When Attachment Breaks: Repairing the Bond with Your Kids

If you’ve ever wondered whether you “messed up” your child, this episode is for you. Secure attachment does NOT come from perfect parenting. It comes from repair after inevitable ruptures. Attachment breaks happen in every family but connection can always be rebuilt.

In this deeply personal episode, we continue to unpack attachment theory — but this time through the real, messy lens of my own experience with separation, grief, and ongoing repair. If you carry mom guilt about time away, postpartum struggle, work demands, family crisis, marital issues, or other life events that led you to be physically or emotionally absent—you'll walk away with hope, clarity, and solidarity that it's never too late to repair connection with your kids.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• Secure attachment doesn’t require constant presence
• All relationships (especially parent-child ones) experience ruptures. This is normal and unavoidable!
• You can wound attachment without doing anything “wrong”, and yet attachment isn’t ruined by one event (more by bigger, unaddressed patterns)
• Repair attempts matter—even when they don’t seem to work
• Even very young children benefit from simple, truthful language that acknowledges and validates their felt experience
• Feeling guilt does not equal being guilty. You are NOT a failed parent if attachment feels strained and secure attachment can be strengthened at any stage

FOR SO MUCH MORE:

Book a free consult to learn more about healing your nervous system so stress no longer sabotages you—or your relationships: https://tidycal.com/solutionsforsimplicity/free-consult)

Get on the waitlist for the next round of my 6-week program, Moms Made NewTM to learn the six most powerful life coaching tools every mom needs so that you and your family can flourish: https://solutionsforsimplicity.myflodesk.com/mmn-waitlist

HOMEWORK:

 Ponder how you can repair any disconnection with your kids and begin to cultivate more secure attachment with them. Share your thoughts with me via email through the link in the show notes or DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity. 

COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back for a new episode next Tuesday at 5am Eastern to keep unpacking the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy.

CONNECT WITH AMBER: Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn 

Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.

