Leading Our Kids Back To School

Re-entry has begun and we are now preparing to return to parts of our lives, like work and schooling, without knowing exactly what this looks like. How do we lead our children? What do they need from us? Can they adapt to the new realities of social distancing at schools and will this create anxiety and emotional problems for them? These are just a few of the questions I have been asked by parents but center around the question of – how do I lead my child(ren) back to school?

Will our kids feel safe?

Safety is an illusion and telling our children that they won’t get covid, or that we won’t get covid is not the best way to make them feel safe. Safety has much less to do with their surroundings and more to do with their connection to adults. Assuring our children that they will be ‘okay’ is far less effective when it comes to feeling secure than making sure they feel taken care of by us. In order to understand why this is so we will need to understand something about attachment and why it matters to kids.

Children are not able to take care of themselves and they can’t make sense of the world like an adult does. It is their dependency on adults that makes them feel secure as they look to them for protection, guidance, and direction. The relationship with an adult is like an emotional bubble that preserves the child’s heart. When a child is afraid, frustrated, or overwhelmed, it is this relational bubble that can provide a safe place to retreat to. Home is where the heart is, and we need our children to give their hearts to us for safe keeping.

A child doesn’t feel lost when they can count on their adults to show up for them and to lead. It doesn’t mean that all the threats in their life disappear and that they can’t be hurt, but that they are shielded from this reality as they trust their adults to lead and to provide for them. Where they are confused, they should look to their adults to lead the way and for their adults to be responsible for figuring out issues of safety.

How can parents and teachers lead?

We can work on taking care of our kids by being their compass point, caring for them in unexpected ways, providing more than they seek, listening with our full attention, and taking the lead in feeding them
We can take the lead in matchmaking our kids to their teachers and strengthening that connection. We can remind our children that their teachers have missed them and can be trusted to lean on.
We don’t know all of the details about what school will look like as they re-enter, but we can direct them to their teacher who will tell them what they need to know
We can’t say ‘everything will be okay’ as we can’t know the future but we can say that we will take care of them and they can count on that

If there was ever a time that we needed our children to rest in our care, it is now. We need to work to strengthen and preserve our relationship with them, providing more contact and closeness than they ask for and being generous in our capacity to make room for their big emotions like frustration, resistance, and fear. We need to take the lead and make decisions about schooling and whether to send them back to school.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do as a parent is to lead when we are full of doubts. Leadership can feel lonely and we may feel guilty as well. These are the emotions that come with parenting and we can care for our kids and lead them through these challenging times, despite all that we are feeling.

How will our kids adjust to the new restrictions and rules around social distancing?

The question of how classrooms will look and whether our children will adjust to them is understandably a big concern for parents. Schools and teachers have been working hard trying to figure these things out and should have started communicating the changes that have been put into place to parents. We can help orient our children to the changes by following the lead of the school and sharing the information they provide, for example, what supplies they can bring to school, guidelines for eating lunch, washing hands, and playing.

When we communicate information to a child that might alarm them it is best to do this in a matter of fact and non-alarming tone and manner. For example, this is how flight attendants give safety demonstrations on planes and it is how we lead our children through fire drills, lock down drills, and earthquake preparedness. Simple scripts and directions help to reduce fear and give the child a sense of agency.

One of the ways schools will be helping children adjust to the new rules around social distancing is by taking a playful approach. For example, we can sing songs to know how long to wash our hands to using hula hoops to understand social distancing. These playful approaches are strategic in helping kids adapt to new rules, experience less fear, and be less resistant to changes. Some parents might be concerned that schools aren’t taking matters more ‘seriously’ but we need to remember that play promotes feelings of safety and rest. It will take the attention off the risks and put the focus on the rules which will help our kids adjust to the new safety measures at school.

How can parents and teachers lead?

Support play as a way to learn about social distancing and the new rules and restrictions
Show support for the school and teachers by positively addressing the changes they have made
If you have concerns about the changes at the school then direct these to the appropriate adults without your child’s involvement or awareness. It is key that your child trusts their teacher even if you are working through your concerns with the school
Matchmake your child to their teacher and the school by affirming that their teacher will take care of them

Will this impact their emotional well-being and create anxiety?

Some parents are concerned that sending their child to school will create anxiety and stress. To answer this question, we will first need to consider where anxiety and stress comes from. Stress arises when you are emotionally overloaded and can’t make sense of everything in your life, and anxiety is a sure sign of this. It is important to remember that it isn’t school that is stressful per se (although there will be stressors there for sure), but that it creates separation from home and their trusted adults. Separation anxiety is from alarm at being disconnected from their caregivers and leads the child to question- “Who will take care of me now?”

If a child trusts their teacher and the adults at school to care for them then the separation from home won’t be as alarming and they will feel ‘safer’ in the care of their teachers and school. Kids feel highly alarmed when they anticipate the world is going to hurt them and there are no adults to support or take care of them. The answer is to foster a strong relationship with their teacher and make a seamless attachment team between the home and school. Parents can bridge the distance by giving the child something to hold onto that represents their relationship – a reminder of what they will do after school, an invisible string that connects them, to a picture of their family in their lunch box.

Our children can also be experiencing a range of emotions as a result of all the changes in their life. There may be frustration that they can’t be with their friends, play where they want to, and have a limited space to move in. They may be resistant to go back to school because they have enjoyed the extra time to play and the freedom from doing work while at home. Some kids are excited to go back to school and see people whereas some of our children are worried they will get sick with covid. What is the answer to all of our children’s emotions?

Emotional health and well-being requires emotional expression and for kids it helps to have someone who will listen to you. We can help our kids talk to us by acknowledging the frustration or sadness they are experiencing. Sometimes parents are worried that if they allow their children to feel sad or worried then it will never stop and their child will just ‘learn’ to be this way. This is not accurate and the more we tell someone NOT to feel, the more feelings it will create. Emotions are not right or wrong, good or bad. Emotions are here to serve us and have an intelligence all on their own. The challenge is being patient with our kid’s feelings and giving them enough room to express them.

Many parents ask how they can get their child to talk to them and the answer lies again in your connection. Find some time to spend with them one on one and just enjoy being with them. As you play together, share a hobby, or go outside together, listen with your undivided attention. Be neutral as they share their ideas and feelings with you, acknowledging how they feel – rather than how you feel about how they are feeling. When children feel the conversation has become about meeting the parents needs, they can stop talking.

If words are hard to find then play is a wonderful place to soften feelings. The very nature of play – not being real or requiring you to work at a problem, allows for feelings to be expressed without words nor consciousness. If a child is frustrated then play that changes things such as building things, destroying, putting together, taking apart, mock aggression, wrestling, arts and crafts may be helpful. If a child is alarmed you may want to play more hide and seek, building forts and hideaways, monster games, chase and so on. If your child has few words, then lead them to their expressive play.

We will likely have to make some room for frustration and some tears too. There are so many futilities that come with the changes at school – from social distancing, to missing home, that our children may be emotionally charged and on need of release. Part of the “emotional homework’ we do with our kids is to help them express what didn’t work and lead them through frustration and to disappointment and sadness. Sometimes there are many things we cannot change but we can adapt and adjust if we make room for emotion.

How can parents and teachers lead?

Bridge the home to school divide by giving your child something to hold onto that represents your relationship (i.e., what you will do after school, a picture in their lunch box
Listen to your child with your undivided attention and make time to just be together
Don’t judge how your child is feeling, and don’t act defensively about what they are telling you, or try to talk them out of their emotions
If your child is resistant to go to school you might need to explore why, come alongside their lack of desire to return, and perhaps have some tears about it
Make room for play – especially after school which can help provide some emotional discharge
Tears can be helpful in releasing alarm and you can support your child this way by naming the things that are frustrating and acknowledge how sad it is
Hold onto your relationship with your child and use this as the safe vehicle to help them express what is stirring them up inside

What about learning?

