Attachment – a brief overview

When I approached my school to ask to give some training on attachment and what it means for teachers, the assistant principal said she couldn’t say yes or no until I sent the attachment to my email. This demonstrates how little we talk about one of the fundamental concepts of therapeutic understanding and how little we understand the effect of our earliest relationships on our later development.

What is attachment?

Attachment behaviour is an in-built survival mechanism which involves seeking proximity to a figure able to assuage distress. Infants are totally dependent on the care and comfort of others and the way they are cared for has a profound effect on the way in which the infant relates to the rest of the world.

If an infant’s needs are met and her distress is soothed, she forms an idea of herself as lovable and worthy of attention. This self perception will stay with her for the rest of her life. If the infant’s needs are not met, or only met sometimes, or her carers are abusive, her ability to form positive relationships will be impaired and she will understand that she is fundamentally unworthy of love.

The research shows that the damage done when the relationship with the primary carer is disrupted, inconsistent or abusive is deep and lasting, with ongoing implications for later relationships. Teaching relationships are particularly prone to disruption due to attachment issues as they echo the dependent relationship of infant and carer.

Difficult attachment, difficult behaviour in schools

Students who have experienced problems with attachment will act out their anxieties in a number of ways. Some crave care and approval, but when they get it, they can’t trust that it will continue. They deliberately sabotage the relationship in order to avoid the anxiety of not knowing when the care will be withdrawn and because rejecting is less painful than rejection.

Others avoid interaction with adults completely. The only positive relationships they form at school are with their peers

Still others use poor behaviour as a way of staying present in the minds of those around them.

Any of these behaviours may be coupled with hyper vigilance, where the student is aware of and responds to even the most minute distraction. This is because prolonged stress in early infancy affects the development of the brain, causing a predisposition to fight or flight behaviour.

How can we support students who have problems with attachment?

There is no one set way of enabling these students to move past their emotional difficulties and reach the calm, attentive place where learning is possible.

In primary schools, nurture groups have been shown to have some success in supporting students with attachment problems. The group mimics the structure and routines of a family; they eat, learn and play together. Such groups are difficult to establish and maintain in the secondary setting, not least because they require intensive staffing at a time when schools don’t have the resources.

Often students who have had problems with attachment and relationships with adults are ‘persistent attenders’ at school; despite often causing disruption and experiencing disciplinary actions or being outside lessons, they often achieve 100% attendance. This is because they experience school as a safe space, which can contain their emotions. They trust spaces and objects in a way they cannot trust people. For these students, coming to the end of school time, at weekends, holidays and graduation is horrifying and their behaviour will often reflect their anxiety.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are those students who cannot bear to be away from their carer. For them, to be out of sight is to be out of mind. These are often school refusers. If they are to settle into school, they have to be supported in moving from a physical connection to a mental one.

In between lie the students who can come to rely on routines and tasks to replace interactions with the teacher. These students learn by copying others or doing what they know. Approaching new material will cause anxiety for them as they are forced to interact with the teacher. These students benefit from strong routines, plenty of tasks at mastery level and written instructions. In the past I have found that longer tasks with as few transitions as possible help these students, as does writing an agenda for the lesson on the board.

Finally there are the students who seek to control the teacher. These students wish they could control the primary carer , whose behaviour is unpredictable and sometimes frightening. In these cases, the passive role of the student is unbearable. Teaching these students is a delicate balance between giving them a degree of power without allowing them to overbear and disrupt learning. Defined responsibilities for tasks in the classroom can help here.

Teacher responses

Students with attachment issues often elicit strong emotions from their teachers; frustration, rage or despair. We feel helpless and de-skilled, we question our ability to teach. This is often a projection of the students’ own feelings; their deep despair and their belief that they are fundamentally unworthy of love.

Working as a team is key when we are supporting a child with attachment issues. It shares the emotional burden, allowing time to separate our own emotions from those which have been projected on to us. It ensures a consistent approach, which will offer the child a greater sense of stability as well as providing strong routines. It also gives the child the experience of being held in mind, which can be the first steps to addressing the crippling sense of having to survive totally alone.

