The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired

by Daniel J. Siegel

The third and most distressed type of insecure attachment is disorganized attachment, where a child has trouble deciding how to respond when the mother returns to the room, and as a result demonstrates disorganized, disoriented, or chaotic behavior. The child might appear terrified, then approach the mother, then withdraw, then fall on the floor helpless and cry, then freeze up. The child may even cling to the mother while simultaneously pulling away. Disorganized attachment results when children find their parents severely unattuned, when the parents are frightening, and/or when the parents themselves are frightened.