Notes: Hold On To Your Kids

Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, G. Neufeld and G. Mate.

Note to Reader

• Our focus is not on what parents should do but on who they need to be for their children. 
• Parenthood is a relationship. 

Why Parents Matter More than Ever

• Only the attachment relationship can provide the proper context for child-rearing.
• The secret to parenting is not in what a parent does but rather who the parent is to a child. 
• It is not a lack of love or of parenting know-how but the erosion of the attachment context that makes our parenting ineffective. 
• Most damaging of competing attachments that undermine parenting authority and parental love is the increasing bond of our children with their peers -- they are being brought up by each other. Peer orientation.
• Instead of culture being passed down vertically, it is being transmitted horizontally within the younger generation. 
• Linked the escalation of antisocial behavior to the breakdown of the vertical transmission of mainstream culture. 

Skewed Attachments, Subverted Instincts

• Not a behavior problem but a relationship problem. 
• Attachment is the pursuit and preservation of proximity, of closeness and connection: physically, behaviorally, emotionally, and psychologically. 
• Orienting instinct. Orienting involves locating oneself in space and time. First business of attachment is to create a compass point of the the person attached to.
• Being lost means losing contact with their compass point. Orienting voids ... are attachment voids. 
• Attachment with peers does not save them from getting lost, only feeling lost. 
• Ways of Attaching: 1. senses (physical proximity); 2. Sameness (seek to be like those child feels closest to) or identification ... often where extreme nationalism and racism come from ... id-ing one's sense of worth with one's country or ethnic group; 3. Belonging and Loyalty; 4. Significance (we matter to somebody); 5. Feeling (emotional intimacy); 6. Being Known (closeness by secrets shared).
• Peers - secrets they share most commonly gossip about other people. 
• Quest for sameness being the least vulnerable way of attaching, it is the one usually chosen by kids.
• Bipolar nature of attachment. With peer orientation on the rise, so is corresponding parent alienation and the problems that come with it. 
• Alienating behavior as humans -- mock and mimic those we wish to distance ourselves from. To be imitated may be a compliment, but to be mocked and mimicked is one of the most offensive put-downs. 

Why We've Come Undone

• Children find themselves in attachment voids everywhere. 
•  Need to create a village of attachment -- a set of nurturing adult relationships to replace what we have lost. 
• Teacher training completely ignores attachment; thus educators learn about teaching subjects but not about the essential importance of connected relationships to the learning process of young kids.
• Attachments come into being: 1. natural offspring of existing attachments; 2. when an attachment void becomes intolerable. 
• Imprinting process -- first person to appears to offer relief from attachment void. 

Power to Parent is Slipping Away

• Parents had to rely on force because, unawares, they had lost the power to parent. 
• problem is not parental ineptitude but parental impotence -- lacking sufficient power. 
• Many confuse power with force. Power means spontaneous authority to parent. That flows not from coercion or force but from appropriate aligned relationship with the child. 
• The more power a parent commands, the less force is required in day-to-day parenting. 
• The loss of power has led to preoccupation in parenting literature with techniques -- brides and threats.
• Power is absolutely necessary for the task of parenting. The power we have lost is the power to command our children's attention, to solicit their good intentions, to evoke their deference and secure their cooperation. Without these four abilities, all we have left is coercion or bribery. 
• Secret of a parent's power is in the dependence of the child. Being dependent does not guarantee dependence of the appropriate caregivers. 
• Power to execute our parental responsibilities lies not in the neediness of our children but in their looking to us to be the answer to their needs. 
• Teenagers -- still dependent, only they no longer depended on their parents. What looks to us like independence is really just dependence transferred. 
• To reclaim their children, to realign the forces of attachment on the side of parenting. This book intended to help parents reassume their natural position of authority. 
• Three ingredients to make parenting work: a dependent being in need of being taken care of, an adult willing to assume responsibility, and a good working attachment from child to the adult. 
• Easier for parents today to confess incompetence rather than impotence. Parenthood is above all a relationship, not a skill to be acquired. Attachment is not a behavior to be learned but a connection to be sought. 
• Labels: Difficulty in parenting often leads to hunt to find out what's wrong with the child. Search for labels to explain our children's problems. 

