Parenting Advice on a Close Mother-Child Bond
Parenting Tips, Children Attached to Moms Form Stronger Friendships
May 17, 2009
New moms work hard to forge strong bonds with their young children. Aside from the immediate benefits, most of them probably hope a secure relationship will promote their kids’ abilities to find other such loving friendships in the future. Guess what, research has recently backed up that hunch.
Parenting Help, Researching Attachment Between Mothers and Children
In 2008’s November/December issue of Child Development, the University of Illinois published a study titled "A Process Model of Attachment–Friend Linkages" which concluding that kids with close, emotional ties to their moms form stronger friendships during their elementary school years. The study followed over 1,000 children from age three to third grade. The early bond with their mothers was assessed at age three. Later researchers looked at how well the kids interacted with peers, their language ability, and how they interpret social encounters.
The study gauged closeness by assessing the children’s level of attachment to their mothers at three and their willingness and ability to express emotions with their mothers at age four.
To assess the kids’ view of their social interactions, researches used hypothetical scenarios such as, “Jack spills your drink at lunch. Why do you think he did that?” Kids either explained the incident as a mistake or as intentional. Kids who viewed their peers’ actions negatively had what the researchers termed a hostile attribution bias. Finally, in third grade, researchers questioned the children’s parents and teachers to determine the quality of the kids’ friendships with classmates.
Parenting Advice, Benefits for Kids Attached to their Moms
Findings demonstrate that the children close to their moms were more emotionally open at four years old, looked at social interaction more positively in first grade, and formed deeper friendships in third. “In a secure, emotionally open mother-child relationship, children develop a more positive, less biased understanding of others which then promotes more positive friendships during the early school years,” Nancy McElwain, the study’s lead author, stated in Science Daily, February 17, 2009.
Basically, a high level of attachment at age three predicts emotional openness and better language skills a year and a half later. That open communication about emotions between mothers and their children leads to fewer hostile attributions in the social interaction of first graders and bodes for better friendships for third graders.
Moms should take comfort in knowing their commitment to forming strong and open relationships with their children will enable the kids to see others’ behavior as positive and nonthreatening. This will in turn equip the kids with the confidence and skills to go out and find close relationships with classmates years down the road.