There is an order to what is most important when you are under stress. Relationship comes first, with play and tears next. Learning happens best when we feel safe in our relationship with adults or when we are at play. Helping our kids feel safe again at school, making sure they trust in their teacher to care for them, and getting our children to express themselves emotionally, are all things that must take precedence over learning.

Learning is easy when kids feel safe. Learning is hard when a child’s brain is preoccupied with questions of security and when it is emotionally overloaded. If we work to create the rest our kids need then the learning will come.

At this time the world may feel out of sorts and upside down for a child and our priority is to make them feel at home again with the adults who are there to care for them. Humans are resourceful, resilient, and amazing in their capacity to care for each other. With enough patience and focusing on what matters most of all, we can carry our children through this storm, taking comfort they are shielded from the worst because we are taking the lead.

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet counselling center, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 11 languages, and a children’s picture book The Sorry Plane.

Why Children Need to Give their Hearts to Parents

My 5-year old nephew is in love. He walks around his house and finds each family member and grabs their head firmly in his hands, places his forehead on theirs, and declares, “we’re married.” He singled out his father for a more formal marriage proposal accompanied with heartfelt proclamations of affection. The dog was also happy with her marriage vows but who wouldn’t be delighted to watch a child fall in love for the first time?

The capacity to feel deep caring and to express warmth and sentimentality is a sign that a child has developed the capacity for emotional intimacy. It usually arrives between the ages of 4 and 5 if all is unfolding well developmentally. It means for the first time they can experience a sense of vulnerability at the heart level, in other words, it is a sign that the relationship is deepening.

As a parent I used to think that what mattered most was how much I loved my kids. While our love is important, attachment is a two way street and we cannot be empowered in our role without our children giving their hearts to us. It begs the question – what comes with a child’s heart that allows us to do our job as parents?

Why love matters

Attaching through deep love is an important milestone in becoming a relational being. We are not born with the ability to relate to others in a responsible and caring way and this is something that must be grown from within us. Becoming a relational being can only grown by first being invited into relationship with at least one adult in their life who cares for them. In other words, we need to lead our children in attaching to us – we can’t leave it up to chance.

How do we invite our children to give their hearts to us? By giving them more contact and closeness than they desire and a sense of belonging and loyalty. We need to convey that they matter and are significant to us by engaging fully with them and caring for them in unexpected ways. We cannot expect a child to fall deeply into attachment unless we have been generous in our care taking and have read their needs and responded.

When a child gives us their heart for safe keeping, there is a greater sense of trust, of closeness in the relationship, and it paves the way for secrets to be shared. Our relationship becomes a wonderful template on which they can judge other relationships. The writer Johann Goethe once said that a person sees in the world that which they carry in their heart. When children come to expect emotional intimacy in their relationships and understand how nourishing it can be, they will be less likely to accept cheap substitutes as adults.

When a child gives their heart to us, they can better hold onto us when apart. Children don’t need to practice separating from us, they just need to be more deeply attached so they can withstand the distance between us. Missing is part of what comes with deep attachment, that is, we only miss the people we care for. Our children can venture forth and discover, play, imagine, and learn, when they are sure there is always a person to return home to. A child is not at home with us unless they have given us their heart.

When the attachment roots go deep there is a secure base to lean on and draw strength from. Kids who have given their hearts to their parents are shielded from the toxic peer wounding that is part of school interactions today – what their parents think about them matter more than any words from another child. Kids who are deeply attached are more resilient and withstand adversity and bounce back quicker. When they are tethered to adults, their feet are on solid ground no matter what storms they encounter in their life.

How a child’s love empowers a parent

When a child has given their heart to a parent they will be more likely to listen and attend to what is said. Children don’t listen because they are told they have to but because they want to follow the people they are attached to.

A child who is deeply connected will look up to their adults, like them, seek their help, and want to be with them. Children don’t seek help from someone because they are told to but because they believe that person has their best interests at heart.

Children will also work to try and please the people they are deeply attached to by helping out and by wanting to measure up to expectations for behaviour and values. As Gordon Neufeld states, it isn’t our love for a child that empowers us in our role as parents, rather, it is their love for us.

How to hold onto their hearts

When we understand the importance of having a child’s heart in being able to care for them, the question remains as to how we can preserve and protect our relationship with them?

Part of the answer lies in avoiding separation that is wounding to our relationship – like the use of discipline that divides like time outs, threats, or punitive consequences. It also means protecting our relationship from being lost to competing attachments like peers or digital devices. While friends are great to be with, they are not the answer to a child’s attachment needs. A child needs to feel anchored to an adult that is hanging on to them

Why is our love necessary to raise a child?

If it is a child’s love for us that empowers us as parents, then why is it important for us to love our kids? If you consider all that comes with parenting – like sacrifice, frustration, alarming feelings, the need for patience, consideration, forgiveness, and compassion – it starts to become a lot clearer. Our love for a child is what makes all of this possible. It is love for our children that holds the power to transform us into the parents we need to become. Parenting can be hard, love is what makes it possible to endure and to grow.

If there were a secret to parenting it would be this, that not only do our children need to give their hearts to us, but we need to our hearts over to the role of being the answer to their hunger for connection. Like a beautiful dance, parent and child relationships were meant to deepen, become exclusive and personalized, and leave everlasting fingerprints on each other’s hearts.

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, the author of the best-selling book, Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), and is the Director of the Kid’s Best, Bet Counselling and Family Resource Centre.

The Gifts of Sensitivity

Sensitive kids are known for being more intense and stirred up by their environment. Sensory overload is common with some sounds being too loud, smells too powerful, and even touch or tags in clothes being too much to handle. They can be difficult to make sense of given their heightened reactions and emotions, especially their increased resistance and anxieties. While sensitive kids can feel larger than life to take care of, what usually gets eclipsed when development is going well, are the wonderful gifts that come with being more stirred up by the world around you.

The number of sensitive kids in the North American population is estimated to be anywhere from 15 to 20%. Their heightened response to external stimuli as well as from signals within their body, is due to heightened reactivity in their nervous system. The parents of sensitive kids tell me, “they just seemed to come out of the womb and into the world this way, more stirred up, reactive, and harder to settle.” When I look at baby pictures I can see the sensitivity in some kids by the way they clench their hands, face scrunching, and body rigid with tension as if to indicate being in the world was too much to take.

Sensitive nervous and sensory systems are not just in humans either, biologists have discovered the same in other mammal species and even fruit flies. While we don’t really understand why some kids are more sensitive, current research is suggesting genetics, prenatal or birth experiences. What is still true is sensitive kids need the same conditions as other kids to grow, that is, strong caring relationships with adults and soft hearts.

Sensitivity exists on a continuum with no two children being the same in terms of their enhanced receptivity to stimuli including differences in reactions to sights, smells, tastes, touch, hearing, kinesthetic/proprioceptor (knowing where your body is in time and space), and emotional/perceptual abilities. As the mother of two sensitive kids, the differences between each one is clear – one has a nose like a blood hound and can sniff out the smell of ‘sneaky’ chocolate on my breath and is very ‘ticklish’ and feels pain intensely. My other child can quickly ‘read’ a room and pick up on emotions and the true intentions of those within it.

