Infographic – Why Play Matters
The instinct to play is hardwired into the human DNA. When children play they develop connections between the motor, perceptual, cognitive, social, and emotional areas of the brain. Critical thinking, communication, language, and emotional expression are also developed in play through trial and error. Impairments to cognitive, language, emotional, and physical development have all been linked to a deficit in play.
Here are some of the ways you can create the conditions for play and the benefits to a child’s development.
Ten Things Teachers Need Most From Parents
As a teacher, I used to look forward to September despite the typical back to school nightmares that would visit me before classes started. There were phones that I couldn’t call out on, students that I lost, or lesson plans I couldn’t remember. Besides the imagined horrors that never came to pass, I still felt there was something special about the start of a new academic year, such as meeting new students or contemplating the challenge of helping them learn.
While my summers involved curriculum revisions and creating new lesson plans, I knew many of my students were likely groaning as their summer came to an end. I was never bothered by this and believed that with time, they would love being back at school again.
After a month into the school year, I would be reminded of how learning isn’t just influenced by me, the classroom, the tools, or curriculum I had. While teachers are responsible for creating a productive learning environment, parents play a critical role in ensuring a child shows up at school ready to learn.
From a teacher’s perspective, there are many ways parents can contribute to a child’s success at school. While many of them are common sense, they are routinely eclipsed by more academic concerns and go undervalued. The bottom line is this – when home and school work together, the learning outcomes for kids are exponential.
1. Normalize and support the challenges that come with learning –
So much of learning involves being placed outside of the comfort of ‘what you know.’ Learning is about being stretched and pulled a little, drawn into discovery and inquiry, taking apart what you know and putting it back together again, and being changed by the whole process. But all of this may create some discomfort as one moves to a place that isn’t certain, is vulnerable, and new.
I used to tell my students that if a teacher cares about their learning then they should feel challenged by this teacher. It was the student’s duty not to take offence but to realize the gift in having someone believe they are capable of learning and stretching.
A parent can help a child embrace feelings of discomfort and normalize these emotions as part of the learning process. It is important not to always try and ‘rescue’ a child nor prevent the discomfort that is part of learning process, but convey that you believe they will get there eventually and are there to help. Similarly, faulting a teacher because learning is hard doesn’t support the child’s relationship with the teacher nor convey faith in a child to overcome the challenge that is before them.
There are also times when kids need adult support and interventions to help identify and overcome their learning challenges. This type of support is made all the better when there is a good working relationship between a teacher and a parent.
2. Help your child adapt –
There are a lot of things at school that won’t go a child’s way – like recess breaks that end too soon, being one of many students with different needs and wants, having to wait for others, as well as following someone else’s rules. School represents many futilities that are part of life and beyond one’s control. Some kids seem more adaptable than others and part of this rests on the support they have at home.
Grumpiness is often a signal that a child is up against some frustration around things that are not going their way. They may unleash their frustration on siblings and loved ones, making after school tantrums frequent. Helping them find some words for their experiences and guiding them to express what doesn’t work can reduce frustration and help them adapt. Tears may be part of the process too, and we may need to support them in surrendering to the things they cannot change with warmth and patience.
3. Keep your relationship with your kid(s) strong –
When kids have strong caring relationships with adults at home, they are less likely to arrive at school ‘hungry’ for attachment. When they are not preoccupied with getting their relational needs met through friends, they will be better able to focus, won’t seek unhealthy connections to their peers, and will be less vulnerable to rejection and wounding from other kids.
One of the greatest challenges in classrooms today stem from peer orientation and the dynamics that play out when kids solely come to school to be with their friends. Adults are often seen as secondary to their school day, lesson plans are an inconvenience, and they share the same values as their peer group instead of the school culture. When peers replace adults, kids lose out on learning. If parents can hold onto a strong relationship with their kids then it frees their child to have healthy peer relationships, and to follow and learn from the adults in a school environment.
4. Match-make a child to their teacher and school –
When kids see that their parents like their school and teacher, it can go a long way to helping them trust their adults at school. Parents need to take an active role and play matchmaker with the teacher by arranging for an introduction (if possible), speaking with warmth about the teacher, conveying trust in them, orienting them to the school culture and rules, and ensuring that the relationship with their teacher stays on track. Kids do best when adults take the lead in introducing them to the people that will take care of them. It provides both security and a sense of rest so that the focus can go towards learning.
