Connection

Humans are profoundly social animals, and our relational connections shape our inner neural connections. Much of the time, we need more than reasoning to maintain social distancing even if an infectious disease outbreak mandates it.

And that's no small thing. Social distancing is never easy. And it's even more difficult for kids. Dr. Ainsworth's groundbreaking "Infant Strange Situation" study discovered attachment science, and changed how we understand the importance of secure attachment or intimate human relationships for kids.

Here it is in a nutshell: Ainsworth assessed mother-infant interactions throughout the first year of a child’s life. At the end of the year, each mother-infant pair was brought into a room for an experiment that lasted about twenty minutes, followed by separation of baby from the mother. Securely attached babies show clear signs of missing their mom when she leaves the room, actively greets her when she returns, then quickly settle down and return to their toys and activities once the mother is back in the room.

Ainsworth, in short, showed that sensitive mothers are more likely to have securely attached children. That’s an important concept. Although there’s no formula that’ll fix every problem our child faces, there’s one thing we can always do: just show up. Showing up means what it sounds like. It means being there. We all need to. Remember, we all are born with a drive for connection. To give you an example, the wisdom of showing up helped me to break the cycle of insecure attachment - and break the regulation of my hospital, too. Two nights ago, a mother was sent to my infectious disease ward when she developed fever under quarantine order; her husband had been diagnosed with the nasty novel coronavirus infection ten days ago. Then, guess who else was sent to the children's ward? That's right, another close household contact: her twenty-month-old daughter.

I kept waiting for the mother to appear. Wait, wait, and wait.

She wasn't escorted up because her daughter was in a body-shaking crying mode. A nervous breakdown. It's hard enough to send an infant to hospital, but it's even harder to separate her from the mother who's supposed to be locked up in another double-door isolation ward. Plus, it's impossible for the daddy to come because he was too sick in another hospital. As we struggled with putting on emotional brakes, the child continued crying. The mother cuddled the infant when our colleagues kept saying, in the most polite tone, "Just can't wait. Go."

I tried not to show how impatient I found myself to be. I've seen the need to hide our bad feeling time and again over the years in my work with patients. We doctors simply had to be patient with patients (pun intended). It makes sense, doesn't it? I sized up the situation and then remembered Ainsworth's story. And instead of putting two patients in two different isolation wards, we ended up with a new option: admit the child to an airborne infection isolation ward, and her mother into the same room. Paediatric team looked after the child, and I took care of the mother. Under the same roof.

Perfect.