While the differences among sensitive kids are great, the gifts that come with heightened sensory systems can start to emerge when development is unfolding well. While they are more prone to emotional challenges, with a supportive environment containing warm relationships, play time, room for tears, they can flourish. While all children have gifts and talents, kids with sensitivity have gifts that are more likely to cluster together in the following ways because of the increased reactivity in their nervous and emotional systems.

Perceptive – Sensitive kids often pick up on small details and notice things that are different or have changed, and can put together patterns and abstract details into a whole. When it rained one hot summers day after a dry spell, my daughter stood smelling the rain and told me, “I forgot what the rain smelled like Mom, it is so wonderful.” When she was younger she also told me that “dust sparkles in the sunshine like fairy dust.” To see the world through the eyes of a sensitive child is to be reintroduced to the wonder and splendor of the simple things that surround us. They often make us slow down enough to notice what we have missed in our hurry to get on with adult responsibilities.
Care deeply about others – The emotional system is part of the nervous system which impacts sensitivity by giving them a heightened caring response. If development is ideal, they can become very compassionate, empathic, and considerate as they mature. The depth of their emotions can be profound as they vocalize what they are feeling. They can be easily moved emotionally by music, stories, nature, art, and the kindness of others. Sensitive kids are known for crying with sentimental songs or through stories – like my daughter did when I sang “Danny Boy” or read Puff the Magic Dragon to her. The warmth they exude when their hearts are soft is breathtaking and they can naturally move to take care of their siblings with fierce protectiveness.
Passionate and intense – The enhanced receptivity in their emotional systems can lead to passionate and intense feelings/responses in their relationship to things, people, and interests. They love their pets – their friends – their clothes – that bedtime story. They can become vibrant and energized talking about their ideas, with big dreams and goals ensuing. They are often interesting people to talk to with their energy vibrating and lighting up a room. Some sensitive kids carry this energy more internally, but it often reveals itself as they play, move, write, or tell stories.
Memory – With increased receptivity to their environment and attention to patterns or details, sensitive kids can absorb and retain information at astonishing rates. They can recite stories by heart and memorize entire picture books. They frequently talk early as they imitate others, and can locate things you have ‘misplaced’ with uncanny accuracy. ‘Natural brightness’ is often a result of sensitivity as well as particular areas of special capabilities, for example, visual processing, reading comprehension, or agility.
Creativity – When sensitive kids play freely, unconstrained by agendas or structure, their imaginative worlds can be vibrant and expansive. They often exhibit a unique capacity to create something novel out of ordinary things, in other words, they incorporate their environment into their play. For example, one sensitive child created a ‘candy wall’ in her room out of blue sticky tack and Halloween candy as part of her decorations. Sensitive kids who flourish this way can be counted among some of our most gifted artists, writers, actors, musicians, designers, engineers, and talented creatives.
Discerning – they don’t suffer fools gladly – Sensitive kids can be particular in deciding who they will trust and form relationships with. They expect a lot from their attachments and people must often prove they are psychological safe and non-wounding before a sensitive child will warm up to the relationship. A parent of sensitive child told me that as his child entered a new school, “it is like he is taking resumes from other kids before choosing who he is going to be friends with.” Sensitive kids are less likely to succumb to false pretenses and fake performances. They can often read people’s true intentions despite people’s attempts to disguise or to try and fool them.
Resistant – It might not appear to be a gift on the surface but a sensitive child’s capacity to resist coercion and control by others has a silver lining. While they can be quick to dig in if they feel pushed and will often push back, this does help preserve a space for their own ideas to emerge. Being prone to feeling easily coerced and quick to resist allows them to stand apart from others, resist peer pressure where appropriate, and become their own unique person.
Problem solving and innovation – When a sensitive child is able to digest a lot of sensory information and hold onto all of the pieces at once, they can start to arrange them in interesting and complex ways. The capacity to find new and unique solutions comes from being able to manipulate ideas, integrate unlike objects, and form connections. Because the sensitive child has more ‘data’ to work with, they can be seen as innovative problem solvers – possibilities are not something sensitive kids are short on when development is unfolding well.
Gifts related to their sensitivity – Every sensitive child exists on a continuum of heightened responses but with this can come a refinement of special skills and gifts. For children with enhanced emotional/perceptual awareness, they may pick up on, describe, and translate the world around them into feelings and emotions as seen in poetry or storytelling. For the child with auditory sensitivity, they may be able to pick up a tune and play it on a musical instrument or sing a song in perfect pitch. For the sensitive child with kinesthetic/proprioception gifts, their ability to tune into to their bodily movements can make them talented at different sports. There are a number of ways a child’s sensitivities can be revealed, with gifts following from each particular sense.
They stretch parents to grow – At times parents of sensitive kids may feel their child is too much for them to care for given their heightened reactions, capacity to resist, and big alarming feelings. It is the love for a child and the feelings of responsibility that will push a parent to grow and stretch in their capacity to find patience, consideration, compassion, and self-control. Sensitive kids need strong, caring, and firm parents to lean on, and ones who won’t be afraid to face their big emotions and walk them through it. When a parent learns to dance with their sensitive child in this way, and when they can make sense of their emotions and behaviour, they will find the confidence they need to be the answer to their child’s needs. The gift of a sensitive child is the opportunity for growth that they represent to those who care for them. In caring for a sensitive child, you must learn to dance with human vulnerability, become a safe landing pad for big emotion, and lead them through the disappointments in life. When you can do this, there will be much fulfillment in the parenting role, and a realization of the growth inside of oneself. While sensitive kids may not be the easiest to parent, they can make amazing parents out of us.

What do sensitive kids need from parents?

Sensitive kids need the same things as every child – caretakers for their hearts when they feel too much and get hurt too much. They need adults that can lead them and who will assume responsibility for reading their needs and providing for them generously.

Sensitivity can be a beautiful thing if we give our kids enough time to grow and to make sense of the world in their unique ways. Nature wasn’t unkind this way nor foolish, difference and diversity has always been her way and there are gifts in all of the temperaments our children have – sensitive and less sensitive alike.

Resilience: Embracing the Emotional Journey

Stress seems to lie around every corner. It is there when change happens to us or when we are up against the things we cannot change. From the losses that are part of life to our unmet needs, how were we meant to find a way through?

Gordon Neufeld defines resilience as the “capacity to return to optimal functioning after stress or to thrive under duress.” (1) While we can’t avoid the ups and downs in life, we can harness the body’s natural way of healing and bounce back. The question is how do we do this and how do we set our children up to do the same?

The key is to resilience is to realize that it cannot be found by “pitting our head against our heart,” as Neufeld states. It has always been our hearts that hold the secrets to healing. The problem is we have gotten lost in thinking that the mind holds all the answers when we are faced with problems. We lose sight that adversity will take us on an emotional journey and our feelings need to take the wheel in helping us find a way through.

There is a difference between “true resilience” and “false resilience.” False resilience arises when our emotions are supressed and no longer become conscious or deeply felt. With false resilience there is an absence of feelings and the ‘calm’ exterior lulls us into thinking that perhaps we are okay and indeed resilient. It allows a child to function at school despite stress or an adult to show up at work and do a job. The problem is a hardened heart is like scar tissue, it isn’t very flexible nor does it feel very much.

True resilience is noisy. It is full of feelings that can be big and upsetting. You can hear it in the healthy teenager as they go through their final passage into adulthood and speak of the emptiness, fear, loneliness, or the insecurity they feel. You can hear it in the new parent who is wondering why they have so many emotions flooding them like alarm, frustration, and sadness as they take care of little people they love dearly.

