Attachment in School: How Attachment Issues Can Affect School bonds
Insecure attachment styles are mental, emotional, and behavioral patterns that can arise when children don’t form secure bonds with their parents.
When attachment issues are present, they not only can affect a parent and child’s relationship but may also filter into all areas of life, impacting schoolwork, friendships, and confidence. Unfortunately, school attachment issues in teens are often mistaken for acting out or seeking attention when there’s something far deeper at play.
When a child or teen misbehaves in class, avoids joining in, or struggles to make friends, these behaviors may not be “just a phase.” They could be signs of attachment trauma, and, if left unchecked, could lead to problems later in life. For example, studies show that insecure attachment can lead to the development of anxiety and poor-quality relationships in adults.¹
If you’re concerned about how insecure attachment could be impacting your child’s school life, a mental health professional can provide advice and support. This article can also work as a guide, covering:
- What insecure attachment is
- Signs of insecure attachment in students
- How attachment can affect student-teacher relationships
- How attachment can affect classroom behavior
- Improving social skills for teens with attachment issues
- Ways caregivers can promote secure attachment in teens
- How to support teen emotional regulation in classrooms
- Where to find professional support for school attachment issues in teens
What Is Insecure Attachment?
Based on her findings in the Strange Experiment, psychologist Mary Ainsworth identified three main types of attachment back in the 1970s. These styles, as we know them today, include: ²
An additional style was later added by a colleague of Ainsworth, Mary Main, based on her observations of children whose actions didn’t fit into any of the other categories: insecure-disorganized.
But what do these attachment types actually mean?
In a nutshell, when caregivers are consistently attuned and responsive to an infant’s needs, making them feel seen and understood, the child will likely develop secure attachment. Secure attachment creates a healthy template of the world and how relationships work, leading to balanced emotion regulation, even in new or challenging situations.³
In contrast, when caregiving is inconsistent, unresponsive, or chaotic, children may develop insecure patterns, feeling anxious or withdrawn when things change or feel even slightly uncomfortable. Their internal working model of relationships is disrupted, leading them to believe that others can’t be trusted and that they’re unworthy of having their needs met.
Recognizing your child’s attachment style can help you better understand their relationships at home and school. Plus, supporting working towards a more secure attachment can boost their confidence, relationships, and overall happiness.
Signs of Attachment Disorder in Students
It’s important to clarify that insecure attachment doesn’t mean that a teen has an attachment disorder. Attachment disorders are psychiatric conditions that typically result from trauma and can severely impact overall functioning in all areas of life.
However, research shows that approximately one-third of children have an insecure attachment style, impacting their ability to bond with others, including friends and teachers.³
For instance, children and teens with insecure attachment may:⁴
- Fear being abandoned or rejected
- Have low self-esteem
- Experience emotional regulation problems
- Act clingy or overly self-reliant, or alternate between both
- Feel helpless or powerless
- Have experienced loss
- Want to control situations
- People please
- Overly require soothing and comfort, or alternatively, resist it
- Feel intense emotions like panic, grief, anger, or excitement
- Stay on high alert for possible threats to their well-being
Signs of insecure attachment in the classroom can include:⁵
- Trouble concentrating
- Fear of rejection
- Disrupting lessons
- Disrespecting teachers
- Avoiding or refusing help
- Asking off-topic questions
- Struggling to follow instructions
- Lying, fighting, throwing tantrums, or running away when upset
Attachment Style and Teacher-Student Relationships
When a teen is insecurely attached, they often interpret a teacher’s tone, feedback, and instructions through a certain filter. A neutral correction, for example, might feel like personal rejection, while they might see praise as suspicious or uncomfortable.
For teachers, understanding attachment styles can help explain why some students seem distant, overly dependent, or inconsistent in their behavior. Securely attached children usually trust that adults want to help them, while those with insecure patterns may need more time and consistency to believe or feel comfortable with it.
By showing up in steady, predictable ways, through clear routines, firm but fair boundaries, and genuine warmth, teachers can become an anchor for these students. This sense of safety can help them feel brave enough to try new things, cope better when frustrated, and build stronger, healthier connections in the classroom.
How Attachment Affects Classroom Behavior
While attachment patterns are more likely to show up in close interpersonal relationships, students can still bring these mentalizations of how the world works into every interaction. For this reason, there are several ways that attachment can affect a child’s learning experience, including the following.