When Attachment Works Against Us

• First business of attachment is to arrange adults and children in a hierarchical order. Into dominant and dependent. What attachment does: trigger the instincts to take care. 
• Getting a child to look at us and to listen to us is the foundational to all parenting. Attention follows attachment. 
• One of the telltale signs of a child who isn't paying attention is a parent having to continually to raise his voice or repeat things. 
• Attachment keeps child close. Child accepts as his models only those to whom he is strongly attached. In the absence of attachment, the learning is labored and the teaching forced. 
• Attachment instills in child a desire to be good. 

Counterwill

• Counterwill is an instinctive, automatic resistance to any sense of being forced. Since counterwill is a counterforce, we invite it into being every time our wish to impose something on our child exceeds his desire to connect with us. 
• Parental efforts to gain leverage generally take two forms: bribery or coercion. All attempts to motivate a child involve use of psychological force -- negative (punishment), positive (rewards). 
• best response to a child's counterwill is a stronger parental relationship and less reliance on force. 

Flatlining of Culture

• The time we as parents and educators spend on trying to teach our children social tolerance, acceptance, and etiquette would be much better invested in cultivating a connection with them. 
• Peer culture more like cult than culture.

Flight from Feeling

• Profound dejection of an excluded child reveals a much more serious attachment problem than does a peer-rejection problem. 
• Parental attachment shield.
• Vulnerability is usually attacked. Carl Jung explained we tend to attack in others what we are most uncomfortable in ourselves. 
• Vulnerability is built into the highly insecure nature of peer-oriented relationships. 
• Human beings are in either defensive mode or growth mode, cannot be in bother at same time. 

Stuck in Immaturity

• Thumbnail sketch of maturation: Phase 1 - kind of splitting, or differentation; Phase 2 - brings ever increasing integration of the separated elements. 
• B/c their feelings and thoughts were not differentiated enough to withstand mixing, they were capable of only one feeling or impulse at a time. B/c anger did not mix with love, they showed no forgiveness. B/c frustration did not mix with fear or affection, they lost their tempers. They lacked immaturity. 
• Foster Maturity: No substitute for genuine maturation, no shortcut. Behavior can be prescribed or imposed, but maturity comes from the heart and mind. Key to activating maturation is to take care of attachment needs of child. 
• Story of maturation is one of paradox: dependence and attachment foster independence and genuine separation. We need to release child from preoccupation with attachment so he can pursue natural agenda of independent maturation. Make sure child does not need to work to get his needs met for contact and closeness, to find his bearings, to orient. 
• Need to create an atmosphere which simply demonstrates -- I care; not I care for you if you behave thus and so. She cannot do anything, since that love cannot be won or lost. It is not conditional. 
• Ways peer-orientation stunts growth: Impossible to satiate attachment needs of child who is not actively attaching to person willing and able to provide for those needs. Peer orientation and immaturity go hand in hand. Peer relationships connect immature beings. Instead of rest, peer orientation brings agitation. 
• Peer-oriented children cannot let go: inability to from frustration to futility, from "mad to sad," is a major source of aggression and violence. 
• Impulse to cry hardwired to feelings of futility. Tears of futility actually bring a release, a sense that something has come to an end. Without futility, as without satiation, maturation is impossible.
• Peer Orientation (PO) crushes individuality. Immature people tend to trample on any individuality that dares show itself. When attachment to peers is the primary concern, individuality must be sacrificed. 

Legacy of Aggression

• Frustration is fuel of aggression. Frustration - emotion we feel when something doesn't work.
• Many triggers to frustration. But what matters to children, attachment, so greatest source of frustration is attachments that do not work: loss of contact, thwarted connection ... 
• Frustration that comes up against impassable obstacles is meant to dissolve into feelings of futility. Mad should move to sad quickly. But if tears of futility never come, adaptation will not occur. 
• most common feelings of futility are sadness, disappointment and grief. Feelings of futility involve vulnerability. 
• Our automatic tendency is to focus on aggression rather than on underlying issue of children's misdirected attachments. Need to reclaim our children and to restore their attachment to us. 

