Why Attunement is Crucial for Children (and Parents too)

As a trauma therapist, I hear some truly awful stories. Very sadly, some of my clients endured the worst kinds of childhoods imaginable – and, as adults, find day-to-day life a real struggle, because the wounds of their childhood are so hard to heal. When we hear the word ‘trauma’, these are the kinds of experiences we think about, but it’s important to understand that much milder, albeit highly painful experiences, also shape children’s personalities in surprisingly powerful ways.

I’m currently writing a book on healing childhood trauma (not due to be published until 2026 I’m afraid, but watch this space for details), so am thinking about these kinds of problems non-stop. What is it that causes childhood trauma? Why are some kids profoundly affected by seemingly quite mild problems in the family? How much of that is nature and how much nurture – meaning, are these vulnerabilities primarily genetic, because of the parenting we receive, or a mixture of the two?

There is obviously a lot to talk about here and the answers to these questions are nuanced and complex – that’s why I’m writing a book about it! But I would like to focus on one key idea for this post, which is the concept of attunement. This refers to the ability of your caregivers to attune to you, from birth onwards. The focus here is often on the mother-baby relationship, because our mother is often our primary caregiver, especially in our early years (if someone else fulfilled this role for you, like a father, older sibling, grandparent or adoptive parent, please adapt the language to fit your experience).

How secure attachment forms

Let’s bring in a related concept, which is that of attachment. Ideally, your attachment bond with your mother would have been secure, helping you form a secure attachment style for the rest of your life. Research consistently shows that around 50 per cent of children are lucky enough to experience this, while the other 50 per cent normally have either an avoidant or anxious attachment style. If you were one of the lucky ones who experienced secure attachment, being in your mother’s arms would have felt like the safest, most delicious place in the world. (There’s a reason researchers call this state attachment bliss, because it feels wonderful for both the little boy or girl and their attachment figure).

She would have fed you, kept you clean and dry, comforted you when you cried and entertained you when you were bored. This is how secure attachment forms, because you would have felt warm, happy and deeply connected to her, with an in-your-bones kind of trust and safety. And attunement is the skill your mother would have needed for that secure attachment to form.

That would have meant attuning to you, on a moment-by-moment basis, to figure out what you needed. Especially in your pre-verbal years, this would have been tricky, because of course you couldn’t let her know whether you were too hot/cold, hungry, wet, bored, needed a nap, scared of the dog, dazzled by those bright lights, overstimulated from too much play, mad at your brother for stealing your favourite toy, or whatever else may have been going on in your little mind and body. As any parents out there know, learning to interpret what your baby’s noises, movements, body posture and facial expression means is no easy task!

But good-enough mums – and dads too, of course – are able to attune to their baby, learning their language before they have the power to express it with words. And when your caregivers were not able to attune in this way, I’m afraid it can be subtly but profoundly hurtful and cause lifelong problems. I call it a subtle ‘missing’, when your mother doesn’t really listen to you, is always a bit distracted or simply lacks this crucial parenting skill, probably because she never received it from her mother when she was little.

The impact of feeling unseen

Think about that: not feeling seen, heard, understood or validated over and over again, thousands of times throughout your childhood and adolescence, into your young adulthood and probably right up to this moment. One of my mentors called this ‘the air we breathe’ as children – not something bad that only happened rarely, but a lack of warmth, kindness, care or attention, happening all the time in your family.

So if you now struggle with low confidence or self-esteem, have negative self-beliefs about not being good enough, likeable or lovable, find intimate relationships baffling and unsatisfying, or feel like there’s a big hole in your chest that can never be filled, no matter how much love you get as an adult, this subtle but repetitive missing could be the reason.