Footnote:

here will be more detailed information about attachment in later posts. This is simply designed to be an overview. This content is largely drawn from Attachment in the Classroom by Heather Geddes, which is very accessible and readable if you are interested in learning more about the topic

The image for this post is by Helen Sargeant https://www.helensargeant.co.uk/art/drawing/the-child-inside-the-mother/

Teachers Leaving School

The joint least favourite school I ever worked at had a tradition; on the last day of term there would be an assembly and the principal would announce all the staff who were leaving. The students would cheer or boo alternately, responding to each fresh loss. At the end of one such assembly, the principal called out the name of the assistant principal, a thoughtful and compassionate teacher who had kept the school running for many years. There was a stunned silence after the calling of her name. The child next to me made no sound, but silent tears wet her face.

It is a tradition in the UK, that, despite having to give notice several weeks before the end of term, teachers keep their imminent departure secret. I think we do it because we fear that if we say we are going, the students will stop listening to us. Perhaps also, we fear having to engage in the difficult emotions surrounding loss.

We also tend to underestimate the emotional importance we have in the lives of our students.

Certainly, without time or guidance, students can express very negative feelings towards a departing teacher, a sort of ‘good riddance’. This is often a projection of the rejection and anger the student is experiencing. Rejecting the teacher is emotionally safer than feeling rejected.

For young people who have experienced traumatic loss or abandonment previously, the loss of a teacher can feel like further evidence that the young person is fundamentally unworthy of continued time and attention. Each departure reinforces this negative perception of the self.

Even for relatively emotionally stable children, the loss of a teacher can feel like their link to the past is broken. This has both emotional and academic implications. Emotionally, there is a loss of the sense of stability in school and academically the connection with the learning done with that teacher can be weakened.

With practice and thought, however, we can lessen the negative impact of saying goodbye and perhaps turn it into something positive.

Several years ago, a young teacher left my school. He had been in the school for three years and had formed a very close bond with his tutor group. Instead of leaving without warning, he talked to his students about his departure. He spoke with them about his sadness at leaving, his reasons for going (at least the ones that were suitable for sharing) and what he hoped he would gain from his new place. He allowed time for questions and discussion.

Together, the class and the teacher talked about rituals and social practices surrounding loss and leaving, then agreed on the rituals they would enact to mark the end of their relationship. The teacher was able to find out who would be taking over the group, and that teacher was involved in the process as well, forming a bridge between the past and the future and reassuring the students that they would still be held in mind by a designated adult.

A thoughtful approach like this allows time and space for the loss to be processed in a positive and thoughtful way. Students have time to move beyond their immediate emotional responses. If these do take the form of hurtful communication, there is time for the relationship to be restored so that both parties can remember their experience positively. There is also time to think about what has been gained from the relationship.

Just one thoughtful departure can provide a blue print for dealing with future losses and can help overcome the emotional disruption of previous loss. By allowing discussion of the teacher’s reasons for leaving, the perception that all loss is a rejection can be challenged. This in turn challenges the negative perception that all the previous losses have been due to an intrinsic unworthiness.

From an emotional point of view, then, perhaps we can begin to approach departures, not as something to be rushed through, hasty, secretive affairs, but as an opportunity to effect powerful beneficial change for our students.

References:

Experiencing Endings and Beginnings, Isca Salzberger-Wittenberg, Karnac Press 2013

Bereavement in Schools

One of the nicest kids I’ve taught asked to speak to me on Monday morning. We stepped outside the class and he told me his father passed away on Friday. Tears pooled in his eyes. I longed to hold him and cry with him. But I am his teacher, not his mother, and what he needs from me is very different.

Zarah’s mother also died of cancer. She was standing quietly in line on her first day back when the pastoral support assistant burst from a passing crowd of students shrieking, “Zarah, I am so sorry for your loss” and wrapped the stunned child in a huge hug. Zarah never trusted another member of staff again.

The outlook for bereaved kids is not great. They do less well in school, are more likely to fall foul of the law and often struggle to find stability in later life. I believe that if schools are better informed about supporting these students we can start to reverse this trend.

Look inwards

We should be mindful of our own feelings when dealing with bereaved children. When we encounter a bereaved child we re-experience our own losses. We immerse ourselves in empathy with the child’s pain. It feels like we are making a deep emotional connection with the child.