5. Put limits on technology –
Kids can be drawn to technology to quell boredom or to connect with their friends, or distract themselves from the challenges they face (same with adults). Setting and maintaining healthy habits around technology ensures it won’t hijack the time that is needed for homework, play, or connecting with family members. While many families start out the school year with good intentions around the use of technology, these rules can start to slide when things get busy. Parents need to be caring and firm as they create boundaries and limits around the use of technology in the home.
Teachers and schools should also set rules around technology use that will help create safe and productive learning environments. The rules will be age dependent but it is helpful for parents to ask about these limits and to support them. Schools are increasingly having to deal with issues between students that have blown up over social media and impact the learning environment. The digital world has made the divide between home and school weaker, and as such, parental guidance and supervision is important to prevent problems from occurring.
6. Support the school schedule and routine –
Schools have set agendas, calendars they plan well in advance, curriculum that needs to be covered, and holidays to navigate around. When parents support a child adjusting to the school routine, it makes classrooms flow better with more focus allowed for learning. When kids repeatedly come in late, don’t have their things ready for school, don’t have support at home with projects or supplies, or take vacations during school time, it makes teaching and learning harder. Parents can help by drawing a child into healthy habits and routine that support getting to school rested, fed, and ready to learn.
7. Let them play –
Kids work at school even though many teachers try to make learning fun and engaging. With so much work, kids need to play and rest so as to balance their day and have space to integrate new learning. While they may be engaged in structured activities after school, they also need time away from these as well as stimulation that prevents expression and inquiry. While it may seem like unproductive time to adults, it is the rest they need so they are able to work again in school. When we push kids to work too much, it can create defenses against learning and upend our relationship. There is a time for work and a time for play. Parents need to help structure a child’s world so there are opportunities for both.
8. Put them in charge of homework where appropriate –
Battles over homework are hard on relationships and do little to foster a child’s internal motivation to care about their learning. If a child shows signs of being responsible, help them take the lead in making decisions about when and where homework will get done and what type of help they want from a parent. When a parent’s agenda is hidden (homework needs to be done), under choices that a put a child’s will at the forefront (where, when, and how it is done), then the child will feel less coerced and resistant to getting things done. The goal for parents is to help create routine, structure, and play a supporting role in getting homework done, but not to descend into battles for control which erode parental influence and a child’s desire to learn.
9. Communicate with teachers and preserve your relationship –
When parents and teachers work on having a good relationship, their children benefit. It is ideal to try and communicate with each other before problems get too big. I often wished my students or their parents came to me when issues were smaller because there was often more I could do to help. It is useful to keep in mind that both parent and teacher see a child in a different environment and listening to each other’s perspective can go a long way. When there are problems, trying to preserve goodwill and a relationship is critical and requires maturity on all parts. The most productive meetings I have been part of are where the adults try to make sense of a child instead of focusing on fault finding and blaming others.
10. Support a child with challenging peer interactions –
In school environments, it is next to impossible to prevent wounding that happens between kids. There are times when they are left out, unkind words may be said, and gossip hurts. When peer troubles are present, it is helpful for parents to draw out tears at home and help them find their words for what has happened. What is most important is for a child to see that an adult believes in them. Confide in a teacher when a child is struggling with other kids too, there are many things they can do in a classroom and with supervision on the playground (of course that teacher must be willing).
What every child needs in their backpack is a relationship at home to turn to. While teachers should create safe and bully free classrooms, they don’t and can’t see everything that happens from the playground or the classroom. The good news is when a parent has a strong relationship with their child, then that child is more resilient and less impacted by the immaturity of others.
When parents take care of their child’s need for relationship and support their emotional development, teachers can harness a child’s natural desire to learn and to overcome challenges. Learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and when parents and teachers join forces, we are in the best position to help our kids reach their learning potential.
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.
