In some Christian circles, there is an idea termed as God’s common grace, a general gift of God granted without any specific belief, any particular request, or any certain discipline. It’s breath in the lungs, a feeling of optimism out of nowhere when you don’t know why, or an unexpected sunny day when you thought it was going to rain.

I recently learned a parenting stat that’s riddled with this sort of grace. It blew my mind, and it gave me hope. Let me take a few moments to distill it.

In the counseling world, there’s this thing called “attachment.” As written by Adam Young of Adam Young Counseling, attachment “refers to the emotional bond that you develop with a person.” Put in other words, it’s a way of defining the style and health of a given relationship. For the sake of this writing, we’re going to mainly be talking about children’s attachment to their parents.

The two broadest types of attachment, gathered from the APA website, are shown below:

Secure attachment is “the positive parent–child relationship, in which the child displays confidence when the parent is present, shows mild distress when the parent leaves, and quickly reestablishes contact when the parent returns.”

Insecure Attachment is “generally (a) negative parent–child relationship in which the child fails to display confidence when the parent is present, sometimes shows distress when the parent leaves, and reacts to the returning parent by avoidance or with ambivalence.” (Ambivalence, meaning mixed or contradictory feelings).

The hope-filled statistic and common grace of God that I learned in regard to attachment between children (aged 0-3) and their parents is this: we as parents have a 70% threshold of grace. Meaning, we can foster a secure attachment relationship with our kids even if 70% of the time we misread their needs or respond negatively. Case in point, if I happened to lose my cool and tense up pretty frequently when trying to put my son down for a nap in the first few weeks of his life, his well-intentioned-yet-very-human-father (...Me) was able to maintain secure attachment by caring for him with patience and compassion in the realms outside of the difficult nap times. Even though I failed, health remained.

The hope to embrace is that even if you’re a parent or become a parent who makes some mistakes and drops the ball in the early years, grace and reconciliation can often be found. Whether it’s through learning to ask for forgiveness or whether it’s through beginning to listen and support your kids in a new and honoring way, a positive parent-child relationship can often be restored to a place of security and health. And on the outside chance you’re a parent reading this who has kids beyond the age of 3, know that different types of insecure attachment as a result of your parenting methods can often find restoration as well.

Thanks be to God for the common grace we get from our kids as young parents!

(See Greater Good’s article on the 70% statistic, here).

By Nick Sweerin, Restorative Mentor