If you are struggling, you might find my Insight Timer practice, Taking in the Good: IFS Meditation, helpful. This guided imagery practice will help you take in positive new feelings and nourishing beliefs that will help ease that feeling of not being enough, in some way. Repeated exercises like this, perhaps alongside the help of a skilled therapist, will start to undo the years of misattunement you experienced as a child, and so help you feel more confident and build a sense of inner peace, warmth and self-compassion, which you so deserve.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Healing the Wounds of Childhood Emotional Neglect

Image by Kelly Sikkema

Sometimes, when I’m working with people struggling with problems like chronic anxiety, depression or disordered eating, it’s hard to figure out where these problems came from. They describe reasonably happy families, with loving parents who did their best to raise happy, confident children. And sometimes what we figure out together is that there were ‘small misses’ – subtle issues with their parents’ attunement to that little boy or girl that led to lifelong problems.

Of course, sometimes these misses were not small and there was a deep lack of love, care, support, safety or any of the other things children need to meet their core developmental needs. And whether this lack of what you needed in childhood was small or large, what we are talking about is emotional neglect – an incredibly common problem that’s a key factor in many mental-health difficulties.

What is emotional neglect?

In schema therapy, we see this neglect showing up as an Emotional Deprivation schema. This means that, as a child, you were deprived of some of the key emotional nutrients you needed in order to thrive. And of all the schemas, this can be one of the hardest to detect in people, because it’s primarily about the absence of good things, rather than the presence of bad things. Let me give you an example.

*Jean comes to see me and in her first session, explains that she has a lifelong history of depression. She also recognises that she has low self-esteem, feeling bad about herself across the board and lacking confidence at work, as a mum, in her friendships and in terms of her body image.

When I ask about Jean’s childhood, she paints a rosy picture. ‘Oh, family life was great,’ she tells me. ‘I had such a happy childhood. Mum and dad were good to us, we had a nice house and everything we needed.’

But as our sessions unfold, it becomes clear that things were not quite so great for Jean. She was a shy, sensitive child who needed lots of love, warmth, support and encouragement from her parents. Although her dad was a kind man, he was also a workaholic, spending long hours at the office. Jean recalls barely seeing him throughout her childhood. ‘He was always at work,’ she says. ‘But I understood, because he paid for our house and all the lovely things we had as kids.’

Sadly, these ‘things’ were how her mother showed love to her children. She was quite a cold person, who was not good with emotion, so showed her kids love in practical ways – cooking meals, making sure school uniforms were pressed and clean, giving them toys for birthdays and Christmas.

She never told her kids that she loved them, never hugged them and scolded them when they were scared or hurt. She just couldn’t handle what she called ‘weak’ emotions like fear or sadness. So Jean didn’t get any of the love and hugs that she needed – an absence of good things, which didn’t help build her self-esteem and left her vulnerable to the depression that has plagued Jean throughout her life.

Healing the wounds of childhood

If Jean’s story resonates with you, it’s possible that you might have experienced emotional neglect as a child. And if so, what can you do to make sure this neglect doesn’t cast a shadow over the rest of your life? First, as I often say in these posts, knowledge is power. Start by reading up on neglect, in my blog and others like it.

You may also like Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect, by Jonice Webb. It’s an excellent self-help book that explains exactly what this form of neglect is, the different styles of parenting that can cause it (from the well-meaning but unattuned to the destructive and traumatising), and offers lots of helpful techniques and strategies to help build your sense of self-worth, confidence and resilience as an adult.

Second, if your wounds are really deep, you might need some help from a mental-health professional like me. Schema therapy is really effective for problems like neglect, but lots of other approaches will also help, like CBT, internal family systems or compassion-focused therapy. All of these approaches will help you identify painful, self-limiting beliefs and behaviours that maintain the sense of being unlikable, unlovable or not enough in some way.

Finally, remember that experiencing neglect as a child was categorically not your fault. You didn’t choose your family, or whatever issues they had that didn’t allow them to give you all the love, support and affection that you needed. So whatever problems that neglect caused in later life are not your fault either. You were just unlucky, got dealt a bad hand as a child, so you’re now struggling with the consequences.

But enough is enough. Don’t let the neglect you experienced define you as a person. Don’t let it define your life. You deserve to be loved, valued and cherished as much as any other human on this planet. Make today the day that you commit to healing and happiness. I very much hope that you find both.

Warm wishes,

Dan

*All of the case studies on this blog are composites of actual people – I would never reveal any personal or identifying information about my clients.