Healing Broken Attachments with our Kids
They are few stressors greater in life than having a challenging relationship with one’s child. It can be heart breaking to look at the chasm in one’s relationship with them, often unleashing a desire to close the distance or even withdrawing altogether. The challenge is we cannot make a child love or want to be near us. We cannot make a child trust, depend on, or give us their heart for safe keeping. Attachment is something that is built between two people, it does not follow orders or commands.
This can lead a parent to ask – is it ever too late to close the distance and get a child’s heart back? The good news is no – it is never too late. Attachment is not a fixed entity and can be cultivated with our kids at any age. Relationships are fluid, permeable, changeable, repairable, and can deepen in vulnerability with time, patience, and good caretaking. Parents are relieved to hear this but often have many questions how this can be done. Sometimes we need to stop and consider how the distance between us got there? This involves more than just recounting incidents but understanding their impact on our relationship with each other.
How Do Relationships Get Weakened in the First Place?
The most impactful of all human experiences is being separated from the people and/or things we are attached to. Attachment is our greatest need, therefore, it is the experience of being separated or rejected that has the capacity to wound a child (and us) most of all. Whether we intend to or not, our actions and words can create too much separation physically and/or emotionally.
When getting close to a parent sets a child up to get hurt on a consistent basis, that child is likely to distance themselves or detach from their parent to preserve and protect their emotional well-being. This is not done intentionally but through the activation of instincts and emotions in the brain that are inherent to human functioning and serve self-preservation. For example, if a child is continuously yelled at, shamed, or receives separation based discipline from an adult (time-outs, 123 magic etc.), they are likely to back out of attachment with that adult. Being close sets them up to get hurt. The most wounding experience of all for a child is experiencing a lack of invitation where they want one, of not being cared for, lacking a sense of belonging and loyalty, and of significance.
A child may also experience too much separation from a parent by not being in enough physical promixity with them. Without consistent regular contact and closeness, a young child may find it hard to stay connected when the feelings of missing are so great. While feelings of missing are a natural by-product of being attached, too much of it can provoke emotional defences in the brain to numb out a child’s feelings, tune out the person, or to detach from the relationship to protect the heart. When trying to engage with a child who is defending against the relationship, a parent may get the cold shoulder or be ignored. This can be short lived or ongoing depending on the level of separation experienced and duration.
A further reason for wounding in the parent/child relationship is the parent’s release of unfiltered emotions onto their kids. Relational problems can be created when we are not consistently tempered in our responses to our children and don’t put the brakes on before speaking our mind when upset. Sometimes yells, threats, or other things come out of our mouths before our head can catch up with us to stop us. While we may not intend to hurt our children, sometimes we do harm to our relationship. When emotions flair, it is important to repair the relationship in the aftermath.
There are many reasons why our children may experience separation from us. Sometimes we don’t collect them nor engage them enough so they turn to substitutes like technology or their peers. When there is distance between us the relational void will be filled by something else or someone. This makes it challenging to reclaim a child and rebuild one’s relationship because the child has now found ‘safer’ substitutes to hold onto. The good news is that it is never too late for a relationship to be mended but it may take time, persistence, faith, tenacity, tears, caring, compassion, consideration, and patience.
Three Ways to Cultivate Stronger Connections
While the circumstances behind the challenges in our relationship will be different for every parent and child, there are a few attachment strategies that can be useful in repairing what has been broken.
- Consider a child’s receptivity to a relationship and bridge the distance – Before proceeding to cultivate a closer connection, it is important to consider how receptive a child is to having one with you. If the cold shoulder is a consistent response, then bridging the distance between you may be the most important thing to do. Bridging means sending a message to the child that you seek a connection with them but will not pressure them to be closer to you than they are comfortable with. This can be achieved in subtle ways like staying near them, doing small things to take care of them, and orchestrating your time together through structure, routines, and rituals – all of which are less provocative than being in close relationship. The goal is to look for signs of receptivity and whether a child is warming up to being around you. It will also be important to be working on changing whatever is driving the separation between you in the first place as well.