Making of Bullies and Victims

• Measures ineffective b/c they seek to address behaviors rather causes. 
• Real dynamic - not missing adult authority but dearth of adult attachments. Underlying problem is not the behavior but the loss of natural attachment hierarchy with adults in charge. 
• Bullying - fundamentally an outcome of a failure of attachment. 
• More time children spent in peer company and away from parents, the more prone they were to develop bullying behavior. 
• First item of business of any attachment relationship is to establish a working hierarchy. Result of PO is powerful attachment urges force immature kids who should be on equal terms with one another into an unnatural hierarchy of dominance and submission. 
• Children (or adults) become bullies when the striving for dominance is not coupled with the instinctual sense of responsibility for those lower in the pecking order. 
• Dominance does not elicit caretaking b/c bully's flight from vulnerability has become hardened against feelings of caring and responsibility. 
• Why dominate? Then they are less vulnerable than one in dependent position. Ones most emotionally shut down are ones most predisposed to seek dominance over others. 
• They are deprived of experience of transforming frustration into feelings of futility, of letting go and adapting. (when they bully parents) -- parents confuse respect for their children with indulging their wants instead of meeting their needs. 
• If parents are too needy or too passive or too uncertain to assert their dominance, the attachment instincts are going to move the child into dominance position by default. Children are coming increasingly to bully their parents. 
• Forms of dominance/elevating oneself: boast or brag. Most common way -- to put others down. Differences become primary targets of insult -- anything that stands out, anything that renders a child unique, not valued by peer culture. 
• Intimidation. Bully must never be seen as being afraid of anything. Also, demands deference. 
• Trigger an attack: Bully is provoked to attack whenever his demands, even if unstated are not frustrated. Also, a show of vulnerability. 
• Personality of bully: distancing one person to get close to another. Danger in loving but none in loathing. Bullies take least vulnerable route to destination. Not personal - targets are only a means to an end. 
• Whenever two or more PO children are gathered, they are likely to back into their attachments with each other by ostracizing others. 
• Unmaking bully: Only hope is to attach to some adult who in turn is willing to assume the responsibility for nurturing the bully's emotional needs. 
• Essence of bully: a tough shell of hardened emotion protecting a very sensitive creature of attachment, highly immature and hugely dependent, who seeks dominant position. Their behavior -- a predictable result of PO. All attributes of bully stem from combination of two powerful dynamics: attachment that is intense, inverted and displaced and a desperate flight from vulnerability. 
• PO breeds both bullies and victims. 
• To unmake a bully -- reintegrate the child into a proper attachment hierarchy and proceed to soften her defenses and fulfill her attachment hunger. It's a breakdown in basic values of attachment and vulnerability in mainstream society. 

Sexual Turn

• Sex is about attachment. In adolescents, most often an expression of unfulfilled attachment needs. 
• Great difference between sexual contact as an expression of genuine intimacy and sexual contact as a primitive attachment dynamic. Result of latter is dissatisfaction and an addictive promiscuity. 
• Family/parents loved them but they were not "feeding" at their table. Looking to peers to fulfill attachment hunger. 
• PO adolescent is a sexual being who is apt to use anything at his disposal to satisfy his need to attach. The less vulnerability and maturity are present, more likely drive to attach will find sexual expression. 
• Sexual activity of PO kids -- really about seeking in each other's arms what they should be looking for in the relationship with their parents -- contact and connection.
• the more sexually active adolescents are, harder they become emotionally. Become desensitized / it's flight from vulnerability. Sex loses its potency as a bonding agent, becomes a nonvulnerable attachment activity. No longer works as human superglue. 
• Need maturity to have sex.
• Adolescent sex is not so much about experimentation as it is of emotional desperation and attachment hunger. 

Unteachable Students

• Teachability of student depends on: natural curiosity, an integrative mind, an ability to benefit from correction, and relationship with teacher. 
• PO extinguishes curiosity: preoccupied with attachment, bored by anything not does not serve purpose of peer attachment. 
• Integrative mind - capable of processing contradicting impulses or thoughts. Must be mature enough to tolerate of being two minds. 
• Most learning occurs by adaption, process of trial and error. Failure is essential part of learning and correction is the primary instrument of teaching. 
• Attachment is the most powerful process in learning. Problem when they become attached to peers rather than mentoring adults. 
• Children learn best when they like their teacher and they think their teacher likes them. 
• What children learn from their peers is how to talk like their peers, walk like their peers, dress like their peers, act like their peers, look like their peers. What they learn is how to conform and imitate. 
• To open our students' minds, we need to first win their hearts. 

