Child Literacy

Attachment Theory, is an important aspect of child literacy which is the attachment theory, developed by Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby in the 1990s. 

Attachment theory is very important as a parent to be aware of, as it influences your child’s social development and relationship capacity as well as influencing their emotional health and ability to communicate. 

Prior to the 1980s, it was believed that children where resilient against trauma or simply didn’t remember rough childhoods.

This was been proved to be quite the opposite and  developmentally trauma is now known to imprint in the social, emotional and psychological development altering the health and wellbeing outcomes across the life span of a child who for example witnesses DV, experiences abuse or trauma. 

The Circle of Security represents a healthy and empowering way to provide a secure base and a safe haven for you child/ren. It stems from secure attachment and provides a template to feel confident as a parent.

The Window of Tolerance

Trauma keeps us wired for worry, it slows down our capacity to grow, feel and experience life as it is now. The good news is we can unwind and create space within ourselves to feel the world through a lens of hope rather than mistrust.

Understanding the window of tolerance is a helpful skill in living beyond trauma. The window of tolerance is the optimal zone of arousal in which we are able to cope, function and tolerate everyday stressors, make room to process past hurt, communicate with clarity and be in a space of learning.

Trauma shrinks our window of tolerance, we spend less time in our learning flow state and longer in states of up or down (hyper-arousal or hypo-arousal).

Self awareness of our window of tolerance through understanding the physical and emotional biofeedback our bodies send us is essential, with this knowledge you are able to gradually widen your window of tolerance and stay longer in the optimal zone. The dream isn’t to always be calm but to have a mind body connection that is flexible, resilient and adaptable.

The Window of Tolerance

The window of tolerance is the zone of learning, joy and peace. When we are in our window of tolerance we are able to respond to physical and emotional demands effectively, we are self-regulated and what is called Safe and Social rather than responding from a place of fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

Trauma Impacts the Window of Tolerance

Our body is always prioritising safety, it wants you to feel safe. Trauma (which is unresolved stress) creates a pattern in our bodies to respond from a place of flight, fight, freeze or fawn even when the threat has past. Traumatic experiences can leave us in a state of biological dysregulation, where it can seem that social interactions feel disconnected, life purpose can feel murky and our bodily functions become impaired (thyroid, digestive and mental health illnesses as examples).

During traumatic experiences if we are not able to get away or fight back our body collapses into the freeze state, and particularly for interpersonal trauma we can depend on fawning (people pleasing) to survive complex and harmful abuse.