- Take the lead in the relationship dance – The responsibility for the relationship lies with a parent. As children become teens and adults, they do have a greater role to play in the relationship but it still doesn’t negate the need for a parent to hold on and send an invitation for connection. It is our job to take the lead, to bridge the divide, to hold on through the storms, to give more connection than is desired, and to be their answer. It is for us to repair or to mend the challenges in our relationship. We must hold on, lead and find a way through the impasses, and to figure out what is coming between us. While we may be frustrated with the response we get in return, it may signal we need to do more soul searching, be patient, or give it time. Sometimes we can get stuck in our persistence and our children in their resistance. Anger and frustrated responses will get more of the same, we need to change our dance steps and chart a different course if we are going to mend the distance between us. If we have apologies to make then we can do this in simple ways and then get on with the business of caring for them.
- Collect and engage their attachment instincts – Collecting a child means trying to get in their face in a friendly way or if this is too provocative we can try to get in the same space as them and collect their ears through our voice. We can start with a greeting, sharing something we have in common, or trying to engage the child in conversation or in play. You can talk about the plans for the day or help them with something – there is no shortage of the ways to connect with a child. What collecting conveys is a desire to be close. It is the repeated and unexpected attempts to connect that can slowly make a difference and signal to a child we want a deeper connection. We need to proceed slowly in collecting a child until we see there is receptivity to our invitation. Our expression of warmth, enjoyment, and delight in being around them are the consistent signals to their emotional systems that we are safe to depend on.
What if they don’t take us up on our offer for relationship?
At the root of our deepest upsets in life is feeling the separation or void from someone we desire contact and closeness with. As parents we can take responsibility for our end of the relationship deal, take the lead in trying to repair what has been broken, and change our responses to reduce separation. Our children may take their time in coming back to us and to this I say – hold on. We don’t know what the path holds ahead for us, relationships have a way of turning around over time with warmth, patience, and a consistent message that we are here. If you had your child’s heart at one time, they will surely be looking on some level to come home to you. Be that safe place to return to and hold on to them as you can.
Gordon Neufeld states, “while loving someone may not change that person, it will surely change you.” If we let our hearts grow cold, if we turn away in anger or hurt from the one’s we love, then this will transform us into different people. If we wall off our hearts, we will surely be lost. It is better to find our tears, lean on other relationships that can help us stay the course, and bide our time. All is not lost when we have the courage to hold on and to love our kids through, over, and around the distance that exists between us. We need to hold on and keep making them an offer for relationship that they can’t refuse.
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.
United Nations Address for the Global Day of Parents – Parenting in the Digital Age
Address to the United Nations, New York, for the Global Day of Parents
June 1, 2016
The digital age has reshaped the landscape in which we are raising our children. While our new tools and technologies allow us to do things we could only once dream of, it has also changed the conditions under which we care for our children. What is the impact of the digital age on parenting and child development? In order to answer this question we will need to ask what comes with these new tools and whether they are what our children need to realize their full human potential?
Many parents today are raising the first true digital natives despite being digital immigrants themselves. The challenge lies in being able to lead our children into this age instead of just following them. Many children now have unprecedented access to information, entertainment, and connectivity, especially to their peers, but is this what our children really need? If the goal is to raise them to be socially and emotionally mature global citizens who are resilient and adaptive, then the answer is no, this is not what they need. Furthermore, these things are proving to make parenting more challenging and have the capacity to adversely impact the conditions under which our children flourish.
I have spent many decades considering human development, as a faculty member at the Neufeld Institute, working alongside internationally respected, clinical and developmental psychologist, Dr. Gordon Neufeld, and author of Hold Onto Your Kids with Dr. Gabor Mate. I have helped parents in my counselling practice make sense of the digital world and the implications for raising their kids, as well as managing problems related to it. I have also addressed the importance of play in young children’s lives and the pressures of technology in my book Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers. I have also aided educators in considering technology and its impact on student/teacher relationships, as well as guided university students in forming educational plans and career goals to meet the demands of a digital age.
But this issue is important to me on a more personal level because I am also the mother of two children who are both entering their adolescent years. I remember when I gave my 7-year old an iPad to try out for the first time. It really was love at first sight as she enjoyed watching video clips and playing games. It was only two weeks later, in the middle of a warm embrace as I put her to bed one night she told me, “Oh Mommy, your hugs are still better than technology time.” I was stunned by her comment and wondered how had my 7-year old relationship with her become comparable to 2 weeks of minimal technology time?