But we have actually forgotten our own roles and what the child really needs from us.

Before we begin to engage with the child’s emotions it is worth checking in with our own. Is the powerful urge to intervene telling us that our own losses require attention? How much of what we are feeling is for the child and how much is for ourselves?

One of the most tempting things to do with a bereaved child is to tell our own story. It can be beneficial for the child to know that we also have experienced loss, but it is not helpful to burden the child with our own sadness as well as their own.

Returning to school

Kids who come back to school right after a bereavement are often looking for stability in a world which has suddenly and awfully become unbearably unstable. Home has been blown apart by loss and absence. Routines have gone out of the window. And worst of all, the adults who had been relied on for emotional stability are now emotional themselves in a new and unwelcome way.

For these children, school provides a safe space, a space which is untouched by loss, where the adults are still in control and business caries on as usual.

Containing behaviour, containing feelings

Our empathy can prevent us from holding a bereaved child accountable for their behaviour. It is understandable that the child is angry at the world and will lash out, particularly when they perceive our rules and expectations as trivial in the face of the enormity of what they are experiencing. But when we fail to hold a child to account for poor behaviour, we are actually saying ‘Yes, the loss you have suffered and the pain you are now experiencing are indeed swallowing the whole world”.

Rules are a form of containment. Upholding them will help the child to understand that their grief can be contained and brought to manageable proportions. Boundaries should be clearly and firmly held, with appropriate sanctions when they are crossed.

Work to occupy the thoughts

School work provides a welcome distraction. I suggest that bereaved students are offered choices, with the option of plentiful work at mastery level as well as more challenging tasks which can absorb the attention.

Therapeutic support

In response to the intense and upsetting emotions stirred up by a bereaved child, it is tempting to fling all the support we can at them to try and make them feel better. We want the child to have counselling, a peer mentor, group therapy, intensive mentoring, anything we can lay our hands on.

The problem here is that the feelings of loss are too fresh and raw to be processed through talk. In fact, being placed in a situation where the child has to sit and face their feelings may be utterly unbearable for quite a long time. Let them know that support is available and remind them of that, but let them decide when they are ready to access it.

Although losing a parent or close family member is very sad and the feelings are very intense, it is not usually very complicated. The child loved someone and now they are not there. It doesn’t take a counsellor or psychotherapist to listen to the child’s feelings and let them know that they are held in mind. A trained peer mentor or compassionate and interested member of staff is adequately equipped to support a bereaved child. Later on there may be need for more specialised support, but that might not be for many years. For now, the support doesn’t need to come from a specialist, just from someone who cares and is consistent.

The role of the adult in this case is just to listen, to hold the child in mind and to create a space free of judgement or assumptions. We may expect the child to feel sad and angry, but they may experience relief, especially if the parent dies after a long illness, or guilt over that same relief. The important thing is to accept whatever the child confides without value judgements. Answer questions honestly, without euphemisms or avoidance, wherever possible,

So in the morning I will greet my bereaved student with a smile. I will not try and signal any special degree of sympathy. I will ask ‘How are you today?’ in a neutral tone of voice, so that it is okay for him to say ‘fine’. And I will nod to show that I accept his answer. I will aim to be attentive, but not intrusive and I will wait for him to signal what he needs next.

Projection

I like to think of feelings like a parcel. Some parcels are nice; some aren’t. Some we are happy to carry ourselves and some we are keen to hand off to someone else because they are too heavy or uncomfortable.

Projecting uncomfortable feelings

When I haven’t slept and my house is knee deep in laundry and I’ve accidentally smashed my favourite mug and I can’t find my bank card, I have an arm load of loss, frustration and anger which I am desperate to hand to someone else so I don’t have to carry it all by myself. I can share my rage by having a go at my wife, or being impatient with my children. In less than three sentences, I can make sure that everyone in my house is carrying my feelings with me. And for a second that feels great.

Unfortunately, I haven’t divided my feelings and my family isn’t helping me carry them; I have just created new parcels of bad feelings for them to carry while my own remain just as uncomfortable, even more so as I now must add guilt to the weight.

As adults, we know this process and hopefully we have developed strategies for managing our own uncomfortable feelings. We know, for example, that we aren’t always going to feel like this, so we can carry our burden for a bit longer by ourselves, knowing that it won’t be forever.

