Book Review: Attaching Through Love, Hugs and Play: Simple Strategies to Help Build Connections with Your Child

Written by: Deborah Gray

Book Review by: Beth Hurlbert, MA

"Attaching Through Love, Hugs and Play: Simple Strategies to Help Build Connections with Your Child" by Deborah Gray is a practical guide for parents of children who may struggle with attachment. She offers simple, actionable strategies to build stronger connections between parent and child. The book also provides in-depth information on attachment and what stress does to the brain. The book focuses on the joys and benefits of fostering secure attachments through everyday interactions like love, hugs, and play. The book provides both immediate crisis response ideas and long-term strategies to help children develop coping skills.

When talking about bonding and attachment, Gray gives suggestions like skin-to-skin contact, mealtimes together, and games that can be played to build a connection with your child. She also gives ideas on how to start with a low-level connection, looking into their eyes, and building to higher levels of connections, snuggling.

The book explores that for parents to be good at attachment, they need to be balanced themselves. Gray encourages parents to set boundaries not only with their children but also with outside obligations, family, and friends. If we don’t set aside time for taking care of ourselves, our other relationships suffer.

Gray emphasizes the importance of teaching children self-regulation skills in clear language that is easy for parents to understand. The book has practical tools to try, which include learning to regulate ourselves, finding self-control in daily routines, and how to set limits for ourselves and our children.

The book also explores how to build higher-level thinking while considering the strengths and deficits of the child. It discusses how dysfunctional thinking from a child can affect parents and gives strategies on ways to address these issues to help develop executive functioning.

There is even a chapter that explores rewards and limits. There are suggestions and guides about what rewards to give and the amounts. Then there are tools for dealing with difficult behaviors such as lying, arguing, stealing, and helping children to get on the right behavioral track. The book not only addresses issues of attachment with young children but also has a chapter for promoting attachment with tweens and teens.

While giving suggestions for immediate responses to behaviors, the book explores building positive, engaging interactions with children, highlighting the joy of bonding. The book also gives different scenarios relating to topics such as adoption, divorce, or other difficult experiences that may occur during a lifespan.

“Attaching Through Love, Hugs and Play: Simple Strategies to Help Build Connections with Your Child” is a great book to consider for ideas when wanting to learn to attach or struggling with difficult behaviors with children of all ages. You can quickly find what you are looking for and try a suggestion without having to read the whole book. The book provides insight and logic into the science of why attachment helps our children’s lives in so many different ways. This book is worth considering to see if you think it would be a beneficial resource to you and your family.

For similar articles, please see our Summer 2025 Newsletter.