How to Hold on to Our Kids

• Collecting our kids: we need to make a habit of collecting our children daily and repeatedly until they are old enough to function as independent beings. 
• Four steps to collecting: 1. attract the child's eyes, to evoke a smile, elicit a nod. Get in their face, their space, in a warm friendly way. 
• A greeting should collect the eyes, a smile, and a nod. Especially important to reconnect after any sort of emotional separation - after a fight or argument, whether by distancing, misunderstanding or anger. 
• For teachers and/or adults, who are in charge of children, collecting them should be the first item of business. 
• 2nd step of collecting: in order to engage children's attachment instincts, we must offer them something to attach to. Like a finger to an infant. Something to grasp, something to hold dear. Ultimate gift is to make a child feel invited to exist in our presence exactly as he is, to express our delight in his very being. And it needs to be genuine and unconditional.
• We cannot cultivate connection by indulging a child's demands, whether for attention, for affection, for recognition, or for significance. Providing something to hold on to is most effective when least expected. 
• Dance of attachment ... conveying spontaneous delight in the child's very being .. by gestures, smiles, tone of voice, etc.
• The real spoiling of children is not in indulging of demands or giving of gifts but in ignoring of their genuine needs. 
• Attention given at the request of the child is never satisfactory, not voluntarily giving of himself to the child. Seize the moment, invite contact when the child is not demanding it. 
• Praise is not collecting.
• The foundation of a child's self-esteem is the sense of being accepted, loved, and enjoyed by the parents exactly as he, the child, is. 
• Step 3: Invite dependence. We are assuming too much responsibility for the maturation of our children. Independence is the fruit of maturation. Cannot get there by resisting dependence. Our refusal to invite them drives them to each other - transference of dependence. 
• Need to orient them. We are the best resource for that. Orientating reactivates the child's instincts to keep us close. 
• Reclaiming PO children: need to win back their hearts and minds, not just have their bodies under our roof. Need to create an attachment void by separating them from her peers, then place ourselves in the void as substitutes. Must come to terms with the futility of addressing behavior and redirect ourselves to the task of restoring the relationship. 
• Grounding works best if parents seize the opportunity to reestablish the relationship with their child. 
• Parent's responsibility to keep the child close. Don't let them go before the parenting is done. 

Make Relationship the Priority

• Children do not experience our intentions; they experience what we manifest in tone and behavior. 
• Unconditional acceptance is the most difficult to convey exactly when it is most needed. Precisely at those difficult times, we need to, in work or gesture, indicate that the child is more important than what he does, the relationship matters more than conduct or achievement. 
• Make the relationship safe before we address behavior. 
• A child will usually know what is expected and is either unable or unwilling to deliver. The inability is usually a maturity problem; the unwillingness is an attachment problem. 
• The child is more important than his conduct. 

Parenting with Attachment in Mind

• Natural sequence of development, in this order: 1. Attachment; 2. Maturation: 3. socialization (societal fit, child's behavior). 
• If we let ourselves be pushed away, there is nothing left for the child to hold on to. Ultimatums make the child feel very keenly that her parents love and accept her only conditionally. 
• Temporary breaks in the relationship are inevitable. Real harm when we neglect to re-collect our child. 

Intimacy

• Make it easy for them to share, to remember our primary objective is not to correct them or to teach them but to connect with them. Create special one on one time. 
• More our children feel known and understood by us, the less risk we run of being replaced. 

Create structures, impose restrictions

• Impose order on child's attachments. Establish structures that cultivate connection, and restrictions that enfeeble the competition. 
• Holding on to our children is not about shaping their behavior but about engaging their attachment instincts and preserving the natural hierarchy. 
• This is prevention. Structures and restrictions cannot be forcibly imposed on PO child without doing further damage. Wise parents will not impose more restrictions than the attachment power they wield will bear. 
• Some take holidays from their kids. A break from their children. More breaks we take, the less attached children are to us. 
• The family meal can be a potent collecting ritual. We have to create a time and place for an activity with a child where our real agenda is connection. Building relationships and maintaining attachments are more effective one-on-one. 
• PO children get stuck in their agendas and can't let go. Aggression and hostility. Mistake to think it's strong-willed or headstrong; actually stuck and desperate. 
• Maintain realistic view of attachment power. Without attachment power we have no genuine power at all. Challenge is not just to separate them from their peers, but to reverse the process. We have to replace their peers with ourselves, the parents. 
• ****** We do not recommend that parents accept our suggestions until they have the confidence, the patience and warmth to follow through with them. One must not parent a child from a book -- not even this one!" ***********

