Keep them CLOSE

Keep them CLOSE

I've been reading the works of Dr Gordon Neufeld, his life altering work on Attachment Theory, he is a theorist, and he is culminating his life work.

It's amazing.

his book you can find here: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Hold-Your-Kids-Why-Parents-Gordon-Neufeld-Gabor-Mate/9780676974720-item.html

his web site http://www.gordonneufeld.com/

I will be putting on a class SOON where he does the teaching, and we get to discuss afterwards. We will all be better for it!!!

Oh, and in case you chased your way here from the twitter feed of @justinATthomson this is one more thing you should also know, I am also the CEO of Heritage Family Services

see me here http://www.heritagefamilyservices.com/team.html

:-) ya, and I love building things so I also own a cabinet company - confused yet???

ok, Keep them CLOSE

I want you to think about this relationship stuff with you HEART I want you to think about how you FEEL when your kids cry. I want you to know, that most times our intuition wins and I would like to spell it out to you in a couple of simple ways.

First thing you need to know is that kids are developing - and SLOOOOOWLY maturing their way into adults. That said - they are not adults yet so instead of telling them to GROW UP show them how to grow up (trust me I made this mistake LOTS with my dear 11 year old!)

back to intuition.

As a mom (or a dad who watches a mom) what do moms naturally do when their infant cries?

they pull them close and soothe.

Okay what do you do when your 40 year old friend goes through a tragedy? You go over, you listen, you exist in their presence, you stay close.

Well turns out this same thing is what we have lost our intuition on in the last 30-60 years with older kids and teens. Now we use the "timeout" and we do so in an uninformed way. That is, lets ask the question, where did this idea come from? Who invented it? Does it work?

It does work, but not in what we want - that is, it does end behaviour, but at what cost? (the time out was created to keep abusive parents from their kids in the heat of anger but does that include you? no, so why are you using it?) Sending our kids away, and saying, "When you are good you can come out" is the equivalent of saying, when you behave you can exist in my presence. But, that is not what we say to the 16 month old crying baby, and not what we say to our 40 year old friend.

in fact, the things parents are saying to their 15 year olds, - What other relationship would they say those things in?

Hey I get it - this parenting thing isn't easy - but that doesn't mean we get to do it wrong. it might be easy to tell a 15 year old "I don't care about your problem" but, that is not what you want to communicate. And the slippery slope starts with the way we parent our kids at 2yrs 3yrs 4yrs.....

Where is this going... eventually what we want as parents is to matter to our kids. Dr. Neufeld simply states, "You want to matter more to your kids, than their friends matter to them." why? Well, when it comes to giving your kids advice about ecstasy - who do you want giving advice, you, or a 16 year old "friend" How about alcohol? dating relationships? marriage? driving? etc etc etc.

When kids don't "attach" to parents - because parents have been sending them "away" when they do not behave (and many other things I'm just picking on timeouts tonight), kids "attach" to their peers - because a basic human desire is "to be known" - in essence to attach.

Keep them CLOSE

How do you do that? simple (ok not really simple - but it gets easier - trust me) GO AND BE CLOSE TO THEM!!!! Dad's tell your daughters they are beautiful, moms and dads tell your kids that you love them!!! This does not mean that you don't discipline it means that you discipline in the context of a relationship. Be NICE!!! When kids get older you can tell them how frustrated you are with them (AND, how much you love them).

Deep down, when your kids face the disappointments that this life throws at them - you want to be the one that they go to. When they fail - you want them to go to you. When they make mistakes - you want them to come to you. When they get hurt - you want them to come close to you. the list goes on. So, now, NOW - go, and be close to THEM.

Keep them CLOSE

or

Someone else will.

slv2all