We also know that we can share our parcel of feelings in an appropriate way, by talking about it rather than enacting it on other people. If I say to my wife ‘I am so overwhelmed, could you help me with the laundry?’ rather than ‘You never help me!” I am sharing my own burden without creating a whole new burden of bad feeling for my wife to carry.

Children don’t know how to handle bad feelings yet

Children and young people don’t know, or easily forget, that their present feeling won’t last forever. They also haven’t yet developed the understanding to recognise and verbalise their own feelings. They have no outlet other than to enact what they feel and to project their feelings onto others.

When my three year old has a melt down because she can’t get her coat off by herself, I feel really frustrated too. When she screams and stamps her feet and refuses to let me help, she successfully passes the parcel of her feelings on to me. I can respond to this burden by shouting or forcing her out of her coat, but this will only amplify the feelings, making the parcel even heavier for both of us. It won’t help her understand how to deal with future frustrations any better either.

If I take a moment and recognise that my daughter can’t manage her feelings by herself just now, I can help her much more effectively. I can say ‘That is really frustrating, isn’t it? I think someone has done up your buttons as well as the zip and you can’t get them undone. How about I do the buttons and you do the zip?” By saying this I take up the parcel of her feelings without being overwhelmed by them. I show her how to verbalise what she is feeling rather than just enacting it. By breaking down the frustrating task, I show her a strategy for dealing with frustration in the future.

Projecting uncomfortable feelings in the classroom

In the classroom, students project their feelings of impotence and frustration on to the teacher. They hand over their fear of rejection and their anxiety about their status in the group. For the teacher, this feels like being powerless to control the class, being frustrated that learning isn’t happening, feeling animosity towards the class or individuals and doubts about our ability to be a teacher at all.

Teacher responses to projection

The tempting response to a parcel of bad feelings is to toss the parcel right back again; we shout and threaten, we hand out punishments. But just as shouting only fuels my toddler’s tantrum, responding to projected negative feelings with repressive force generally only makes the situation worse. Even if we do succeed in silencing the student(s), we have not taught anything about emotional control or addressed the negative feelings which erupted in the first place.

Instead we can pause and take a breath. We can recognise that the student isn’t just being badly behaved; they are transferring their own feelings on to us. Instead of enacting these feelings by shouting, we can say ‘I think you are feeling very frustrated just now, do you want to step outside for a minute to calm down?’ Just by using this response, we identify the feeling and suggest a strategy for managing it rather than adding to it.

How do you feel?

Projection can actually be a helpful tool in understanding how students are feeling. I have a student who always uses lower case ‘i’ in her writing. I begin to teach using capital ‘I’ for the pronoun for the sixth time this term. The student turns to talk to her neighbour. I feel intense frustration. For a second I grind my teeth and consider phoning every single member of her family just to make sure she gets properly annihilated when she gets home.

Then I stop. The frustration I feel is a projection of the frustration she feels at not getting this right. Mentally, I place the package of frustration down. I set the rest of the class to work, then approach the student.”It’s hard when things keep going wrong,” I say, “Let’s try thinking about this a different way.”

Behaviour as Communication

Behaviour as communication means that when children (even quite big children) do things that are unacceptable, they are telling us that something is wrong. To help them behave in a more acceptable fashion, we need to understand what they are telling us and help them to fix the problem and resolve their feelings.

Toddlers and teenagers

Interpreting behaviour is a concept which might be familiar to anyone who has made themselves depressed by reading parenting manuals. It’s quite easy to interpret behaviour as communication when my overtired toddler has thrown all their dinner on the floor ostensibly because I let a carrot touch their mashed potato.

That toddler clearly hasn’t got the words to tell me that she has had to do without me all day at nursery and what she really needs is for me to stop trying to feed her and to give her a cuddle instead. It’s harder to remember the same point when a year 10 who is taller than I am has just flipped a table over and kicked a chair at me because I told him to do some silent reading. But the principles are the same.

When our children are small their needs are fairly limited and we often have a good idea of what they have been through in a day, so puzzling out the problem when they lose control is not that hard. Their language is developing so we expect to carry the burden of communication, of interpreting their actions and supplying them with the words they need to express their feelings.

