More parent child attunement is not always better.
Since the advent of the helicopter parent, trending parenting advice has pushed the idea that parents should stay in sync with their kids at all times. In contrast, a new study finds that higher parent-child synchrony may be a signal that something is not working in the interaction. More parental attunement does not imply a better relationship, but may instead reflect interaction issues.
Researchers from the University of Essex in the U.K. studied 140 families in order to measure parent-child dyad synchrony and its relationship to the attachment styles of the parents and children.
More Parent-Child Synchrony Is Not Better
The study has important implications for current parenting practices, which emphasize parental attunement—meaning a parent tunes in to what their child is feeling and needing, trying to get on their wavelength and achieve synchrony. For example, if a child is upset, a parent might comfort them in just the right way without the child even having to ask. High attunement is promoted as a way to ensure the child forms a secure attachment to their parent.
On social media, Vrtička notices a very strong emphasis on seeking high attunement under any circumstance in some parenting approaches. “This is in stark contrast to the optimal mid range model that was suggested fourteen years ago,” says Vrtička. According to the science-supported model, too much synchrony can lead to problems in parent-child interaction and child development in the same way that too little synchrony can. When parents are too attuned to their children, it becomes intrusive, inappropriate or overstimulating to the child. High synchrony may also be related to stress, as found in one study that measured salivary cortisol between interaction partners.
Parents And Children Solve Puzzles Together
For the study, children from Eastern Germany between ages 5 and 6 years old were paired with their biologically related mothers or fathers. The pairs (or dyads) were either instructed to solve a puzzle cooperatively or to relax and close their eyes.
The researchers scored the dyads for both behavioral and brain synchrony. Functional near infrared spectroscopy measured brain activity from both parents and children in areas related to effortful attention regulation and perspective taking.
Regarding behavior, the dyads were scored on “how much turn-taking there was during the interaction,” says says study author Pascal Vrtička, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Essex, “which reflects how well the parents take their children's perspective into consideration.”
Attachment Styles
Attachment style refers to the way we connect to the people in relationships and impacts how comfortable we are getting close to others or how we react when they are not around. Based on our childhood experiences with our own parents, we form either a secure of an insecure attachment style. And insecure style correlated with mental health problems throughout adult life.
In order to understand how the attachment styles impacted the puzzle-solving scenario, the researchers used validated tools to assess the attachment styles of the parents, and the attachment representations of the children. By attachment representation, Vrtička explains that he means children’s thinking about the availability and responsiveness of their parents and their own capacity to elicit help when needed.
How Attachment Styles Impacted Synchrony
The team found no relationship between attachment styles and behavioral synchrony: parents and children did equally well with turn-taking while solving the puzzle regardless of whether their attachment representations were secure or insecure.
However, when mothers had an insecure attachment style, they had higher levels of brain-to-brain synchrony with their child. Meanwhile, these mothers did just as well with behavioral reciprocity as other mothers. “We think that where mothers are insecurely attached, their brains, together with their children’s brains might need to work harder to get to the same level of behavioral synchrony, especially in the regulatory attention area,” says Vrtička. “It required more attention, effort and regulatory effort from both of them.”
Differences Between Mothers And Fathers
Mother-child dyads scored higher than father-child dyads for behavioral reciprocity. “With fathers there was less of a give and take. We saw more of one of them taking the lead for extended amounts of time and one being rather disengaged,” says Vrtička.
The team concluded that when one element of the pair is less in sync, another element must compensate by showing higher synchrony. So father-child dyads had higher brain synchrony as compared to mother-child dyads because their behavior was less in sync. “Overall, there is an optimum amount of synchrony that enables the interaction to to actually happen and to function efficiently,” says Vrtička.
Optimum parent child synchrony is context dependent
Children thrive when parents are comfortable enough to both attune to their emotions and needs, and to give them autonomy. “Optimum synchrony needs to be context dependent, and tailor to the relationship and to the interaction,” says Vrtička. “What really contributes to positive child development and a secure attachment is when the parent can take the needs of the child into perspective and act upon that.”
In one example, Vrtička explains that the popular trend of baby wearing in order to promote attachment can backfire. When parents are told they should be very close to baby all the time, even co-sleeping, it pushes their behavioral synchrony with the baby to a very high level. But is this actually appropriate for the baby? "To have high synchrony all the time, regardless of the circumstances, might be detrimental and actually lead to insecure attachment and relationship problems,” he says.
The danger of parenting styles that emphasize high synchrony at all times is that they leave no room for one of the most important learning experiences a child can have: rupture and repair. “No interaction is perfect, right? Many interactions consist of rupture and repair cycles. And that's exactly where children learn the most because that's when they need the parent as an external co-regulator, which has been shown to be very important for the development of a secure attachment,” says Vrtička. Healthy relationships show a fluctuation of engagement, disengagement, high synchrony, low synchrony, mistakes and apologies. And these cycles give children space to learn.
Future Research
In their next investigations, the research team will look synchrony within families with neurodivergent children as well as in adopted children. Ultimately, their hope is to further clarify what an optimal range of synchrony looks like, in order to help parents form healthy relationships with their children.