The problem facing parents today is that we do not have cultural tradition to guide us. As Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki stated, it takes societies anywhere from 100 to 200 years to develop the cultural rules and rituals around the use of new tools. We don’t have this type of time when it comes to raising our kids so we will need to find another way. We will need to become conscious of the conditions conducive for healthy development by turning to developmental science, attachment science, neuroscience, as well as parenting intuition and insight.
The greatest need our children have, that must be met for healthy development to unfold, is that of human attachment. Attachment is how we fufill our children’s hunger for contact and closeness and is the single most important factor that influences the trajectory of their growth. Every child needs at least one strong, caring, emotionally available adult to feel they belong to. Attachment for a child is about who they feel they are the same as, who they are loyal to, who they want to be significant to, cared for, as well as share their secrets with. The answer to what our children need most of all is love.
But the key issue here is that it is actually not how much we love our children that matters most, but whether they have given their heart to us. Children do not follow parents or learn from teachers they are not attached to. You cannot protect, preserve or be a guardian for a child’s heart that has not been entrusted to you for safekeeping. Healthy brain development is based on whether a child can experience vulnerable emotions such as caring, sadness, disappointment, but the world is too wounding for their hearts to be left unattended. Parents were meant to be the natural caretakers of a child’s emotional system, to orient and guide them, to lead, to look out for, and to share one’s values. We need to hold onto the hearts of our children, it is what will make them fully human and humane. We cannot live this part of our lives out loud from behind screens and through devices. Our attachment with our children is the one thing that cannot be displaced or replaced by algorithms, apps, or reduced to 0’s and 1’s.
Many years ago I was looking for information on raising kids in a digital world and I stumbled across a computer scientist who told a story about growing up in Italy about 40 years old. He said his friends all had Sony Walkmans and he wanted one too but his father refused. Despite pleading his case that he was the only one among his that didn’t have a Walkman, his father remained firm. Six months later he went to his father again and told him that a friend had got a new Walkman for his birthday and had offered to give his old one to him. He again pleaded with his father, “Papa, you don’t even have to buy it, my friend will give it to me for free – please can I have a Walkman?” Again the father said no and when asked why by his son he said, “Because I don’t want you to have anything in your ears that would interfere with you hearing your Mama or your sister talk to you.” What this father knew intuitively is that relationships were more important than technology or tools.
If there were one thing we need to remember most when raising children in a digital age it would be to let nothing come between us. But there are clear signs that this is not the case. According to the Centre for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, family time has dropped dramatically by more than a third since the onset of the digital revolution despite staying relatively consistent for decades prior to this. The study involved more than 30 countries.
Parents and teachers also now compete with digital devices and a child’s peers in order to get their attention. Many of our children are increasingly more attached to their friends than to the adults who are responsible for them, which is only fuelled by devices that enhance peer connectivity.
It is also our caring for our children that unlocks their instincts to care about others. Tragically there are signs our children are losing their caring feelings at an alarming rate. Research on empathy in North American youth has found a 48% decline today in comparison to 30 years ago, as well as a 30% decline in their capacity to consider someone else’s perspective. Videogames and digital devices cannot teach empathy nor activate instincts for contact, closeness, and caring in the same way that human connection can.
What our children need most are relational homes to grow up in, where adults invite them into relationship and to rest in their caretaking. Research on resiliency in kids has consistently demonstrated the link between children’s emotional health and social success with strong caring relationships with adults. However, the message that adult relationships are the answer to human vulnerability has not been translated well into child rearing practice.
When our children can take for granted their relational needs will be met by the adults in their lives, they will be free to play, to discover, and become their own separate being. Play is the birthplace of personhood, not entertainment nor instruction. Our relationship with our children is also how we represent the limits and restrictions that are part of life and all the futilities they must face. Adults are still the ones who need to help a child accept that they can’t always get what they want and can survive this experience.
What is clear is that our relationships with our children cannot be displaced or replaced by all that comes with this new digital age but there are clear signs we are being challenged to hold onto our kids.
