Clingy Children with Teachers Cause: Difficult Relationship with Mother

Mothers are the first person that children would look up to because they have been together since they were formed. While inside the womb, the fetus could already hear their mother's voice and is already familiarized with their heartbeat. When the baby is born, they would long for their mother's touch because they know that it is the first person that they could run to whenever the world has turned its back against them. But what happens when growing up, the child and the mother have a difficult relationship?

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Children who have a difficult relationship with their mothers tend to become clingy to teachers.

Children with Difficult Relationship with Mothers Tend to be Clingy to Their Teachers

Children who have a difficult relationship with their mothers tend to become clingy with their preschool teachers. That is because when children first started schooling, the adult that would give them warmth is their preschool teacher apart from their parents. More often, the children would rely on their teachers for the love and guidance that they could not get from their mothers. 

Researchers from New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development found that children who have difficult relationships with their mothers tend to be clingy with their preschool teachers. 

Children Develop Anxiety

Published in peer-reviewed academic research journal of Attachment and Human Behavior, the new research continued studying their subjects until elementary school and found that the children were more at risk of being anxious, overly shy, and withdrawn. 

Lead researcher and doctoral student at NYU Steinhardt's Department of Teacher and Learning, Robin Neuhaus said that their research shows that preschool teachers may play an important role for more dependent children. She also said that by encouraging children to explore, preschool teachers could help reset the trajectories of children who are struggling with anxiety in elementary school by being warm and supportive to them. 

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Teachers may play an important role for more dependent children.

When the parents could not provide what their child needs with his personal development, preschool teachers could help the little ones by being supportive of them, especially since they need guidance from adults the most during these times. 

Children Become Clingy to Their Teachers

Neuhaus and her colleagues analyzed the data gathered by the National Institute of Health's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development from 769 children and assessed the attachment of mother and child from across the US. They examined closeness, dependency, conflict, and other behaviors between the mother and their children, and between teachers and children. 

They took samples from children with an age range of 36 months, 54 months, grades one, three, and five and found that the clingy behavior of the children with their preschool teachers was associated with the children who had high anxiety levels during their fifth grade. Results also showed that the children's high level of anxiety was partially affected by the difficult relationship between the mother and the child.