False resilience stems from the absence of emotion whereas true resilience is about being hardy or of much heart. Resilience requires more feeling, not less.

If we are to play a role in our children unfolding as resilient beings we will need to play caretaker to their heart. We don’t need to chase them away or have them run away from their big feelings. We don’t need to toughen them up or suggest “not to let themselves get down” or that they “need to pick themself up.” It is the emotional mending of what has been broken that paves the way to being able to thrive and bounce back.

The problem is that when stress overwhelms or floods us, there are too many things to focus on or to feel. Our emotions are stirred up and they get busy trying to fix the challenges we face. A child can cling to a parent when it’s time to leave for school or a teen can refuse to talk about something because it hurts more when they do.

The brain jumps into action when we are full of emotion, and feelings are a luxury. Feelings are the emotions we can catch hold of and cry tears to, and make room for. But when we are overloaded, we have “more emotion and less feeling,” as Neufeld states.

We struggle to embrace the emotional journey’s that come with stress and we have lost sight of how important they are to take our children on. The problem is we seem so scared of emotions that come big and strong in times of stress. We worry they will take us down the dark holes that are part of life and we will never get back up. We think we have to kick and scream and crawl our way out of the tunnels in life rather than to see that there has always been something to carry us through them. Resilience is an emotional journey and our emotions were meant to carry us forward when we no longer know the way. It isn’t the absence of vulnerable feelings that make us strong, but our capacity to embrace the ones that we have.

We have lost the keys to opening the heart at the time when we need it the most. We have become lost in our heads and believe thinking things out holds the ultimate answer. Reason doesn’t hold the answer when our heart is hurt. Resiliency isn’t a set of skills to learn nor is it a list of statements we tell our kids to write out and repeat. Resilience doesn’t come from a script, a worksheet or talking yourself into happy feelings either. The idea that we have to force healing down a particular path doesn’t understand the inherent capacity in humans to heal.

We need to embrace our feelings and allow what nature has given us to be able to journey through the stress and adversity that is part of our life.

We need to help our children express the sadness that will be there when things don’t go their way. We need to open channels for expression through play and free the muses to draw out their feelings through music, paint, dance, song, or clay. We can encourage them to tell us their stories and to “replay” all that has happened says Neufeld.

What we all need most of all on emotional journey’s are people who can come alongside our feelings. It is the people we hold onto at times of unrest, that carry us through our strong emotions. Our relationships provide an illusion of safety in the midst of all the things that don’t feel right. When we are in doubt about our chances of a safe return to well being, it is our relationships that can guide us and say hold onto me.

Our relationships are also what give us hope and help us believe that we are indeed strong enough to carry the heavy load we feel. It is a parent’s belief in a child that helps them feel there is a way out of it all.

When I think of the big things in my life that have had to be faced, it is people I am most attached to that have anchored me the most. They have become embedded in those emotional journey’s. They are the people that helped keep my heart soft and helped me endure despite feelings of despair. And like all journey’s, once you have travelled somewhere, you are never the same again. You become forever transformed by the things you see on the way, the experiences you have, and the emotions that are felt.

As Kierkegaard said, “Life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards.” While you are in the midst of the emotional journey it is not important to make sense of it all, to have the pieces all fit together, but rather, to embrace the process of the emotional let down, and to use nature’s system to help release the emotions that need to come out and to rest from trying to make things different.

If we can do this for our kids, they will realize that healing wasn’t something we had to invent, wasn’t something we had to learn, something we had to work hard at or force, but rather, to release ourselves too. We already have inside of us the ingredients to allow healing to occur, we just need someone to go on the emotional journey with us. As parents we can set the stage for the feelings and the play to help our children too.

Emotions are not a nuisance, they are nature’s ways of taking care of us. It is our feelings that carry us when faced with the challenges that life presents. The more we make room for them, feel them, play with them, the more they can do their healing on us. The challenges in life must be embraced but we all need someone to lean on. There could be no greater gift to our kids nor no better message to leave them with.

Notes

(1) Gordon Neufeld, The Keys to Resilience, Keynote Address 9th Annual Neufeld Institute Conference, April 28, 2017, Richmond, BC

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the author of the best selling book, Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one). She is also on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute and the Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a counselling and family resource centre. For more information please see www.macnamara.ca.

Five Things You Might Not Know about Attachment Between Parents and Kids

A father sat in my office, visibly upset that his 7 year old son wasn’t listening to him. He recounted challenge after challenge with his son from leaving the park to getting dressed in the morning, from eruptions of frustration to bedtime battles. Exasperated, the father looked at me and asked, “Why would any child follow any parent in the first place?” It was a good question and one I couldn’t answer without making sense of attachment first.

Attachment science is the name given to the study of human relationships. Attachment is how we root our children to a secure base, create a sense of belonging and significance, and nourish them. John Bowlby, the psychiatrist who first coined the term, ‘attachment’ stated, “What is believed to be essential for mental health is that the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother-substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment.”

While there is widespread agreement on the critical role of attachment in emotional and cognitive development, it remains a complex and dynamic field. The science of human relationships is more than just baby bonding, it embodies the fusion of instinct and emotion which drives us to seek contact and closeness with others.

Gordon Neufeld, one of the world’s leading developmental experts, has put the pieces of the attachment puzzle together revealing the complexity of human relationships. While the hunger for relationship is part of the human psyche, how attachment serves to bind us together is a dynamic and fluid story that infuses all aspects of life. What the father of the 7-year old boy didn’t understand was that all of the unrelated challenges he was having with his son stemmed from his relationship with him. Focusing on his son’s behaviour would not reveal the answers he needed, it was when he started to understand what had happened to their relationship that he could start to make headway with him.

Five Things to Understand About Attachment

Attachment is a two-way street – When parents consider how strong their attachment is with a child they often reflect on how much they love their child or want to be around them. Attachment is not just a matter for the parent but for a child too. We often fail to take a step back and consider whether a child is attached to their parent and if so – how deeply? Without a strong relationship there is little capacity for a parent to harness a child’s instincts to follow, obey, adopt the same values, or seek help from their adults. Instead of being able to lead a child, a parent may face constant eruptions of frustration, resistance and opposition, as well as bossy and commanding behaviour. When assessing how good our relationship is we should consider it through the eyes of our child. The answer for the father who asked me why a child would follow a parent was attachment. It is a child’s love for us that empowers us in our caretaking role. You cannot truly care for a child who has not given their heart to you.

Separation is the most impactful of all experiences – Attachment is the greatest need a child has therefore separation is one of the most impactful of all experiences. Separation is especially provocative for young children because of their immaturity and high dependency needs. The experience of separation can stir up three primal emotions in a child – pursuit, frustration, and alarm. They may cling or clutch, erupt in frustration, or exhibit fear and anxiety, well after the separation has occurred. The answer is to ensure wherever they go, they are attached to the adults who will care for them – from teachers to extended family members – connection is key when leaving them with others. Attachment and separation are two sides of the same coin, that is, our children only miss the people that they desire to be close to.

Relationship is a shield to protect against emotional wounding – One of the challenges for kids is the range of emotions and feelings they experience, with the capacity to be hurt and wounded deeply. Being rejected, not loved or cared for, can be wounding to the heart but this is offset by a caring relationship with an adult. When a child cares more about what an adult sees in them, then the wounding ways of their peers and other adults is less likely to hurt as deep. The key to resilience and surviving stress and adversity in kids relies on the availability of at least one strong caring emotionally available adult who can comfort, provide a sense of consistency, warmth, guidance, and who will invite tears or sadness when necessary. The reason children need to be attached to adults is that it gives that adult the capacity to preserve and protect the emotional health in a child.