I watched as my 14-year old niece became peer attached and clung to her phone as the lifeline that preserved her connection to friends. We took her on a camping trip as an extended family in order to reclaim a foothold back in her life. In realizing the campground didn’t have any cell coverage she told her mother it was going to be so boring trip because she couldn’t talk to any of her friends. Despite being surrounded by her village of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, she longed to be elsewhere.
On the third day of the camping trip I came across her and her mother in conversation. My niece was sobbing and my sister said my niece felt lost and confused. As I comforted my niece I asked her if she knew the number one rule when she felt this way and she said no. I told her that she needed to hold on to someone who wasn’t lost and confused about who she was. I asked her, “are your friends lost and confused?” to which she replied yes. I asked, “is your boyfriend lost and confused?” to which she replied yes again. I then asked her, “When you look around here today, who is not lost or confused about you?” She looked at me and said, “you” and it was then that I felt I had reentered her life once more. I asked her who else and she looked at her mother and said, “my mom.” And with that I left them to have a conversation.
Later on my sister told me they talked at length and my niece cried for some time. After telling her mother about all the things that were not working in her life she looked at her surprised and said, “Mom, I never thought you would understand what I was going through or that you had gone through some of this too.” Separated from her phone and her peers, we, the adults in her life were once again able to reclaim a foothold in her heart.
What is clear to me is that we need to find a way to hold onto our kids in a digital age as there is no turning back and this is the world they will inherit. We need to lead our children into this new age and introduce them to their new tools and technologies when they are ready and mature enough to handle all that comes with it.
The role of adults in a digital world is buffer against the technological turn and to remember that despite all of our wonderful new tools for learning, creating, and communicating, our children still need adult guides who can ensure that what comes with a digital age does not derail their development.
The answer to parenting in a digital is quite simple, we need to believe we are what our children really need. It is a story as old as time, just retold in a digital age.
We need to invite our children to depend on us in ways that make us irreplaceable. We need to be the one to listen to their stories, to impart our values, and to teach them something only we can share.
We need to create rules and rituals that will preserve our parental relationship and our ability to hold onto our relationship with them.
We need to make it easy for them to attach to use to us by collecting their eyes and making sure they see delight, enjoyment and warmth in ours. As Gordon Neufeld states, if you do not feed your cat and your neighbor does, you will surely your cat to your neighbour.
We also need to take the lead and use technology appropriately so that our children will follow suit.
What is clear is we do not have the luxury of just following our children into the digital age. We need to lead and this is more than just tracking their use on devices or monitoring if they are getting into trouble. We cannot become police officers in our own homes and classrooms, ending up in battles with our children that will surely erode our relationships. We need to lead our children into the digital age and ensure that what comes with it does not come between us. Most importantly, we cannot let our love for our new tools blind us to what our children need most of all from us.
In conclusion, we cannot send our children into the digital world empty handed with only their technological tools in tow. Maturity is the prerequisite for true digital citizenship and to that end, parents are still the best ‘devices’.
Deborah MacNamara, PhD is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute and in private practice working with parents 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.
Holding Onto Kids in a Digital World
Digital devices provide kids with the capacity to connect with each other like never before. No longer confined by geography, classroom walls or home, they have unprecedented access to a constant stream of friends, information, and entertainment. While our kids emerge as savvy inhabitants of this new digital world, parents are left to monitor, negotiate, and police their child’s online interactions and activities.
While it is clear the digital age presents new challenges to parents in terms of holding onto their kids, what is often missed is how this is colliding with the phenomena of peer orientation. Traditionally, children have oriented around their adults but in the last 50 years kids are increasingly taking their cues, values, and bearings from each other. There are many reasons contributing to the rise of peer orientation stemming from changes in family structure, economics, and increased geographic mobility. Children have become increasingly separated from the adults who are responsible for them, leaving them with relational voids often filled with one’s peers. As if in a perfect storm, our children’s enhanced capacity to connect with each other via digital devices comes at a time where their drive to be with one another is at an all time high. When our kids prefer to be with their peers they can feel miles away from the adults who care for them. They become difficult to take care of and readily make decisions without adult influence.
