Understanding Early Separation Anxiety: How Delays and Distance Build Secure Attachment

The Delays That Teach Trust

The delay and space between a need, and how (and when) it will be met — this is what we may call the first separation, the very beginning of what later becomes known as separation anxiety.

Separation doesn’t start the day the parent leaves for work — it starts much earlier, in those tiny gaps between a child’s cry and the parent’s response. These delays are not harmful; they’re how the child learns that someone will come. That trust becomes the foundation of secure attachment.

As the child grows, parents can’t always be there immediately — and that’s a good thing. Through these small absences, the child begins to build an internal image of the parent: “Even when I don’t see them, they exist.”
This is the beginning of object permanence, and it’s the first step towards feeling safe in the world.

Finding Comfort in What’s Left Behind

When the parent isn’t available, the child learns to soothe themselves. Sometimes it’s the thumb, sometimes a blanket — later, it becomes what Winnicott called a transitional object. It’s not “just a toy”; it’s something that carries the trace of comfort, the feeling of being held.

Through it, children start to discover that comfort can be recalled. They can sleep through the night with their object instead of needing the parent’s presence. They can play in another room while the parent cooks, still connected in some way — another small step in managing child separation anxiety.

The Play of Absence

Games like peekaboo or hide and seek aren’t just for fun — they’re early exercises in separation. In peekaboo, the baby learns that even when something disappears, it can come back. Later, hide and seek becomes a way to transform something once scary into something bearable, even joyful.

The game works because it has rules — a beginning and an end. If the parent never hides, there’s no game. But if they hide too far, or for too long, the game stops being fun. That’s a good metaphor for life: children need to face tolerable doses of discomfort, not overwhelming ones.
These small challenges help prevent separation anxiety in children from becoming overwhelming.

For Parents Too

It’s not only about the child — parents also have to learn to tolerate their child’s discomfort without rushing to fix it. That doesn’t mean being absent or cold. It means being present — available, calm, containing the child’s emotion instead of immediately removing it.

Because part of growing up will hurt. A child will one day meet someone who’s unkind, be left out, or get disappointed. We can’t stop that from happening — and maybe we shouldn’t. No one here has had a perfect life, or perfect parents. The perfect parent doesn’t exist.

The good-enough parent is the objective — the one who stays, listens, and holds space for what hurts. Interacts, agrees or disagrees, but still shows up. This is what supports healthy attachment development.

When It Becomes More Than a Phase

It’s normal for young children to cry when saying goodbye. Separation anxiety usually appears around 8 months, peaks between 10 and 18 months, and fades around 2 years.

It becomes something to look at more closely when the fear is excessive for the child’s age, lasts for months, or starts interfering with their daily life — for instance, when they refuse to go to school or show physical signs of distress.

In such cases, it’s not about “spoiled” children, but about a system that got stuck somewhere between fear and reassurance. Therapy can help both the child and the parents rebuild that bridge.

In the End

Separation is not just about absence. It’s the space where we get to be creative.

Every goodbye, every reunion, teaches the child that safety can exist even when love isn’t visible. And for adults, separation anxiety can still echo quietly in the background.

For parents, it’s a reminder that letting go — even a little — is part of love too. It can appear in our relationships, in the fear of being left, or in the need to constantly stay connected. Sometimes it hides behind jealousy, control, or difficulty trusting.

Often, it’s not about the present moment at all, but an old echo — the memory of a time when absence felt unbearable, when reassurance came too late, or not enough.

Recognising it is not about blame; it’s about understanding the link between what once was and what still moves within us — and perhaps, finally, learning to say goodbye without fear.