Transcript

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The biggest, biggest takeaway is that secure attachment doesn't have to mean you are there with the other person 100% of the time. That you never do anything wrong, you never go away, you never unintentionally hurt the other person. Secure attachment comes from repairing any rupture that does occur, because it will. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. We are back today to talk more about attachment styles. In the last couple of episodes, I have introduced the four attachment styles. There is secure attachment, which is always the goal, where someone feels very loved, seen, able to be vulnerable, and know that their love or acceptance is not conditional on making another person happy or things being a certain way, them being a certain way. That is, of course, the ideal, true love and belonging. True connection. True attachment. You know you are loved. You know your loved one will come back. You feel free to be who you are and to let the other person be who they are as well. It's mutually giving. It is not exclusive. It is something where you just add value to each other. But sadly, secure attachment, while possible, is extremely rare and it is very often not what was modeled to us or what we developed based on our experiences with our caregivers growing up. The three insecure attachment styles are then anxious attachment, where you are really fearing being left. You are really trying to hold on to what you have. You don't know who you are apart from the other person, and you are always trying to do whatever you can to keep that person pleased or appeased in order to make sure that they don't leave you. Then there is avoidant attachment where you refrain from being close or getting connected because attachment was unsafe in the past. You got hurt, you were belittled, you were not seen and valued for who you were, and so you just prefer to be alone and not be vulnerable, not take the risk of letting yourself get attached to anyone. Then there is disorganized attachment, where you're basically hot and cold. Sometimes you crave attachment, but then once you're in it, it feels unsafe or risky or someone is getting too close, so you pull away. And you're just always going back and forth, fighting the inner urge to be attached with the perceived threat you feel when connection is there. None of these attachment styles mean you are better or worse as a person. I was really trying to raise awareness of the fact that we all have one. And again, your attachment style mostly just underscores what your nervous system took on from a young age based on the kind of attachment that was available to you. As wives and mothers, of course we want to be so aware of this phenomenon so that we can cultivate real meaningful connection with our husbands and with our children and then set our kids up for successful relationships down the road by modeling for them what good healthy attachment looks like. That we are there, that we love them, that their job is not to make us happy, that they are allowed to be fully themselves and we don't love them any less, even when they are expressing emotions or acting in ways that are unpleasant to us. Of course kids also need boundaries and rules and discipline in a healthy way where they are being taught and modeled good ways to express their feelings, but they are not expected to repress or shove down any particular emotions just because they make us as the caregiver uncomfortable. As promised, today I really want to go behind the scenes and bring you into something that has been incredibly painful for me because I know we can hear this information about attachment styles and then use it to raise the bar for ourselves. and to take on all of this pressure that we've got to get it right with our kids because, yes, the stakes are so high. But that is truly not the goal. The goal is for you to be aware of these facts and then really work to heal your own wounds and build safety and capacity in your own nervous system so that you can handle your kids and not sever attachment with them. then life still happens. And that's exactly what happened with one of my sons. We have had severed attachment now for years and it's just an ongoing source of pain and grief in my life that I'm still working to repair. But I just wanted to share this to let you know that there are so many things that are not our fault and yet are just part of our journey, part of our opportunity to heal, certainly heal ourselves and then help to heal our children. None of us is going to be the perfect parent. And as Brene Brown says, a parent's job is not to be perfect. If we were, that would only set our kids up for failure. Our job is rather to help our kids navigate an imperfect world and know that they are worthy They are whole. They deserve love and connection, even as their most imperfect selves. So we can model imperfection for them, but do it with grace and openness and perseverance and all the things that are so easy to think about, but very hard to actually live out in practice. If you are a mother who is struggling to connect with your children, or feels like you have messed up to this point, or is looking to find ways that you can establish more secure attachment with your children, I hope my story gives you some comfort, gives you ideas, and just, again, normalizes the fact that we are all doing the best we can. It really is also just in God's hands, and He is writing the story of our children. It's not up to us to provide them the perfect childhood. I could go into a long backstory, but for brevity's sake, you hopefully know that I was someone that always dreamed of being a mother and then struggled to have kids. Plan B was becoming a professor and accepting this very prestigious job. only to then discover I was pregnant a week after I signed my contract and push forward as if nothing was going to change. I was blindsided by the reality of new motherhood. I was so in love with my son, but so exhausted and so stressed and overwhelmed that I ended up suicidal. And then got help and ended up having three kids in four and a half years. The joke is always then that it took us about another four years to feel like we were ready to dive in again. I, meanwhile, was doing all kinds of personal development work. I was trying to balance my life. I thought I had gotten a handle on my time management and productivity. I had started my business and my YouTube channel to share all the things I had learned, and I was so ready, so excited to have a fourth baby. Now I look back and realize that I guess I thought that this time I was going to get it right. I thought that I had the answers and that I was going to finally be the mom I aspired to be for this new child. I love that intention, but as you will see, that is not how things have played out. And it would be very easy. It is very easy for me to berate myself because of that or feel like a constant failure. And that too is not the message that is not helpful. I was so excited for him to be born. And when he was, it just felt so amazing. Everything really felt perfect. And I. was so, so overjoyed. By the fourth child, I had learned the hard way how important it was to take maternity leave and I had been able to get special accommodations from my university to work from home. I got to spend the first eight months of my fourth son's life holding him, being available on demand whenever he needed me or wanted to nurse or sleeping with him, just being there and holding him close, carrying him around. We were so connected. But then my mom got diagnosed with cancer. As the next few months went on, she tried so valiantly to fight it, only to realize that it was too late and we entered the hospice process. My mom lived in Colorado, whereas I live in South Carolina, and my sweet husband was very supportive of the gut-wrenching decision that I went out to be with my mom to help her through some of this end-of-life process. I ended up being gone first for three weeks and then came home thinking I had gotten her settled, I'd gotten her some round-the-clock care. My siblings were so incredible and they were truly carrying the bulk of all of this because I was the only one with kids and I lived far away. It was so emotional and physically exhausting for all of us. But I thought that I was coming home and things were going to get a little back to normal. Then within another week or so, I ended up needing to fly back to Colorado and had the great blessing of being by my mom's side as she passed away. And then stayed for another week and a half to get funeral arrangements taken care of and process whatever I could. Like looking back, I was just, I was just going through it. I wasn't actually feeling the grief, but all the while my heart was so torn. I ended up being gone over five weeks. So naturally, that time away completely severed my connection with my little baby. I knew it was going to be tough on him, but I had every intention of coming back and resuming our nursing relationship or just kind of jumping back in where we had left off. It was clear after even just the first