The instinct to detach instead of attach – Just as human beings come with instincts to seek connection with others, they also come with instincts to detach when the threat of separation or wounding is present. If caring about someone or something sets you up to get hurt, the brain can reverse the attachment instincts and lead the child to push away from that adult. For example, the father in my office discussed how his son held him in contempt, did the opposite of what he was told, mocked, defied, countered, or talked back, or in other words – parenting had become a nightmare. When a child detaches, the type of behaviour that ensues can be very difficult to manage and usually creates more separation between the adult and the child. The goal is to focus on restoring the relationship while at the same time having to deal with behaviour that is challenging and provocative.

The depersonalization of attachment – Attachments can become depersonalized meaning that instead of seeking contact and closeness, a sense of belonging, significance, caring, or being known by a specific person, that there is a turn to less personal forms of connection. Someone could move to collect belongings rather than seek a sense of belonging to someone. Someone could seek significance in groups, workplaces, through their constant achievements or striving, or through social media – all of which are one step removed from a close social bond with an individual. Depersonalized attachments are an attempt by the brain to move someone towards connecting with others, but in ways that are less vulnerable and provide a buffer zone against the potential wounding from separation.

It is too often the case that when our children act in ways that defy understanding or are uncivilized, we are quick to focus directly on their behaviour. What gets missed is the child’s attachment needs and the emotional issues that drive the most problematic behaviour. While we cannot condone uncivilized behaviour from our kids, we can move to protect the relationship as well as use it to help influence and guide a child in a different direction. If we treated the biggest problems we have with our kids as attachment issues, we would likely be closer to the root cause, and closer to making headway in the right direction with them.

Reference

Neufeld, G. (2012). The Attachment Puzzle Course, Neufeld Institute, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a counselling and family resource center. For more information please see www.macnamara.ca and www.neufeldinstitute.org.

When the Worry Bugs Are in Your Tummy: Helping a Child with Anxiety

When my daughter was anxious she used to tell me, “Mama, my tummy feels like it is making butter.” After ruling out sickness, I told her tummies sometimes get upset when there are worries in them. She replied with, “I don’t know what I am worried about.” I took her words at face value because the reality is we don’t always know what stirs us up. The brain has its own reasons for activating emotional arousal and we are not always conscious of why this is so. Alarm and fear are like this – they have a way of getting so big we are blinded as to their true source.

One of my niece’s told me at the dinner table the other night that she felt sick to her stomach as she ate. After asking her some questions I told her I thought they might be ‘worry bugs.’ I asked her to sit on my lap and I put a hand on her tummy and said it felt like worry bugs to me. I asked her if she knew what she was worried about? She said, “I am not worried at all!” I replied that when the worry bugs are in your tummy and not in your head, we usually don’t know what they are about and this is okay. I said thought the worry bugs would move and eventually come out of her mouth if we just gave it time.

A half hour later my niece said the worry bugs had moved and were no longer in her tummy. I asked where they were located and she said, “in my throat.” I asked her to open her mouth and then looked inside it and said, “oh yes, they look like worry bugs alright.” I let her know that I thought they would come out soon too. Later on that evening she came to find me and said that she thought I was right, that she really did have worry bugs in her tummy. She said she realized she was worried about watching the movie the kids had picked out because it looked scary to her. She said that after she watched a little of it she thought she could handle it. I asked her if there were any worry bugs left and she said, “No, they are all gone now.”

My niece was afraid yet rendered speechless about it. She is also very sensitive and things can stir her up easily. She didn’t have words for what made her afraid, only nameless worries in her tummy. The answer is not to tell a child to calm down, to tell them to make the worries go away, or to have them think positively. The goal is to invite the child to express what is stirring them up through words. It is our invitation to them to express their worries that helps bring the emotional system back into balance. It is the increased awareness of what stirs them up along with being able to make sense of it that helps bring emotions to rest.

Inviting Emotional Expression

If we want our children to have a relationship with their emotions and find feelings names to attach to them, then we will need to start by inviting them to express themself. The biggest obstacle to expression is believing there will be some repercussion to one’s relationship for speaking one’s heart and mind. If sharing a piece of yourself leads to further distance from someone you wish to be close to, then the brain is faced with a dilemma. The hunger for attachment wins over the need to express oneself and the self is supressed for the sake of preserving a relationship. In other words, children won’t share their feelings with us if it interferes with getting their relational needs met. This is not intentional nor done consciously but is instinctive in origin.

There are a number of strategies that are helpful in encouraging a child to express their heart’s contents but they all rely on being in right relationship with a child. This means the parent is considered to be a warm, caring, and generous caretaker that the child can rely on. A child must be deeply attached so as to want to share their secrets in a vulnerable way.

Invite expression by conveying warmth and a willingness to listen – If we want a child to communicate their internal world to us we will need to listen with our own emotional system. This is where our intuition and capacity to read a child’s emotions and needs is critical. We will need to convey a desire to hear what they have to say and listen with full attention.

Make room for expression – There needs to be enough time and space for a child to be able to consider their internal world. This might be done when they are free to play and are not preoccupied with peers, screen time, schooling or instruction. To bring emotions into consciousness requires not only an invitation but room. Jaak Pankseep, a leading neuroscientist, states children need ‘play sanctuaries’ for the purpose of emotional expression.

Come alongside their feelings – When a child is expressing their feelings or thoughts the goal is to listen and come alongside them. This will increase the likelihood that they will tell us more and be able to feel in a more vulnerable way. Coming alongside means we acknowledge what a child has said, for example, “yes, worry bugs come when we are thinking about scary movies sometimes.” To come alongside means we don’t discount, negate, judge, problem solve, or try to teach them a lesson when they are sharing their experiences. The goal is to communicate that we are hearing them which helps to bring the emotions into full consciousness.

Hide your own emotional needs – When we are trying to help a child with their own emotions then it is important not to trump this with our own emotional expression. Parents need to hide how they are stirred up in order to make the focus on the child’s internal world. If a child sees or believes that what they share will be too hard for a parent, they may preserve their relationship and supress their feelings. Our job is to hold onto their feelings and guide them in finding their way through them. Our own emotions will only serve to cloud the picture and likely alarm or confuse them.

Help a child name their emotions with feeling words – Emotions are the raw impulses that arouse us based on stimuli from the environment. Our feelings are the names that we give these emotional states, such as fear, upset, sadness, or frustration. Humans are unique in their capacity to be able to reflect and become aware of their instincts and emotions. This development takes time and needs support from adults who can guide kids to give names to their emotions.

When it comes to emotional expression we think the answer is to calm our kids down when what helps them find a way through is to become conscious of what stirs them up. We cannot control our emotional arousal – it happens to us. What we can do is to help our kids get their hands on the steering wheel and form intentions about what to do with their feelings.

Anxiety is part of the human condition, we need not pathologize it. We were meant to be stirred up – sometimes with ‘worry bugs’ or with ‘tummies that make butter.’ The emotions that challenge us the most are the ones that have no names and no room for expression.

Our emotions are not problems, they are just trying to fix the problems in our life. We need to teach our kids to listen to their internal emotional world by guiding them and having faith that balance and stability was never achieved by cutting out feelings but by letting them loose.

When we are confident that there is a way through, our children will follow us. Resilient kids are those that feel a lot, have names for their feelings, and believe that facing what upsets them is the surest way through the storms in life.