Emotional Triggers in the Classroom
Teens with insecure attachment may react strongly to perceived criticism or changes in routine. For example, even small shifts, like a substitute teacher or a group project, can spark anxiety or withdrawal. These reactions aren’t always obvious to others. Sometimes they appear as irritability, other times as shutting down completely. Understanding these patterns can help teachers avoid misinterpreting a stress response as defiance or disinterest.
Social Dynamics With Peers
Attachment style often influences how students form friendships.⁶ Some may struggle to trust classmates, while others could become overly dependent on one or two peers, leading to potential isolation or conflict. Group activities, seating changes, and even lunchroom dynamics can amplify these challenges, especially for teens who already feel unsure of their social standing.
Approach to Learning
A securely attached student is likely to take academic risks, ask for help, and persist through challenges.⁷ In contrast, insecurely attached students might avoid tasks that feel too difficult or give up quickly, fearing failure or embarrassment. When trust is low, they may also resist teacher guidance, preferring to work alone rather than risk perceived judgment.
Classroom Participation
Some students with insecure attachment stay quiet to avoid drawing attention, while others might act out to control the environment around them. Both behaviors can mask underlying discomfort or a lack of confidence in their place in the classroom community. Consistent routines, predictable expectations, and relationship-building can gradually help these students feel safer engaging in class discussions and activities.
Improving Social Skills for Attachment-Challenged Teens
When teens struggle to form or maintain healthy relationships, therapy can provide a safe space to practice new skills and repair old patterns. Evidence-based approaches that often help include:
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): Helps teens recognize unhelpful thinking patterns that may lead to withdrawal, defensiveness, or people-pleasing, and replace them with healthier responses.⁸
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): Builds emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness, which are skills that support more balanced relationships.⁹
- Attachment-based family therapy: Strengthens trust and communication between teens and caregivers, ensuring the home environment supports healthy attachment development.
- Group therapy: Offers real-time practice in listening, expressing needs, and setting boundaries while receiving feedback from peers and a trained facilitator.¹⁰
- Social skills training: Provides direct coaching in conversation starters, nonverbal communication, and conflict resolution.¹¹
- Art therapy: Allows expression of feelings and exploration of relationships through creative mediums, which can be less intimidating than verbal sharing.¹²
How Caregivers Can Help Promote Secure Attachment in Teens
Outside of counseling for school-related attachment issues, everyday interactions can be powerful opportunities to nurture social confidence:
- Model healthy communication: Demonstrate active listening, respectful disagreement, and empathy in your own interactions so teens see these skills in action.
- Create consistency: Aim to make the home a consistently safe environment, where emotional discussion is encouraged.
- Encourage low-stakes engagement: Help teens connect with peers through clubs, sports, or volunteer work where pressure is low and shared interests make conversation easier.
- Validate effort, not just outcomes: Praise the courage to join a conversation or try something new, even if the result isn’t perfect.
- Create predictable opportunities: Regular family meals, game nights, or outings can give teens a consistent space to connect without the unpredictability of new social situations.
- Role-play challenging scenarios: Practice how to respond to teasing, rejection, or disagreements so teens feel prepared when these situations happen in real life.
- Encourage perspective-taking: Discuss how others might feel in certain situations to build empathy and understanding.
- Support healthy boundaries: Teach that it’s okay to say “no” and to choose friends who are kind and trustworthy.
By combining structured support from therapy with intentional guidance at home, teens can gradually replace defensive habits with skills that open the door to genuine connection. Over time, these tools not only strengthen friendships but can also prepare them for healthy adult relationships.
How to Support Adolescent Emotional Regulation in Classrooms
and manage their feelings in ways that keep learning on track. This is especially important for students whose attachment history makes self-regulation harder. A frustrated look from a teacher, for example, can feel like deep rejection to a student with insecure attachment, triggering either withdrawal or disruptive behavior.
Many schools now incorporate attachment-based counseling programs into their student support systems. These programs focus on building trust between counselors and students, teaching coping strategies in a safe and consistent environment, and strengthening the relationships that influence emotional wellbeing, both with teachers and peers.
Practical steps educators can take to support adolescent emotional regulation in classrooms include:
- Creating consistent routines: Predictability can reduce anxiety and make it easier for students to stay calm and engaged.