Discipline that does not Divide

• Punishment creates an adversarial relationship and incurs emotional hardening. 
• 7 principles of natural discipline - developmentally safe and attachment-friendly. We do not require skills or strategies but compassion, principles, and insight. Could be titled, 7 disciplines for parents. We need to bring ourselves under control and work systematically toward a goal. Manage ourselves. 
• Put ourselves on hold as parents until loving impulses once more come to the surface. 
• #1: Use Connection, not separation, to bring a child into line. No time-outs. "Connection before direction." Collect the child, engage the child's attachment instincts in order to give guidance and provide direction. Parent needs to draw near the child, reestablish emotional closeness before expecting compliance. 
• The will to connect must be in the parent before there is anything positive for the child to respond to. Human connection must be intact before we are likely to get our points across. Having the eyes, the smile, and the nod, and then bring the child near. 
• A failure to collect the child should be a reminder for us to back off a preoccupation with conduct and to focus our effort and attention on building the relationship. Solicit the smile and the nod before placing our request or making our demand. 
• #2 - When problems occur: Focusing on the frustration instead of taking the attack personally will often help. Acknowledging the frustration that exists in the child and tone of voice that indicates that what happened has not broken the union. 
• #3 - When things aren't working, draw out tears instead of trying to teach a lesson: key to adaption is for futility to sink in whenever we are up against something that won't work and we can't change. Adaptive process accomplishes its task of "disciplining" in natural ways -- by bringing to end a course of action that does not work; by enabling child to accept limitations and restrictions.
• Parent needs to be agent of futility and angel of comfort. Represent a "wall of futility." Stand firm when something is immutable. Then come alongside the frustration and provide comfort. The agenda should not be to teach a lesson but to move frustration to sadness. 
• Much more important than words is the child's sense that we are with her, not against her. 
• #4 - change of focus from behavior to intention. Solicit good intentions. Draw attention not to our will, but to the child's: "Can I count on you to ... Are you willing to give it a try ... Do you think you could ... Will you try to remember ... ?"
• Essential to acknowledge a child's positive intentions instead of identifying him with is impulses, actions, or failures. 
• Draw out mixed feelings: Alternative to confrontation. Key to self-control is not willpower, but mixed feelings. When conflicting impulses mix together that's when orders cancel each other out, putting child in driver's seat. A new order emerges where behavior is rooted in intention rather than impulse. 
• Rather than trying to address the behavior, we draw out the tempering element to moderate the impulse that gets the child in trouble. Confrontation leads, at best, to an empty compliance, or to defensiveness. It does nothing to develop impulse control from within. 
• When coaxing conflicting feelings into consciousness, we need to get outside the incident and inside the relationship where we can take the lead. We cannot cut out a child's repertoire behavior that is deeply rooted in instinct and emotion. 
• With immature children: rather than demanding that they spontaneously exhibit mature behavior, we could script the desired behavior. Provide cues for what to do and how to do it. No negative instructions. Focus on the actions that are desirable. Like a director, the end result is created first in the adult's mind. 
• Immature beings should not be left to their own devices in social interaction. Many kinds of behavior can be scripted: fairness, helping, sharing, cooperation, conversation, gentleness, consideration, getting along. 
• If you can't change child, change situation: Adding force usually backfires. Coercion elicits counterwill, punishment provokes retaliation, yelling leads to tuning out, sanctions evoke aggression, time-outs to emotional detachment. Need to discipline differently. Impose order on the child's environment. Alter the situations and circumstances that trigger the problem behavior. 

Preventing PO

• enemy is not our children's peers but PO.
• PO kids go to school to be with their friends, not to learn. 
• Shyness: not a problem. It's an attachment force. 
• Children don't need to be home but they need to feel at home with those responsible for their care. Home is a matter of attachment. Being related is not the issue, being connected is. Shyness of a child should be a sign child is not ready to be taken care of. Need to connect first. 

