Keeping Hope Alive: Helping the Child with ASD Navigate the Attachment Process

“Why does everyone know the ‘rules of how to live’? Why do I have to fend for myself? I continue to be a lost child drifting in air and at the mercy and whim of others. My body will not work like those of others. I have no control over my bodily functions. I am not in control, but feel everyone else has control over me. Is there anyone that is listening and do you know what I am saying? Why is it taking you so long to understand my plight? I feel that I will have to live in this never land the rest of my life.”

Let’s make sense out of this autistic child’s experience. We can only hypothesize about what is occurring. This child believes he has been left out of the developmental process. He is very aware that others can function appropriately and that he cannot. He feels no control over his body and feels he cannot make a difference in his own life. He is also looking to others to help him with this predicament. He knows he cannot manage this situation by himself. Finally he believes there is no hope for the future and that his life will forever remain the same and he will remain in a ‘never land.’ He communicates great frustration and hopelessness.

This child is also describing the experience of not having had a completed attachment. From the work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth attachment theory has developed. Without going into the details about attachment theory (if interested review the work of Bowlby and Ainsworth) four categories of attachment have been recognized and it is believed that all people (including those with ASD) fall within these categories: secure, ambivalent, anxious and disorganized. It is my opinion that people with ASD do not fall within any of these categories and have not yet had the benefit of a ‘completed attachment.’ Instead I have proposed a new classification that takes into account the autistic experience, which I call an ‘Incomplete Attachment.’ Instead, the child is left in a dissociated state, unconscious and waiting for the attachment process to be revitalized. If you have never experienced an attachment you are left to navigate the world without a sense of security, trust and ability to use yourself in relationship to others as one would have who has benefited from an attachment. Thus it can be said we are working with a person (ASD) who has no experience of being able to experience themselves in relationship to others. It is important to note that this is a major reason the child with ASD has difficulty navigating interpersonal relationships.

Therefore the process to help the person with ASD is very time consuming, complicated, but not impossible. It is time consuming because we need to start at ‘square one’ in helping the child to develop a secure attachment, trust others, gain a sense of security, develop the ability to self-regulate, to learn to communicate and to express his feelings. All these developmental abilities would have been acquired through the attachment process, which this child has not benefited from. The key purpose of this blog is to emphasize that the time consuming nature of working with those with ASD is daunting, but can be navigated. The child can develop what is called an earned secure attachment, but the development of an attachment will be more time consuming and difficult than if acquired as an infant. The solution is to not give up, but instead to keep the hope alive that the attachment process can be successfully completed for the child with ASD.