[THREAD] Given how common issues with our families are and how they can be key to mental health as adults, I want to discuss forms of attachment and approval from children to parents. Let's start with forms of attachment. There are 4 main ones. Secure, anxious-ambivalent,

anxious-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant. A secure attachment is when children feel secure when parents are present and are free to explore the world. Anxious-ambivalent is when children will be fearful of new situations even when parents are present. The other two basically mean

that children don't care whether parents are present or not there. These attachment styles were developed for infants but apply throughout our lives. We often think of secure attachment as the norm, but they are not really. Not in our culture. We will often have parents who are

loving and caring one moment and angry, abusive the next. The stereotype of a brown parent is usually someone who is too overprotective and not shy to spank. This often leads to children having a very anxious-avoidant relationship with our parents because we don't know which

version of the parent we are going to get. That creates a lot of fear to explore the world and gain independence. An overprotective parent will paint the world as a scary place, one that should not be explored, while also creating an environment at home that is also scary, where

we don't know which version of our parents we will get. At that point, children will try to do what they can to get their parents' approval from trying to be perfect at school, to being good kids with relatives and strangers, helping around the house early, etc...But they learn

that no matter what they do, that secure attachment isn't happening. The more children try to get to perfection, the more parents try to find fault within them, continuing that anxious-avoidant style. That pattern can continue for a long time, until the breaking point where

the teenager or adult no longer wants their parents' approval and rebel against it. They realize that the game is rigged. They can never be enough or please them. We get children who are anxious to explore (due to overprotective parents), who do not feel secure at home (due to

spanking and reprimands), who tend to be perfectionist (from trying to please parents) and who don't know what their identities are (because they were never free to explore their environments). Even when they are free from their parents' influence, those forms of attachment

persist in ways that we don't often link to how we were raised. I hope this thread was a little informative and a very quick summary on a very complex issue that stems from attachment that we form starting from infancy.

credit goes to @shruthi_134 for asking to write about parent approval.