The answer to keeping our children close lies in cultivating, deep, strong, caring relationships with them. You cannot take care of a child if you do not have their heart. Parents need to take responsibility for their relationship with their kids but what are some of the ways this can be achieved?
1) Collect our Children -Collecting a child is an attachment ritual used to activate relational instincts to depend on, look up to, trust, and follow. In collecting a child we seek to get in their face in a friendly way and try and get a smile, a nod, and an overall sense of warmth and connection between us. In pursuing them in this manner we gather them to us and invite them into relationship. The warmth, delight and enjoyment we express conveys a desire to connect and provide for them. It is this collecting dance that builds the deep, caring relationships that parents need in order to hold onto their kids.
2) Nurture to Fulfill Attachment Hunger – Parents can best nurture their children when they seize the lead in the attachment dance. Reading their child’s needs before being told and providing generously for them conveys they are the one responsible for holding on. The provision of care from a parent needs to be greater than a child’s pursuit for connection, that is, if they need a hug, we give three in return. When a child feels there is a generous invitation to exist in their parents presence they hold onto them in return.
3) Preserve the Connection – There are many things that can come between a parent and child including behaviour, unmet expectations, and strong emotions. While adults need to convey rules and reminders of appropriate conduct when infractions have occurred, they must also communicate through words and deed that the relationship is still intact. If behaviour or conduct has come between us, we must find a way to hang onto a child and impress upon them that our desire to take care of them remains unwavered. To send them out into the world hungry for connection due to perceived breaks in our relationship pushes our children into connection with each other and out of orbit with us. Parents must assume their rightful position as being responsible for the parent-child relationship, especially when faced with conduct from their child that is less than ideal.
4) Protect Against Competing Activities and Attachments – Keeping children close in a digital world requires the conscious creation of structure and rules around the use of communication devices and peer interaction. Why would we allow children to use their devices at the dinner table where we were meant to collect their eyes and listen to their stories? Why would we allow them to retreat to their room with their devices seeking connection with others and eroding their appetite for interaction with us? We must consciously create rules and structure around the use of digital devices and peer engagement that will preserve and protect our relationship with them. As we set rules and rituals around technology use parents must also lead by example. We cannot let our love for our new tools blind us to the responsibility we have in creating a context for their safe use in and out of the home.
5) Matchmake to Build a Village – We cannot leave it in our children’s hands to build the village that will raise them. Parents need to take an active role in introducing and match making their children to the adults who are responsible for them. Coaches, teachers or extended family members are potential attachment figures that can provide for a child. If we fail to do this we leave them to their own devices, typically placing them in the hands of their peers. By matchmaking we set our children up to fall into attachment with other adults, drawing attention to similarities between them and the warmth that is there.
Social media and the enhanced capacity to keep one’s peers close was born from and is fuelled by our children’s relational hunger for each other. The best inoculation against losing them to their peers and an online world are deep nourishing relationships with the adults responsible for them. If we do our job and hold onto our kids they will hold onto us and see us as their best bet. When kids rest in the care of their adults, they can grow into the people that nature intended.
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a counselling and family resource center, is 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.com for more information.
The Lost Art of Play, on CBC with Stephen Quinn
An interview based on the presentation Lost Art of Play: Helping Children Become their Own Person for the Vancouver International Children’s Festival PEP series. It aired on May 13, 2013 and the interviewer was Stephen Quinn from CBC, On the Coast, Vancouver, BC.
Plugged In: Growing Up in a Digital World
I remember being overjoyed when my parents bought our first dishwasher. Overnight I was rescued from the drudgery of washing dinner plates. I was even more ecstatic when my parents bought our first colour television. I still laugh when I tell my children, “Mommy used to watch television in black and white”.
Board games, record players, paper books, air guitar with tennis rackets, and outdoor play were the substance of my weekends and summer vacations. I feel a sentimental attachment to these experiences, especially as I watch them being transformed by technology. My kids have their movies on demand and can find their way around an itunes library. When they are playing I overhear their Barbies talk on cell phones and their Polly Pockets invent devices that navigate a miniature terrain. In these moments I feel as if I am standing between two worlds. I am an immigrant to this new digital world but my children are its true digital natives. They have never known a world without internet, computers, handheld devices, and screens to navigate by.