As children get older we tend to think that they should be able to use their words automatically. We stop trying to interpret their behaviour and don’t expect to scaffold their emotional expression as much. This is particularly true for secondary school teachers, who often lack the training or time to think in this way. But that doesn’t mean that the children are ready for us to stop doing the work of thinking about their behaviour as expressing deep, often explosive and inarticulate emotions. That is why our school has the staff work discussion group and it is what this blog tries to both record and explore.

Observe patterns

Interpreting the communication of behaviour of older students is an imprecise art, but it can help to alleviate problems in the classroom. Start by looking for patterns; flash points, triggers, times of calm. In the discussion group we write out a case study so that the details are pinned down. The act of writing down the whole situation allows us to view what is going on with some measure of critical distance, especially when it is difficult to see past our own emotions or our frustration has blurred out smaller pieces of information.

Look past ‘good’ and ‘bad’

The key to the process is to step away from the ideas of naughtiness and disrespect. The students may be naughty, even downright unpleasant, but what they are communicating is not simply ‘badness’ of character, but unfulfilled needs and anxieties. If we are able to meet these, we can positively influence the way the student behaves.

Year 10 Superset

My year ten class seemed to be totally unpredictable; we don’t have any lessons after lunch, for example, which might have been expected to be less settled. There wasn’t any correlation between being unable to learn and certain pupils being absent or present either. I had differentiated the work according to the data on ability, so that shouldn’t have been a problem. It was just that on some days they could listen to me and on other days, their social interactions could not be contained enough for them to focus on the learning.

I sat down to think about what the class might be communicating through the times when they seemed unable to even begin thinking about learning. We have practice assessments every two weeks. I noticed that the lack of control coincided with these assessments, often peaking in the assessment session itself.

The class is a superset, a smaller group of students, not necessarily lower ability but who learn better in a more contained environment. What they were communicating was their anxiety about having to work without guidance, their fear of failure and their dread that failure was inevitable. They knew that they could be socially successful , so bolstered their self esteem by constant interaction rather than engaging in the intimidating academic process.

Taking the lack of confidence into account, I divided up the assessment tasks so we didn’t do so much at once. I included a lot more work at mastery level in the run up to an assessment and providing opportunities to practice some assessments before the actual session. My aim was to increase confidence going in to the assessment.

On the surface we cover less material under the new approach, but they are actually learning what we do cover, rather than retreating into social behaviour. As time has gone on, their grades are beginning to pick up, giving a greater sense of control and ability to perform well. This in turn is leading to less of a need for constant social approval.

I am not saying that the class is now perfect, far from it. But I find them less frustrating when they are experiencing crises of confidence; I am able to find patience and compassion. I am also able to break down what we are doing into smaller, more manageable pieces so that they feel more confident in undertaking the work.

Flipping a desk and kicking a chair

So the student who flipped the desk and kicked the chair at me? He is in that year 10 class. He isn’t able or willing to discuss his behaviour to any meaningful extent. I can surmise that he is communicating intense anxiety about his ability to do well in English. Reading in silence makes him unbearably uncomfortable and he will do anything to remove himself from having to sit and read.

The student can read out loud reasonably fluently, which masked his underlying problems. He had successfully avoided assessment so it wasn’t immediately apparent that he doesn’t understand what he reads. He’s always been aware of the problem and he is ashamed. Asking him to read in silence is asking him to sit in his shame and he can’t bear it.

I have tried giving him easier reading materials, but his feelings are too intense to let him even begin to access these texts. At the moment I am giving him grammar exercises while the class reads. I think a next step will be to introduce a class text which is somewhere near his mastery level and we will work from there.

Self Care

We can’t take care of others if we don’t take care of ourselves first. We can’t do our jobs if we are exhausted to the point of collapse and stressed to the point of breakdown. It’s not nice, it’s not healthy and it’s not how we are supposed to be.

I feel like a bit of a fraud writing this particular post and in some senses, in writing this blog in general. I am really struggling to contain all the emotions that my classes are hurling at me. I know that part of this is because my own self care has fallen by the way side.

