Have you ever favored being around someone because they made you feel secure? Especially when we're infants, toddlers, and eventually grow into a young child, these are the people we feel the safest with. By the time we have reached adulthood we may decide to choose these people who make us feel this way as lifelong companions, because it's only natural for one to desire to be around people who they are more familiar and comfortable with. Regardless of whatever stage of life you're in when we're separated from the people we prefer to be around, we become distressed. In contrast one would not react the same toward someone who they are unfamiliar to. This is called attachment. I have researched numerous meanings and definitions of attachment, and they all seem to revolve around ones emotions, behaviors, and experiences with someone they're closest to. In fact many of the feelings a person might come to face in their life such as love, grief, jealously, anxiety, and even abandonment all have a connection to attachment. (Mercer, 2006, pp.2-3).
According to the Exploring Lifespan Development second edition textbook, "Attachment is the strong affectionate tie we have with special people in our livers that leads us to feel pleasure when we interact with them and to be comforted by their nearness in times of stress " (Berk, 2010, p. 150). The most fascinating to me is the attachment in toddlers. Although they may not have the ability to express themselves as an adult would, their behaviors and reactions still stem from the emotions I previously mentioned above. A toddler might spend a few minutes crying over his mother leaving him. This would be strange if a grown man acted in the same fashion. Nevertheless the adult still experiences the loss of a loved one but chooses to express it more maturely, making the child response to loss completely parallel to a grieving adult. It just goes to show that we all experience attachment in some way, shape, or form.