We love our technology and who couldn’t − it has given us tools to do things we only once imagined. The fact is though, with every step forward there are losses left in its wake. As a parent raising children in a digital world I am left to contemplate whether all these technological devices are what my children really need? What is lost when screens and devices become part of their play? How do I make sense of these new tools and the role they serve in my 
children’s life?
David Suzuki suggests when a new tool is introduced, it takes one to two hundred years for new rituals and customs to form around its use. I don’t have two hundred years to figure this out and neither do my kids. Parents continuously face questions whether they should allow their kids to have a facebook page, cell phone, play video games, or post content and surf on the Internet. The problem is we will never find our answers if we keep asking these type of questions. We need to consider the heart of this issue, that is, how do these new tools help or hinder our children’s development?
The irreducible needs of children are very clear from a developmental perspective. First, our children need to become their own person and develop their own ideas. The way they start to develop this sense of agency and become an actor in their world is through play. It is here they play fight, play house, and play at figuring out the world around them – consequence free. This unscripted, unmitigated play is critical to eventually figuring out who they are. The question is whether technological devices foster this type of play in our children?
The type of devices our children have in their hands have the capacity to rob them of their expressive and exploratory play. Our children are often at the mercy of other people’s ideas, which only serves to limit theirs. What can possibly compare to the stories they can create and the adventures they go on with their trains or dolls? There is so much that needs to come out of them. We need to stay cognizant to what gets lost when they are bounded by a device, an algorithm or another person’s ideas. Their expressive and exploratory play is the vehicle for growth into personhood and without these spaces they cannot make their internal world emerge.
The other irreducible need of children is that they need rest in order to grow. As an adult I often feel overwhelmed with too much information bombarding me. My attentional systems are often overtaxed and I have taken multitasking to an all-new level. I don’t need any more information, I just need some time, space, and rest so I can process it. Our children need the same so they can find their own questions and develop their own meanings before being introduced to other people’s answers. Our children need spaces free of distractions, information, and entertainment so they can focus on what interests them. When the focus is on putting information into them, we lose sight of the questions that were meant to come out first.
The other irreducible need of children is to experience their world in a vulnerable way where the losses and lacks of life are truly felt. From the checker games they never win against their grandfather to the sports activities where winners and losers are clearly defined − these all serve to teach them something. These small losses are what prepare children for the big upsets that will be part of their life too. There will be jobs they don’t get, people that don’t love them back, and constant reminders of the unfairness of life. Does a videogame world with a reset button and endless lives prepare our children for the world they will live in? I fear not. We cannot possibly exchange the lessons learned in the real world, in real time, with the world that is created on our screens. There is too much lost and so little that is learned when the futilities of life come with a reset button.
I love my technology but this isn’t about love. It is about developmental readiness that needs to be considered when putting these tools into our children’s hands. Our children need to be full of their own ideas before we introduce them to the ideas of so many others. They need to have the space to attend to the questions inside of them instead of the distractions posed by too much information and entertainment. They need to be able to accept the futilities of life in the real world and with people that were meant to be their life teachers.
To keep this new world in perspective, I view my children’s new tools on the same level as all the other treats they desire. As Gordon Neufeld says, “there is nothing wrong with cookies but every parent knows there is a time and a place for them”. Cookies are treats and we ought to savour them − their sweetness need not blind us. Treats are just cheap substitutes for the real things that were meant to nourish and grow us. Parents have always been the ones to decide when cookies are in order. Treats shouldn’t be eaten on an empty stomach and before all of the other good stuff goes in.
Healthy development is always a matter of timing. Parents were meant to act as buffers against the outside world and determine when children are ready to experience it. Before we plug our children in, we need to consider what they will be unplugged from. Helping them become their own person is the goal and parents are still the best devices that help them get there.
Copyright Deborah MacNamara, PhD, Kid’s Best Bet – Dr. Deborah MacNamara is a counsellor in private practice and on faculty at the Neufeld Institute. She works with parents, educators, child-care and mental health professionals in making sense of kids from the inside out. See www.macnamara.ca or www.neufeldinstitute.com for more information.