The Teacher Has My Child’s Heart

With relief and delight my sister called me and said her 6 year old son had just drawn a picture of someone he loved – he drew his teacher of three weeks – Ms. Cod. Here is his lovely picture of the two of them together, side by side, with matching yellow bodies and black pants. Their arms are out stretched to embrace coupled with big smiles on their faces. The differences are obvious, Ms. Cod is bigger and she has orange hair and he has locks that are a darker shade of red. As if to cement the relationship, my nephew makes his intentions clear and writes, “I love you Ms. Cod.” His love does not to go unrequited as she lets him know she thinks he is pretty special too. While it is clear this teacher has my nephew’s heart, does she know what she will get along with it?

When a child attaches to their teacher it unlocks a powerhouse of characteristics that make a child teachable. When you have the heart of a child, you have the keys to unlock their mind and learning potential. Ms. Cod has much more than my nephew’s heart, she has the power to teach him.

The Characteristics of a Good Relationship Between a Teacher and Student

When a child is attached to their teacher they are inclined to follow them, listen, want to be the same as, talk like, be good for, inclined to agree with, take direction from, be open to influence from, and seek to measure up. The characteristics that make kids easy to teach for are the result of healthy attachment – not teaching style, technology, curriculum, or classroom space.

A mother asked me to help her understand why her 7 year old son was being sent to the Principal’s office repeatedly despite his good behaviour in kindergarten and grade one the previous year? I asked her if he liked his teacher and she said, “no, he really dislikes her and says he wants the teacher he had last year.” There are few if any disciplinary measures that are effective substitutes for a healthy relationship with a teacher.

The purpose of attachment is to facilitate dependence. It allows a teacher to lead with natural authority in the classroom and to take care of their students. It is their relationship that helps kids endure the hard parts of learning and the homework that is required. Attachment creates a sense of home, provides comfort, rest, and a place of retreat when the day is hard. To foster a child’s resilience at school we only need to work on their relationship with their teacher.

When a child is attached to a teacher they are easily commanded by them, guided and directed, as well as adopt and share their values. Kids want to stay close to teachers they like and will be steadfastly loyal to them. A strong relationship with a teacher helps a child feel safe at school and empowers teachers in their role.

Strategies for Cultivating Connections at School

The saying “it takes two to dance” is a good metaphor when considering the teacher and student relationship. The good news is both parents and teachers can play an important role in ensuring a child feels connected to their teachers.

How did this teacher win my nephew’s heart? My sister tells me she is both firm and caring in how she deals with her kids. She welcomes the students to class, has a twinkle in her eye when she sees them, as well as warmth in her voice. She connects with them throughout the day, she is patient and kind, and she doesn’t shame the kids when they are struggling in class. Ms. Cod has a way of holding onto her relationship with her little charges throughout the impasses that come up each day. She seems to know that the relationship is the most important thing to protect.

What can parents do to help the relationship between a teacher and student develop? They can matchmake their child to their teacher by pointing out similarities. It is a well known fact that we tend to like people that are like us! A child might also bring in something to show their teacher as a means of connecting with them as well as share their stories. A parent can show delight and warmth when talking about a teacher or when a child shares what happens at school. When a child sees their parent likes and trusts their teacher, that child is likely to follow suit.

On a last note I wish to send all the Ms. and Mr. Cod’s out there a heartfelt thank you. You bring relief to parents (and auntie’s too), when we know you have our children’s hearts. Kid’s learn best from the people they are attached to and we think you are pretty special too.

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a counselling and family resource center, on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one). For more information please see www.macnamara.ca or www.neufeldinstitute.org.

Good Fit Friends: Helping Kids Navigate Peer Relationships

There was a time when the hardest part of going to school for most kids was the academic work. Today, some of the toughest days for kids have little to do with their lessons and everything to do with their peers. While bullies have always existed, as well as disagreements on playgrounds, the youth culture of today has significantly changed bringing with it new challenges.

In a 2011, a 15 year, meta-analysis research study on North American youth revealed a 40% decline in empathy and 35% reduced capacity for perspective taking. This lack of caring is evident in peer interactions and is changing the nature of our classrooms, lunchrooms, and playgrounds.

Bullying now tops the list of parental concerns with at least 1/3 of children reporting they are being bullied in any given 6-week period according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Children come home from school in varying emotional states depending on the nature of their peer interactions.

What is Driving the Changes in Peer Relationships?

One of the greatest challenges for kids in a school environment is the increasingly peer oriented nature of their classrooms. Peer orientation refers to the fusion of children to each other for the purpose of meeting their attachment needs. Far too many children are using peer relationships as a replacement for the missing adult connections in their life.

The phenomena of peer orientation was first outlined by Gordon Neufeld, a clinical and developmental psychologist, and Gabor Mate, a physician, in their best-selling book Hold Onto Your Kids. Peer orientation is due in part to the increasing levels of separation between kids and parents today, the increased amount of time kids spend with their peers, and the pressure to socialize children with their same aged peers.

The challenge with peer oriented kids is they are not easily influenced and directed by the adults in their life, including both teachers and parents. They will take directions and adopt values that are in keeping with their peer culture. This leads to immature behaviour and in worst case scenario, aggression and hostility to those outside of their peer pack.

When children run in packs without orienting to an adult to guide them, the scenario is very similar to that described in William Golding’s book, The Lord of the Flies. Their conduct and behaviour can be brutal, leaving a trail of wounded children in their wake.

There is a difference between a child having friends versus being fused with them in order to have their relational needs met. If a child becomes peer-oriented then the first order of business will be to restore their adult relationships. Peer orientation can lead to developmental arrest, a loss of teachability, and emotional inhibition.

Strategies for Helping Kids Navigate Peer Relationships

Foster adult attachments in and out of school – One of the biggest buffers against wounding in a school environment is being attached to caring adults. When kids cares more about what their adults think of them, then their heart is better protected from the wounding words of their peers. It is imperative for a child to have a good relationship with their teacher, especially in the younger years. If your child is struggling, then asking a teacher to connect and check in with them whenever they can is a great strategy. When a child feels they can turn to their teacher, then the school day stress and classroom environment can become more manageable.
Structure the unstructured time – Peer challenges often appear when there is little adult supervision and unstructured time. When left to their own devices, peer oriented kids can gather in packs and torment kids in the lunchroom or playgrounds. One of the most effective strategies to curbing such behaviour is to ensure there is adult supervising when their time is most unstructured. Adult supervision helps to temper, monitor, and take care of peer oriented behaviour when it gets out of line.

Draw out a child’s feelings and thoughts – In debriefing school experiences it is important to listen, not judge, or become upset when your child is reporting on what has happened. If a child believes their experiences are overwhelming for a parent or they will have strong reactions, then they may stop sharing their stories altogether. It is important for a child to sort through their own feelings and thoughts in a safe environment and to have their tears if necessary. When a child can do this they can often come up some helpful solutions and understand their peer problems better. They are also more amenable to hearing our suggestions as well.

Help them identify ‘good fit friends’ – Discuss with a child who they consider a ‘good fit friend’ to be. A good fit friend should be someone they feel similar to, doesn’t take advantage of them, treats them kindly for the most part, and they feel comfortable in being around. Helping a child articulate what a ‘good fit friend’ looks and acts like helps them feel a sense of agency in being able to pick friends and find those that are a good match. It also validates their intuition about other kids and draws out their insight as to who is not a safe friend or where they feel most uncomfortable. The term ‘good fit’ also avoids polarizing language that paints other children as ‘bad’ or ‘good.’ Fortunately, a child who has a soft heart and is in right relationship with their adults will often be drawn to similar children as oneself.