Getting Along

• Kids to gravitated towards their parents demonstrated more characteristics of positive sociability. 
• Social integration means much more than simply fitting in or getting along; true social integration requires not only a mixing with others but a mixing without losing one's separateness or identity. 
• Mixing indiscriminately and prematurely, without adults being involved as the primary attachment figures, will lead either to conflict, as each child seeks to dominate the other or has to resist being dominated, or to cloning, as a child suppresses his sense of himself for the sake of acceptance by others. 
• By placing getting along at the top of the agenda for immature beings, we are really pushing them into patterns of compliance, imitation, and conformity. 

Not Friends that children need

• very concept of friendship is meaningless when applied to immature people. Until children are capable of true friendship, they really do not need friends, just attachments. with family and those who share responsibility for the child. 
• Developmentally, children have a much greater need for a relationship with themselves than a relationship with peers. Until the child manifests the existence of a relationship with himself, his is not ready to develop genuine relationships with other kids. Much better for him to spend time interacting with nurturing adults or in creative play, on his own. 
• Peers not answer to boredom: hole that is usually experienced as boredom is the double void of attachment and of emergence. Lacks sufficient curiosity and imagination to spend time creatively on his own. 
• Precisely when children are bored that they are also the most susceptible to forming attachments that will compete with us. The more prone to boredom, the more they need us and more of their selves needs to emerge. 
• More a child depends on accepting adults, the more room there is for uniqueness and individuality to unfold and greater the insulation against the intolerance of peers. 
• Self-esteem: ultimate issue is not how good one feels about oneself, but the independence of self-evaluations from the judgments of others. 
• PO children - their self-esteem will never become intrinsic, never rooted in a self-generated valuation. It will be conditional, contingent on the favor of others. Based on external and evanescent factors like social achievement or looks or income. That's not genuine self-esteem. Usually, they are esteeming what others think of them. 
• Peers no substitute for siblings: trouble is not in children playing with one other, but in being left to one other when their basic attachment needs have not been met by adults in charge. This is when our children are most at risk for forming attachments that compete with us. 
• The play that children need for healthy development is emergent play, not social play. Creative solitude. Because the strong emphasis on peer socialization, emergent play -- play arising from the child's creativity, imagination, and curiosity about the world--has become endangered. 
• Children need adults much more than they need other children. 

Re-Create Attachment Village

• We need to value our adult friends who exhibit an interest in our children and to find ways of fostering their relationships with them. We also need to put a high premium on creating customs and traditions that connect our children to extended family. Being related is not enough -- genuine relationship is required. 
• Matchmaking: involves priming two persons in such a way that they are more likely to become attached to each other. Introduction -- opportunity to create friendly first impressions. Also, a natural way of giving our attachment blessing. 
• Seize the lead in becoming acquainted with the adult to whom we are entrusting our child an the to assume control of the introduction. 
• Also, endear the unconnected parties to each other. Whether it is passing on compliments or interpreting signs of appreciation, make it easy for parties to like each other. 
• Relationship must be established first and foremost, before we deal with what does not work. To teacher -- "you've made quite an impression on her ... likes you and eager not to disappoint ..." One can usually find something that can be interpreted in a positive way to prime a connection between one's child and the adult responsible for her. 
• Create attachment relay team. We have to successfully pass the attachment baton before we let go. 

Diffuse competition

• Those not in relationships with us are likely our competition. What breaks the ice and brings them into relationship with us is to serve them a meal in a family setting. 
• My unannounced agenda was to get into their face in a friendly way, make eye contact if possible, solicit a smile and a nod, get a name and try to remember it, and introduce myself as well. The message would be clear -- relating to her meant relating to her family. 
• Another way to diffuse potential competition is to cultivate relationships with the parents of our children's friends. 
• Because childhood is a function of immaturity, the duration of childhood is increasing in our society. At the same time, since true parenthood is a matter of relationship and exists only while the child is actively attaching to us, the duration of hands-on parenthood is rapidly decreasing. 
• For parenthood to fade before the end of childhood is disastrous for both parent and child. 
• Who is to raise our kids? We, the parents and other adults concerned with care of children. We need to hold on to our children until our work is done. Until they can hold on to themselves.