want to actively participate in the experience. This reinforces your bond and emotional closeness. It also boosts their self-esteem, knowing they can read to you, too!

Reading offers other benefits. It reduces stress, boosts imagination, improves vocabulary and critical thinking skills, increases emotional intelligence, and encourages lifelong learning.

Reading with your children is fun, but it’s much more than just that. By reading to your children, you create memories that last a lifetime. Later in life, seeing your adult children reading those same books to their own children is deeply gratifying. Knowing they have learned the value of reading and seeing them bond with their own children, gives you the same contented feeling you have when you’ve read the last page of a good story.