Intervene when necessary – Many peer altercations and challenges can be helped through supervision, therefore, bringing a teacher into the conversation can be helpful. Sometimes teachers are not aware that a child is struggling in their peer relationships and can provide valuable insight as to how a child is managing in the classroom. These conversations are often done best privately where a child’s concerns are not openly revealed to other students or parents of other children. Being covert and asking for privacy protects the child’s dignity and does not overly reveal their struggles which could be further preyed upon by peer packs. When sharing your concerns with a teacher, offer concreate strategies wherever possible such as a moving your child’s desk, or suggestions for pairing your child with others for the purpose of group work.

Peer friendships are a part of growing up and offer children an opportunity to connect with people who share similar interests as oneself. Helping kids navigate the friendship terrain is an important one as well as not forcing connections where it is clear there is no invitation for relationship. Too often our agenda is one of helping kids get along with others, and while there is merit in this approach, it doesn’t take into account that not all kids will like each other or do well together.

Children need to feel a sense of agency in being able to choose ‘good fit friends,’ and to be guided by adults on how to deal with tricky peer relationships when they arise. Kids will be hurt by their peers but the good news is that the wounding doesn’t have to go deep. Adults relationships in an out of school have the capacity to shield a child’s heart from the worst of their peer’s wounding ways.

The One Thing Every Kid Needs in their School Backpack

A friend told me her son couldn’t understand why a young child he knew had such a hard time being away from his mother while at school. The kindergartener would cling to her mother’s hand and in tears, voice protestations to being left behind. My friend explained to her son that the 5-year old felt scared to be separated and left with people she didn’t know well. Her son, still confused, looked up at her and said, “but why doesn’t she just talk to her Mom in her head?” Astonished, my friend looked at her son and said, “is that what you do?” He replied, “Yeah, I talk to you in my head all day, it helps me not feel so lonely and I don’t miss you as much.”

What every kid needs to take to school is an adult they hold onto psychologically. It is the sense they carry with them that there is someone to return home to, share their secrets with, and feel a sense of significance, belonging, and caring towards. It underlies their capacity to be resilient, resourceful, and survive adversity. It allows them to face the challenges that school will present, from learning new subjects to persevering on tasks that are difficult. It will be critical to helping them deal with tricky peer groups, friends that turn into enemies, and bullies that are on every playground.

The beautiful design inherent to attachment is that we don’t have to be physically close to someone to feel connected; rather, we need to make sure we are firmly planted in their heart. A strong relationship with at least one caring adult is the answer to resiliency in our kids – not skills they have to learn, having to act tough, or to ‘suck it up.’ We don’t need to work at preventing our kid’s from facing adversity but make sure they don’t face it alone. Relationship is the natural home for the human heart.

The Shielding Effect of Adult Relationships

When a child has a strong relationship with an adult, their heart is shielded. The emotional system is protected from the wounding words and ways of others because a child cares more what their closest adult attachment thinks about them. What kids say doesn’t hurt as much, it doesn’t feel as toxic, personal, nor as deep. The best inoculation against ‘mean’ kids is an adult who is holding onto a child. It is an adult who should offer a child an invitation for relationship that is gracious, generous, forgiving and unwavering.

While adult relationships shield kid’s emotional systems from the worst parts of their day, there will still be tears that may need to be shed. There will be emotions that are stirred up and need to be expressed as well as problems to be solved. It is through relationship they are invited to rest from all that does not work so that they can embrace what might.

As a parent it feels like my homework each night involves gathering my kids and trying to take their pulse emotionally. I aim to help them make sense of their disappointments, hurts, as well as excitement and joy. Sometimes the stories and day’s events spill out of them spontaneously, or sometimes they need space, quiet, food, or to play before I can engage them. At dinner my kids sometimes compete for airtime or can be mute, alerting me to the fact that a bedtime chat is likely the best place to connect. I care little how or when my children and I engage on the day’s event and only that we do. I keep my eyes on our relationship and an ear to their emotional world, vigilant to when I am needed most. I take faith that what my kids need most in facing the world outside are the relationships that anchor them to home.

How to Cultivate Strong Relationships with Kids

The recipe to cultivating a strong relationship with a child cannot be reduced to a set of instructions, directions, or mantras to hold onto. Relationships at their root, are an invitation that is offered to someone. It is an invitation to depend, to trust in, be guided by, and feel at home with someone. We cannot dictate how relationships are forged and protected but we can be certain that it is the answer to the problem of facing separation and adversity.

Tragically, there are too many kids who are not tethered to an adult home and will look for substitutes to hold onto. They often lean on their friends for connection which usually leads to issues in terms of their emotional vulnerability. An immature child is a poor substitute for the caring relationship an adult can offer.

The good news is it is also possible for a teacher or another adult to anchor a child’s heart as well. The sense that someone cares for them and offers them an invitation for relationship goes a long way when they face rejection, separation, or are shamed by their peers. From the educational assistants who encourage kids to keep trying to the counsellors that are a soft place to land when days are hard – these adults can make a difference to kids when home is challenged to offer what they need most.

The following strategies are key to building strong relationship with kids and protecting them from competing attachments such as peers or technological devices.

Collect their attention and engage their attachment instincts

We all seek connection – it is the primary driver in our attention system. The goal is to get their first with kids, meaning we need to collect their eyes, smile or a nod in agreement. We need to engage them each morning by checking in, talking about the plans for the day, to sharing a funny story – anything that puts you into relationship with them. Feeding them is a wonderful opportunity to collect their eyes and to invite them to depend on you.

Cultivate loyalty and a sense of belonging

When a child perceives an adult as being disloyal to them by not taking their side, understanding their perspective, or using what they care about against them through consequences or the use of time outs – the relationship can take a hit. When there is a sense that an adult is not for them, a separation is created in the relationship. The challenge is there are times we cannot abide by a child’s actions or their words, when their behaviour is clearly inappropriate and we will need to act. Finding our way through these situations while maintaining a sense of belonging and loyalty can be achieved by coming alongside the feelings and thoughts that have stirred a child up. While we make note of what isn’t okay, we can cue the child that we do understand and are there to help with what isn’t working for them. It doesn’t mean we have to change what isn’t working, but we can give them some room to express it.

Family rituals, structure, and routine

As kids face the separations that are part of life, they need to regularly return to things that ground them. Rituals and structure are these anchors, providing a regular hum and predictability to contact with their key relationships. From the morning routine that starts with a hello and ends with a goodbye to the dinner time that starts with a hello and ends with a goodnight – these are the rhythm’s that connect kids to time, place, and people. If separation is the problem, then holding onto to the connection that comes from rituals, structures, and routines is the answer.

The reality is we can’t perfect a child’s world or ensure they never face adversity. Venturing away from home is an important part of life. School often represents the first bold steps in this direction but we need not be alarmed by what awaits them. We just need to work at making sure they have our relationship to hold onto that will shield their heart from wounding. Relationship is the home of the heart and when we understand this, we won’t ever fear that our kids will ever be too far away from us.

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Founder of Kid’s Best Bet, Counselling and Family Resource Centre, on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one). For more information please see www.macnamara.ca or www.neufeldinstitute.org.

Softening the Hardened Heart

Hearts can grow cold and become hardened, something poets, artists, and musicians have always claimed. From children to adults, emotional numbing is part of the human condition and reveals the inherent vulnerability in a system that was built to feel deeply. As Hank Williams lamented, “Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart?” The loss to human functioning is tragic as it is our caring that makes us fully human and most humane.