I am the mother of two small children and I’m teaching full time. Finding a moment to take care of my own needs is not easy. Physically I am displaying this on my face – I have very blonde eyebrows and normally I dye them. I have not had time to dye them and now they are invisible. Yesterday a student called me ‘potato face’. It stung. How dare this student take my wordless cry for support and identify it as a weakness to be attacked!

Our students often don’t know how to handle our vulnerability. They have a lot of emotions and anxieties; they want us to be able to contain their emotions. When they don’t think that we can do this, they become even more anxious and can lash out. I think this is what happened for that student.

There are lots of other blogs about living healthily and taking exercise and emotional well being. In teaching, they can sound like lovely ideas but not anything which is sustainable in the face of lesson planning and marking and report writing and observations and duties and parents evenings and staff meetings and data inputting and intervention classes and all the other things that occur to senior management. We’d like to do yoga every morning, but the reality is that our day starts at least an hour before the rest of the working world’s and we just don’t have time.

Boundaries

Self care in teaching has to start with boundaries. Teaching will expand to overflow whatever time you have. You will never reach that moment when your books are up to date, your mock exams are marked, your lessons are fully planned and differentiated and you are on top of your paper work. Picture that fantasy moment clearly. It is a will-o-the-wisp; a fantasy that only lures you into the swamp of over work and burnout. Let it go.

Instead, be realistic about what actually needs to be done. For experienced teachers, this is an easier task. We can judge when what we are being asked to do is reasonable and effective. For less experienced teachers, ask for help. For both groups, seeing your line manager and asking her or him to identify the key priorities is a good idea; it makes sure that you are getting the important things done and they are aware that some other things might need extra time or support. It is also helpful to document these meetings if you have any concerns about meeting your performance targets.

Set a finish time

The earliest trades unions campaigned for a balanced life for their workers; eight hours’ labour, eight hours’ recreation, eight hours’ rest was their model for the working day back in 1817. This isn’t a bad model to aim for. Other professionals get paid hefty overtime rates when they are required to work past their eight hours. I believe that the reason teaching workload is so heavy is that we keep on carrying it. Put it down. You aren’t going to be a better teacher because you stayed up until one o’clock in the morning planning and marking.

Containing feelings

It is really easy to cart around the negative feelings that your classes have handed to you during the day. Find ways of putting these feelings down; it might be a mental image of a bucket or a box where you can park the difficult emotions, it might be laughing (or crying) with colleagues, it might be a good burst of physical activity. Create your own ritual, whatever it is, for recognising these feelings as belonging to others and placing them to one side. They most definitely do not belong to your family and should not be handed over to them in the form of bad temper or misplaced frustration. Personally, I find it useful to remember that most of the negative feelings belong to the family of the child. Handing it back to them in the form of a phone call or letter home can help me to feel like I have given responsibility back to the people who are best placed to carry it.

Numbing versus replenishing

There is so much around us that will help us numb our thoughts and emotions, from hours scrolling through social media to codeine to ‘help’ us sleep. And wine. Numbing is not the same as resting or relaxing. It will not replenish the mental and emotional energy that the day has taken from you, it will just speed the movement of time through your resting hours. We all do it. My particular numbing tool just now is watching the whole of Grey’s Anatomy. I’m at season 10 and I don’t know what I will do with myself when I am all caught up.

I try to respond to numbing the same way that we are encouraged to respond to a wandering mind in meditation, to notice what is happening without guilt or judgement and to try something different. So when I find that I am half way through my third episode of Grey’s Anatomy and it is way past my bed time, I send myself to bed without judgement. I have also taken up crochet while I watch. And I’m writing this blog.

Replenishing activities don’t just pass the time. When we have done them they make us feel better. Unfortunately, they often aren’t as accessible as activities which numb us, so we have to put thought into working them into our day.

Think about your own numbing tool. What could you add or tweak to introduce a replenishing activity? Make your goal realistic or it will just be something else to feel bad about. Again, there are lots of other blogs that go into this in detail.

You are a person first and a teacher second

Everyone expects you to be consumed by your profession; students, other teachers, society. Change the script. When asked what I do, I never say that I’m a teacher, I say that I teach. It reminds me and the person I’m talking to that I have an identity outside of the classroom. ‘Teacher’ is a role that we play and we have to take care of the person playing that role.