Parental and teachers attachment in children at risk of ADHD and with ADHD

Parents of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience more stress than parents of nonclinical controls. One of the factors that is highly significant in the study of parenting is attachment. Attachment has a quality that transcends the day-to-day interactions between parent and child. The style of attachment in children with ADHD was examined in this study. The main hypothesis is that ADHD children would be characterized by greater insecure attachment patterns than control children; secondly, it extends our current knowledge and attempts to understand if the pattern of insecure attachment developed with family caregivers would be present also with school caregivers. A sample of 72 children (36 young children aged 4-5 years: 12 at risk of ADHD-I, 12 at risk of ADHD-C and 12 controls; and 36 older children aged 7 years: 12 with ADHD-I, 12 with ADHD-C and 12 controls) was tested on both Family Separation Anxiety Test (F-SAT) and School Separation Anxiety Test (S-SAT) measures of attachment. Results showed that the ADHD-I and ADHD-C groups scored lower than controls on both SAT scales. There was also a strong positive correlation between the ADHD children’s scores on the School and Family Separation Anxiety Tests. These findings suggest the attachment deficit may be an important but currently underestimated factor in the diagnosis of ADHD and that the family attachment patterns can predict the school attachment patterns.