The past couple weeks and at present we are learning about the science of children and relationship development, and how parents can provide the conditions for their child to flourish. This is centered around comprehensive interpretations by Dr. Gordon Neufeld who has accumulated more than 40 years of experience as a clinical psychologist with children and youth, and is the founder of The Neufeld Institute.
Google Dr. Gordon Neufeld and you will find endless keynotes and presentations available to hear from Dr Neufeld himself. He has so many empowering messages for parents in his presentations. This is a great video of him presenting to future mothers in Vancouver. Some of my takeaways are:
Moms, YOU were made for this. You instinctually have inside of you what Dr. Neufeld calls your alpha. Don’t confuse this with a dominating parenting style, but rather your child needs to have confidence that you can handle them and all situations that involve them. If you don’t leverage your instinctual confidence then your toddler may take on that missing alpha in your relationship. Your confidence is biologically there from the moment you became pregnant or became the parent/caretaker.
Now combine the caretaker instinct with the fact that baby’s natural instinct is to want to be cared for. See how these two major instincts are the perfect match made?
Next is Dr. Neufeld’s Attachment Theory in which the parent plays a significant role in babe’s ability to flourish and mature. Babe only needs one person to have this attachment with, not two caretakers necessarily. Babe needs to be able to rest in the generosity of your care to become attached to you. YOU are her best bet. Below are images from Dr. Neufeld’s free Keys to Well-Being
in Children and Youth that speaks to the 6 stages of attachment for a child (the area below the line in image 1), and the their maturing process that occurs (the area above the line) with that solid foundation.
A large component of this is emotions. The male colonial message is to not be upset, to not be sad, to not be mad. Developmentalists and psychologists urge to not follow that path. We all need to shed tears. Tears drain the emotion away and instills resilience in them. Analyzed tears show different hormones which have been released from the body. Its critical for caretakers to guide children to recognize all emotions, feel the sadness and recognize the futility of something in order for to move on, and experience resilience. This is important to set a solid foundation. It is what determines if they will have the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties in their adult life.
The realization of futility and subsequent sadness is experienced through simple day to day occurrences with a toddler. This does not mean you say No for the sake of invoking tears. This in practical terms means ‘No you can’t eat cookies all day.’, acknowledge their frustration, name their feelings, let them know you are staying present, their frustration will transition to the realization that wanting endless cookies tonight is futile, the tears come, and you are there to allow them to be. As the tears pass the emotional release is out, they can move on, they can recover.
For me, it’s a very natural and quick reaction to say “Aw, don’t cry” in a well intended sympathetic tone to my 19 month old when she cries for endless goldfish crackers. I have to be conscious and stop myself. If she shows that she needs to cry, then she needs to cry in order to move on.
Focus on this foundational work now to avoid some struggles later in their life. Suppressing tears now means their emotion will remain bottled up inside and they won’t understand how to process them. It can come out in other ways: anger, aggression. Know any adults with this problem? Watch the news any time to see its chock-full of adults that do not know how to navigate through their tough emotions in a mature way.
The next big takeaway in all of this is Play: also where a child can replay and live out challenging emotions or situations. Play is the birthplace of personhood - it is how the self is born psychologically. Play fosters development as a viable, separate being. Play is creating the brains that will solve the problems of tomorrow. It is also the introduction and method to use before you need a child to follow instruction. Dr. Neufeld says think of play like the primer on a wall in order for paint to stick. See this helpful article from Dr Deborah MacNamara on playing your way through discipline.
What I also found to be super interesting was this Ted Talk by Judy Klein, MD and Wilderness Educator, regarding importance of nature and risky play in nature to the physical and psychological health of children. Children allowed to have risky play had better physical and emotional risk judgement later in life. Children who played a lot outside had less near-sided vision issues as adults.
Stay tuned for the next week’s blog on the world of emotions and developmental science around them.
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