Today we have neuroscience mapping out how emotional inhibition occurs within the limbic system. At last Freud’s theory of how we can be driven by unconscious emotions has gained its neuroscientific footing. Every brain comes equipped with the capacity to tune out what distresses, repress bad memories, dull the pain, suppress alarming feelings, and be divested of caring and responsibility (1). The anthem of the emotional defended is, “I don’t care,” “doesn’t matter,” “that doesn’t bother me,” or “whatever” and resounds loudly among our kids (and many adults) today.

Being defended against vulnerable feelings is an equal opportunity problem not confined by geography, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or education level. It is a quintessential human issue given our unique capacity to reflect on our emotions and assign feeling names, unlike other mammal species. The three or four year old who suddenly bursts out with their words instead of their hits, “I frustrated! I need HELP!” reveals the developmental sophistication in this system. We were meant to develop a language of the heart, one that takes us towards civilized relating around emotional content.

When Caring Goes Missing

Caring feelings are a luxury in a world that feels like it is coming undone. There are sometimes too many acts of uncaring for a human heart to bear in today’s ‘connected world’ when self centered actions dominate, combined with an absence of shame or fear, and no tears in the face of all that should make us weep. As T.S. Eliot pens in his poem, “The Hollow Men,” vulnerable feelings often go missing not with a bang but with a whimper. We were meant to care deeply – and not just about ourselves but about others too. The hunger for connection is what should hold us together but there are times we seem so intent on tearing these relationships apart. The vulnerable feelings that make us most vital and human go missing for the sake of survival.

When the emotional system flatlines, not only does fear disappear but joy, delight, and enjoyment too. Some of my counselling clients would tell me, “I don’t need anybody, I don’t really care I am on my own” with little emotion. It created problems attaching to others and preventing the love that was there for them in getting through the wall of defenses their brain had erected. They could not feel, despite being aware on some level that they really should be. As one teen said to me, I know I should be happy but I just don’t feel anything right now. When the emotional system operates in a defensive mode, the caring feelings go missing along with their tempering effect on frustration, upset, alarm, and impatience.

How to Revive Hardened Hearts

What is critical to remember is when a heart becomes hardened, the brain has its own reasons for pressing down upon vulnerable feelings. To feel sets the person up to get hurt and the brain is geared towards survival at all costs. To bring emotional defenses down, the heart must be softened. The question is how can this be done? The heart won’t be resuscitated through logic, cognitive manipulation, or behavioural interventions. When our kids lose their caring (or adults), it is the warmth and caring of others that offers the best chance of melting emotional defenses.

According to Gordon Neufeld, a heart can only be softened with the cultivation of safe and caring attachments with others. It is relationship that offers someone the promise of safety, warmth and dependence. It is attachment that is the ancidote to facing too much separation and leads to wounding. The human heart will spontaneously recover and experience vulnerable feelings again when emotional defenses are no longer needed. It cannot get there with a pill, prodding, pushing, cajoling, rewarding, or punishing but only through the warmth of another human being.

What every person needs most of all is a guardian for their heart. As one ten year old said to her mother, “I don’t what it is about you Mama, but when I talk to you I feel such comfort.” One of my clients said her sixteen-year old son said, “Mom, you always seem to know what to say to help me when I am really scared.” This is the job of parenting – to hold on to our kid’s hearts and shield them. As adults, the hope would be that we can rest in the care of another.

Three Keys to Melting Emotional Defenses

Lead into Vulnerable Territory – If we are going to soften emotional defenses and increase vulnerability we will need to lead someone there but this can’t be done without cultivating a strong relationship first. When I trained new counselors they would often ask me for the ‘techniques’ to elicit emotional responses in clients. I would lecture them on how they were asking me the wrong question. The most important part of their role was not a diagnosis or a technique but about showing up as a human being. Psychology does not own suffering, humans do. We cannot expect someone to share their heart with us if we have not earned a place in their life first.

When we have built a strong relationship with someone we can lead then lead them towards vulnerable territory, ever so gently. With a young child it might be reading picture books about characters with big feelings, taking an older child to see a movie such as “Inside Out,” or having chats with teens about the songs they are listening to or the ‘heros’ they admire. It is our job to use our relationship to come to their side and invite them to share their world with us. When appropriate we can reflect back what we have heard in increasingly vulnerable ways such as, “sadness saves the day – who ever thought that would happen!” It is the slow, but consistent message that all of a child’s feelings are welcome and that the relationship can handle what needs to be said, that will slowly bring the defenses down.

To lead someone to their vulnerable feelings we will need to be caring ourselves and model an openness to vulnerability. This doesn’t mean we tell our children our feelings about them but rather reflect on vulnerability as a strength and as being valued. We can then increasingly touch emotional bruises in their life in a gentle way as needed.

Shield with a safe attachment – When a child has a caring attachment that they can take for granted, their heart will be shielded by that relationship. What we forget with our kids is just because we are their guardian, it doesn’t mean they have given us their heart for safe keeping. If a child is truly at home with someone, the hurts in their life can be experienced and made sense of with this person. We cannot protect our children from being hurt all the time, but we can make sure they are not sent out into the world to deal with it on their own. It is our love and caretaking that buffers them against rejection, betrayal, and heartache.

The beautiful design in attachment is that our hearts can shield another’s from injury – it is the ultimate cure and protection. As my children lament about their school day and harsh words from friends, I collect their tears and remind them that they are never too far from home. As I listen to their emotional injuries, my balm is to tell them not to take it into their heart, and to look at me, the one who knows them best. When we feel overwhelmed and lost it is about who we look to that will help ground us, to center us, and to bring us back to ourselves. It is caring that is meant to tie us together and make us caretakers for each other’s hearts.

Protect from emotional wounding and facing separation –If the brain has erected emotional defenses then we can try to reduce the need for them by creating shame-free zones. Typically these would be protected spaces against peer and sibling interactions that are wounding. It would mean minimizing involvement in places where there was a lack of invitation for connection, e.g. a family member that is unkind to a child, or a classroom full of kids who bully.

If the child’s world is too much for them emotionally then we will need to consider how we change their world to reduce the need for defenses. While this may lead to some hard choices, until the heart is back online, there will be problems with behaviour and development can be at a standstill. When the heart is flatlining, resuscitating it become the first order of business.

In reducing wounding we would want to scan the child’s world to see where they face too much separation. This can include forms of discipline that are separation based including time-outs and the overuse of consequences. Moving to more attachment based and developmentally friendly forms of discipline can help to reduce wounding. When problems occur, finding a way to hold on to the relationship in the middle of the storm is the best way through, for example, “this isn’t working, we will talk about this later,” or “I can’t let you do this, I see you are frustrated, I will help you figure it out.” When there are emotional defenses that are stuck, it will be common to have behaviour problems to have to work around until more vulnerable feelings come back on line. It will involve protecting others, including the dignity of the parent and child involved.

What is clear is we cannot ‘will’ emotional defenses to rise or fall, this is not for us to say. However, it is within our capacity to move into relationship with someone, to take up a relationship with their feelings, and to convey that despite everything, it is our relationship that is most secure in their life. If hurting too much is the problem, then surely love is the answer. It is a solution as old as time but one that needs to keep being retold in a world that continues to come undone.

Reference

(1) Gordon Neufeld, Level I Intensive: Making Sense of Kids, 2013, Neufeld Institute, Vancouver, BC. www.neufeldinstitute.org

Deborah MacNamara, PhD is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute and in private practice working with parents and professionals based on the relational and developmental approach of Gordon Neufeld, PhD. She is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one). Please see www.macnamara.ca for more information or www.neufeldinstitute.org.

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