- Carry out emotion “check-ins”: Quick moments to share feelings at the start or end of class can help normalize emotional awareness.
- Create co-regulation opportunities: Offering calm, steady responses to dysregulated behavior models emotional stability.
- Create safe break spaces: Quiet areas where students can briefly regroup before rejoining the lesson.
- Work on collaborating with school counselors: Working alongside attachment-focused counselors ensures strategies are tailored to each student’s needs.
How Mission Prep Can Support School Attachment Issues in Teens
At Mission Prep, our programs address how insecure attachment can affect all areas of life, including classroom behavior, and offer strategies for both families and educators. We focus on strengthening the teacher-student relationship so that school feels like a safe place to learn. We do so by…
- Helping teens navigate peer interactions and insecure attachment
- Reducing conflicts
- Addressing attachment issues and bullying in school
We also provide mental health support for students with attachment disorder through counseling, small group work, and attachment-based school counseling programs. These school interventions for attachment problems target the effects of attachment trauma on academics, improve confidence, and teach skills for adolescent emotional regulation in classrooms.
From providing mental health treatment for teens with school anxiety to improving social skills for attachment-challenged teens, we can help teens build trust and resilience – allowing full engagement in school life.
If you’re a caregiver or teacher and would like guidance on insecure attachment or mental health support for students with attachment disorders, reach out to Mission Prep today.
References
- Kerns, K. A., & Brumariu, L. E. (2014). Is insecure parent-child attachment a risk factor for the development of anxiety in childhood or adolescence? Child Development Perspectives, 8(1), 12–17. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3960076/
- National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (UK). (2015). Introduction to children’s attachment. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK356196/
- Tabachnick, A. R., He, Y., Zajac, L., Carlson, E. A., & Dozier, M. (2022). Secure attachment in infancy predicts context-dependent emotion expression in middle childhood. Emotion, 22(2), 258–269. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8678397/
- Gori, A., Topino, E., & Griffiths, M. D. (2023). The associations between attachment, self-esteem, fear of missing out, daily time expenditure, and problematic social media use: A path analysis model. Addictive Behaviors, 141, 107633. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030646032300028X
- Wright, B., Fearon, P., Garside, M., Tsappis, E., Amoah, E., Glaser, D., Allgar, V., Minnis, H., Woolgar, M., Churchill, R., McMillan, D., Fonagy, P., O’Sullivan, A., & McHale, M. (2023). Understanding of attachment difficulties. National Institute for Health and Care Research. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK588783/
- Weimer, B. L., Kerns, K. A., & Oldenburg, C. M. (2004). Adolescents’ interactions with a best friend: Associations with attachment style. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 88(1), 102–120. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022096504000128
- Bergin, C. A., & Bergin, D. A. (2009). Attachment in the classroom. Educational Psychology Review, 21(2), 141–170. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225217736_Attachment_in_the_Classroom
- Herres, J., Krauthamer Ewing, E. S., Levy, S., Creed, T. A., & Diamond, G. S. (2023). Combining attachment-based family therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy to improve outcomes for adolescents with anxiety. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14, 1096291. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10165080/
- Zapolski, T., Whitener, M., Khazvand, S., Crichlow, Q., Revilla, R., Salgado, E. F., Aalsma, M., Cyders, M., Salyers, M., & Wu, W. (2022). Implementation of a brief Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills group in high schools for at-risk youth: Protocol for a mixed methods study. JMIR Research Protocols, 11(5), e32490. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9136647/
- Arias-Pujol, E., & Anguera, M. T. (2017). Observation of interactions in adolescent group therapy: A mixed methods study. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1188. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5522846/
- Tetono, M. M. D., Kuntoro, I., & Savitri, L. S. Y. (2018). The implementation of social skills training (SST) to improve the social skills of an adolescent with peer relationship problems at school. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Intervention and Applied Psychology (ICIAP 2017) (pp. 186–192). Atlantis Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325929173_The_Implementation_of_Social_Skills_Training_SST_to_Improve_the_Social_Skills_of_an_Adolescent_with_Peer_Relationship_Problems_at_School
- Riley, S. (2001). Art therapy with adolescents. The Western Journal of Medicine, 175(1), 54–57. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1071468/