part of the trip that he didn't really feel the same towards me. He didn't want me. I wasn't comforting to him. I brushed it off in the moment as if, of course, that's how he felt. He had been with my husband and his babysitters or the daycare, and I just thought that we would get back to normal. But as the weeks and months and now years have gone on, It's abundantly clear that, of course, he felt abandoned. His sweet little nervous system had no words for this. He was 13 months when all this happened. But the felt experience was huge and left a big imprint on his little nervous system. he just turned four. And for these last few years, it has been a tremendous battle because he much prefers my husband to me. He really doesn't ever want me to put him to bed. When I try and connect with him and do something with him, he just runs away or gets very defiant. People that see us at the grocery store or at church, I'm sure oftentimes think like, wow, that kid is out of control or he sometimes has trouble sitting still at school or is disruptive in class. It's so easy for my brain. to blame myself. There is an element of truth to that. I was gone. I was so torn between being there with my mom in the last moments of her life and being with my husband and my kids and especially my little baby. It was just an inescapable part of my life that I can't go back and change and yet has had a huge long-lasting effect not just on the relationship that I have with my son, but clearly on his default attachment style. The attachment theory literature underscores that as long as the child has SOME stable caregivers, they'll be alright. It's wonderful if it can be the mother or the father, but as long as there is a calm, attuned present caregiver there, then secure attachment can still form. And I think, to a large extent, my son does have very good attachment with my husband. But in general, he just tends to go off on his own. He tends to defy expectations or do the opposite of what he is asked to do. He's still so young. He's basically still in the toddler phase, where some of that is normal behavior. But my brain is really wrestling with the guilt of feeling like it is my fault. And then knowing that it's not. At least it wasn't intentional. I didn't deliberately choose to abandon him. I am still so grief-stricken myself with how losing my mom affected my ability to not just be physically but emotionally present for him. Because even when I came back, I think that's probably more of the situation. Even when I returned, I was just going through the motions and so preoccupied with what had just happened and the new reality of trying to mother without my own mother and then get right back into work, pick up on all the things I was behind in, pour into my other three kids' love buckets and repair my relationship with my husband and navigate just all the ongoing things that life continued to bring. All that to say, If you feel like you don't have ideal attachment with a child, please don't ever lose hope. It is in the small moments, the constant attempt to repair, the being there and verbally making it known that you want to cultivate a deep meaningful relationship with someone that can do wonders. Only Time Will Tell, how things play out with my son and my brain, like all human brains, immediately goes to what's called the fast-forward error, where I assume that we are doomed for life because of this experience. or that his future relationships are going to be impacted because of this one thing. That may be, and I'm trying to make peace with that and really pray about it and leave it in God's hands. But more importantly then, take ownership of what I can do now. As he gets a little more mature and we could talk about it and verbally communicate, that will help. Even when he can't understand things now, I'm still speaking this stuff to him and I notice that it does have somewhat of an effect. For instance, several months after I had returned from losing my mom, We went through an issue with his daycare where they were not going to give him a bottle anymore. He needed to be able to drink from a cup and he did not want to take anything from a cup. And so then he was hungry and it was a whole big battle. I finally drew the connection in my mind that, of course, he was so attached to his bottle because that had been the substitute when he felt abandoned by me and our nursing relationship had been forced to end so abruptly. So he was like a year and a half and I was just talking to him before bed one night saying, I know that you love your bottles and I know that that feels like your comfort, but it is safe to drink from a cup. We need you to have a cup at daycare. I'm sorry mommy was gone. That as silly as it sounds, really did seem to help. So don't ever underestimate the power that the truth, your honesty, your words can have with just planting seeds of awareness with someone who might even seem too little to really understand. All of it, again, is just about repair. The rupture is an inevitable part of all relationships. We are going to wound each other, intentionally or unintentionally, and it really is in our coming back together, our willingness to admit that we were wrong or that this is hard and even if we're not at fault, that we want to be better. We want to repair the connection and we're going to keep trying. We're going to keep being there, keep showing up. Our persistence, our continual practice. can earn back the trust and help to reestablish safety in their little nervous systems too. Another big form of rupture that often happens in motherhood is when you add additional children, especially going from having one to two kids, because you were able to give your first kid your everything. And then while you have surely learned that a mother's heart only expands the more children she has, the perceived loss of you or all of your attention is very real to the pre-existing children. That is so normal and also something that is just what they are going to have to navigate. It's part of their journey and their life story to shape who they become. But we as the mother can reassure them. We can be there with them. We can acknowledge all the emotions and the hardship that they are feeling, whether it is because of us or not. Another huge common way that attachment wounds show up in our parenting is when our children are clearly anxious about separating from us. And if you're a working mom, you know this all the more. But every mother experiences this to some degree, that separation anxiety that we or our children might have when we need to leave them in the hands of some other caregiver to go do what we need to do. When our child is upset and doesn't want us to leave, that can be so overwhelming. It can pile on the guilt. It can make us feel like we shouldn't leave or we shouldn't be anything other than with our children 100% of the time. I sure wrestled with that nonstop with all of my children. But I also now see that some separation is not only necessary, but very good. Because it gives the parent the chance to prove to the child that you do come back. you will return and that they are safe even when you are not in their immediate presence. It's so hard. All of it is just full of emotion and I want to share this because I am still wrestling with it so much. I can't say enough that there is no perfect mother. We have to be forgiving of ourselves and then keep going back to try and repair no matter how irreparable things might feel. Your homework for this episode is to just ponder what, if anything, you would like to be different or better in your relationship with your kids. Do you feel a strong sense of connection? Are there ways in which you wish things were better? Are there clear moments or events that you can pinpoint as having definitively ruptured your connection with your kids? And then most importantly, how can you repair things moving forward? How can you talk about the pain? How can you prove that you are there and you love them and you will be there for them moving forward? The biggest, biggest takeaway is that secure attachment doesn't have to mean you are there with the other person 100% of the time. That you never do anything wrong, you never go away, you never unintentionally hurt the other person. Secure attachment comes from repairing any rupture that does occur, because it will. If you are carrying any guilt from the perceived separation or insecure attachment that has occurred with your own children, give yourself so much grace. Take it to prayer, reach out for help, talk through the grief and emotion with a trauma-informed practitioner like myself. Remember, you can always book a free call with me through the link in the description. But more than anything, just acknowledge that you are a good mom. You are doing the absolute best you can, and your job is not to be perfect. It is to be your best, and to acknowledge your limits, and to show your kids how to navigate an imperfect world. Join me back next week for another episode unpacking more hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. And until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day.