Attachment Disorders In Foster Children

Attachment disorder is a disorder where the child has the conflict of not being able to show any sort of affection to their parent at times this can be difficult because this can cause problems throughout the person's life. This disorder can happen to children that have parents as well as foster children. The disorder is caused by the feeling of insecurity with their parents or caused by the death of their parents. It can also be caused by the abandonment of a child that was forced into a foster home where they did not treat the child humanely. According to Albus & Dozier,”’young children in the foster care system, who face threats far beyond the experiences of normal childhood’” ( Wilson 2001). In other words, children who were in foster …show more content…
If the infant felt that they were neglected there could be a possibility for the infant to develop the attachment disorder. “For example, children whose parents have alcohol, substance and mental health problems may be experiencing a chaotic and dangerous environment with physically and emotionally unavailable parents who do not respond to the child’s distress signals” (Minnis). The parent negative behavior places the child in a unsafe environment causing the child to become distant and enables them from developing a healthy relationship with his or her parent. As the child grows, they become distant from the parents they are not able to bond with them because of the lack of attention the parent gave them as an infant. Even though they are distant from their parents they can be clingy in a separate relationship and they tend to be the center of attention, so the child does everything he or she can to stand out such as having a temper tantrum. They also do not consider the impact of their actions and the consequences that come with it. For example, some children can demonstrate their need of attention by showing aggression towards objects or innocent human or …show more content…
In the insecure relationship, the child begins to display distance from its parent and denies and affection from his or her parents. Other symptoms that caregivers realize is that they do not show psychical affection and if they do show affection it is not a genuine affection toward the parent. The child also has an excessive desire to control its environment or anything surrounding it and not have a clear conscience that he or she is displaying that action. If the parents notice that the child is demonstrating any of these symptoms they should take their child to therapy so that the child can be diagnosed and receive the necessary treatment. The parent would take the child to the psychiatrist where he or she observes the child behavior and diagnoses the child with attachment disorder based on their behavior. The psychiatrist compares the child behavior with the norms of other children of the same age. Some children may have different symptoms; whereas some children can express behavior that is more aggressive than other children. “Most of the non-institutionalized children had moderate levels of aggression, more than half of the institutionalized children had very little aggression, and about 25% of institutionalized children had considerable