A Development Case Study

Timothy’s Struggles

Timothy is a teen who struggles to fit in with his peers. He struggles not only with social interactions, but also with schoolwork. He was denied promotion to sixth grade at the age of 11 due to poor academic performance that dipped below the fifth grade. This is a problem that stems from his parents’ financial position. Since his birth, the parents have barely given him enough parent-child time to foster a good relationship. While the parents work in long day and overnight shifts on minimum wage, they hardly extended a feeling of care towards the boy as they often spanked him for anything they perceived as wrong or a failure. They enroll him in an illegal daycare, where Timothy fails to get proper attention. Spanking continues. The daycare is highly unhygienic and unfit for child development but Timothy’s parents can hardly afford proper care center services. He also skips kindergarten. In his elementary years, he is easily frustrated and faces many socially awkward situations with both peers and adults. He grows into a child with less regard for rules or respect.

Attachment Theory Summary

The attachment theory conceptualizes the significance of child attachment with caregivers to personality development (McLeod, 2009). Young children who have high physical and emotional attachment with their parents or caregivers are more likely to be at ease with the formation of interpersonal relationships based on stability and security. They have the ability to trust and branch out easily in social environments, thus enhancing their interactions with new people. The theory is divided into three attachment styles: secure, ambivalent, avoidance, and disorganized attachments.

Timothy’s Attachment Style

Timothy’s parents lead a busy life that does not accommodate their son with regards to physical and emotional connections. Due to the utter neglect that he faces as a child, both from his parents and caregiver at the daycare, Timothy learns to fend for himself and create his own rules. He is may be categorized under the ambivalent with a slight inclination towards avoidance attachment. For instance, he feels that the only way for him to respond to a decline in his request is to throw tantrums in order to get it, which means that he does not trust his caregivers to know what is best for him, and therefore, has to demand it. The continued lack of attachment pushes him towards extreme avoidance attachment, which causes him to face difficulty in forging long-lasting relationships with friends or adults. These factors affect his learning ability, thus making him lag behind in his academics.

Effect of Timothy’s Attachment to his Parents in Later Life

Timothy shares a discontinuous bond with his parents since childhood. The ambivalent attachment style with a slight inclination towards avoidance is likely to cause Timothy to have problems in the formation of long-term friendships. He can hardly trust anyone, including his caregivers, to whom he throws tantrums. This behavior means that he is likely to become emotionally manipulative, which hardly fosters any good relationships with people. His parents even refer him to special services for being “out of control.” He is likely to be violent in the future, having experienced first-hand violence either by watching his parents fight or his spanking as a corrective measure. The level of disorder to which he is exposed in the daycare is likely to influence his lack of respect for rules or organization. All these factors increased the difficulty in making friends or trusting teachers during his elementary years and subsequently affected his grades.

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model

Urie Bronfenbrenner categorized the social system into four categories: microsystem, mesosystem, macro-system, chronosystem (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). A child’s home is his or her microsystem, and so is his class and other social places in which he has direct people-relationships. Timothy’s microsystem includes his home and daycare, which expose him to abandonment. His parents’ economic situation is a macro-system that affects him because it is a factor that is out of any of the control of players within his microsystem. He suffers as a consequence of the country’s poor economic condition. The factor contributes towards his abandonment at the daycare by parents who are busy with work and can hardly care for him and a caregiver who divides his attention among many children, thus enhancing his avoidance attachment style. The mesosystem, the interaction between daycare, school, and home, are inter-dependent and are exposed Timothy to self-doubt, increasing his alignment towards avoidance. He constantly feels insecure in every ecosystem and, thus, has to find ways to fend for himself.

Disordered Attachment

The disordered attachment is one in which a child experiences a mixture of ambivalence and avoidance, and in some cases, secure styles (Scheper, 2016). This mixture causes a clash between the different attachment inclinations because it results in inconsistent behavior. Therefore, children of such kind hardly find their perfect matches, and can hardly form any relationships. This causes them to feel misunderstood and deserted. Cognitive behavioral therapy is considered as being the best mechanism of treating disordered attachment (Jongerden & Bögels, 2014). A person learns to accommodate the other attachment and personality styles possessed by various people.

Stages of Development and Strategies of Secure Attachment

Early years. More attention from the care of parents or caregivers increases a sense of secure attachment. A child should be taught using reward and punishment in moderation.

Elementary. Teachers should aspire to forge close relationships with parents and children, thus causing an acceptable mesosystem that promotes a sense of security for a child.

Adolescence. Parents and teachers should show utmost care and understanding through the expression of patience and sincere concern.

References

Bronfenbrenner, U. (2005). Making Human Beings Human: Bioecological Perspectives on Human Development. SAGE.

Jongerden, L., & Bögels, S. M. (2014). Parenting, Family Functioning and Anxiety-Disordered Children: Comparisons to Controls, Changes After Family Versus Child CBT. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(7), 2046-2059.

McLeod, S. (2009). Attachment Theory. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/attachment.html

Scheper, F. Y. (2016). Inhibited attachment behaviour and disinhibited social engagement behaviour as relevant concepts in referred home reared children. Child : care, health & development, 42(4), 544.