KindlED
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED
Season 1 Top 10 | #3 Rest. Play. Grow. A Conversation with Dr. Deborah MacNamara
We're continuing summer break with #3 of our Top 10 Season 1 episodes.
Join Kaity and Adriane as they chat with Dr. Deborah McNamara, a clinical counselor and educator with more than 25 years of experience working with children, youth, and adults, who unpacks her book "Rest, Play, Grow."
This episode also explores:
- the importance of providing a supportive environment that allows children to rest in the security of their attachments
- outdated behavioral methods that push for early independence
- how true growth stems from strong relational foundations
- kids' unique developmental stages
- the concept of counterwill
- practical strategies to foster cooperation and reduce conflict
- the critical role of attachment in human development,
- how to build strong, lasting parental bonds and protect children from negative peer influences
- and so much more!
Tune in now for practical advice and profound insights that are sure to resonate with anyone involved in nurturing the next generation.
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast:
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
Important links:
• Connect with us on social
• Subscribe to The Sunday Spark
• Get our free literacy curriculum
Interested in starting a microschool?
Prenda provides all the tools and support you need to start and run an amazing microschool. Create a free Prenda World account to start designing your future microschool today. More info at ➡️ Prenda.com or if you're ready to get going ➡️ Start My Microschool
Hello everyone, Welcome to the Kindled podcast with me, Katie, and my lovely co-host, Adrienne. Adrienne, what episode are we re-releasing today for our summertime highlights?
Speaker 2:This was another favorite. I seriously I say that every week of our summer re-release party or whatever we want to call this. This is episode seven rest, play, grow a conversation with Dr Debra McNamara of the Newfield Institute. It was such a great conversation with her to really help parents, educators, any adults that has interactions with a young child, to understand what their attachment needs are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and like their brain development too, I feel like when I read this book this was one of the most life-changing books I've ever read. It's completely flipped my parenting style on its head and probably like saved my children from years of future therapy. So thank you, debra McNamara, and the Neufeld Institute for getting this information out to parents, and I seriously don't know what I would be doing right now if I had never read this book. It has been so amazing and I love the Neufeld Institute. I feel like every other thing that comes out of my mouth is something I've learned from them. So big fan and so grateful for them. What was your favorite part about this episode?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just understanding the difference between a developmental approach to children versus a behaviorism approach to children and, kind of foundationally, why we still treat children in ways that, now that I've had the paradigm shift, it makes no sense to me. However, it does make sense if you look into the history of it and our culture, and so I love that we dove into that a little bit and again, just to help understand the developmental needs of kids. Yep, for sure.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get to it. Episode seven Rest, play Grow with Dr Debra McNamara. Hi and welcome to the Kindle podcast where we dig into the art and science behind kindling the motivation, curiosity and mental wellbeing of the young humans in our lives.
Speaker 2:Together, we'll discover practical tools and strategies you can use to help kids unlock their full potential and become the strongest version of their future selves. Welcome to today's episode. We are so excited we have Dr Deborah McNamara on, and she wrote this incredible book called Rest, Play, grow.
Speaker 1:So, Katie, have you read this book? This is like my favorite book. I'm so excited. I'm like I feel like I'm going to like a concert.
Speaker 2:And I was. I was totally kidding with that question, Cause I knew that you love this book. But why do you love this book?
Speaker 1:I had such an incredible experience with this book because when my kiddos were young I didn't understand any of this whole relationship, brain development stuff. I just had read books that say like be super strict and be consistent with consequences. And you know, your job as a parent is to discipline and like draw these really hard lines. And I was doing that. I'm like man. It's just a lot of contention in my house and I don't like who I'm becoming as a person and I'm not seeing that it's very effective. And so I, you know, stumbled into all of these books, one of which was rest, play, grow, and it just went through all of the developmental stages and like what we should expect to see, and that helped me kind of put to rest all of my like my kids should be doing this or this is my job. It just helped me reframe all of that and my, my second son was just going through this phase where he could. He was not attaching to me. He was like two or three year old and he was just not having it, and so reading this made me understand what was happening and helped me totally reframe how I was parenting him.
Speaker 1:So we are super excited to interview Debra McNamara. She is a clinical counselor and developmentalist. She's the author, like we said, of Rest, play, grow, making Sense of Preschoolers or anyone who acts like one, and the Story Plane, a children's picture book. She's on the faculty at the Neufeld Institute. She's the director of Kids Best Vet Counseling and she presents on child and adolescent development to parents and professionals internationally, and we cannot wait for this conversation.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Dr McNamara, welcome to the Kindled podcast. We're so happy to have you.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 1:So, before we get started, I know we read your biography, but I would love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself and your personal. Why for the work that you do in the world?
Speaker 3:Well, I think there's many whys, but perhaps the most important is I came to this as a parent. But perhaps the most important is I came to this as a parent when I had children. I was already a counselor and teaching, but there was something you know and embedded in attachment and developmental material. But there's something about having your own children and faced with a temper tantrum or resistance or discipline and really having to translate theory into practice. So that's what brought me to my work and I think the underlying mission or purpose I have is to try to make the world as good a place as possible for my children and future generations. It's just that's my reason for doing this work.
Speaker 2:I can really resonate to that and that's why I do this work as well, because I feel like a weekend start with the kids, especially that zero to six years age. Think about how the world truly will change by the time those children become adults. So thank you so much for being here. Okay, we're going to dive right in.
Speaker 2:At the very beginning of your book, you explain why it's understandable that parents seek out tools and techniques to deal with children's immature behavior. As a parenting coach, that's what I get a lot of questions about. People come to me oh, what tool can I use, what strategy can I use? But then you say the problem is instruction won't help a parent make sense of a child. Instead, we need to understand that the child. We need to understand that child from the inside out. This was incredibly profound to me because it describes my own parenting journey of needing the right tools. So now I just have learned to be with my kids and really embrace their behaviors as part of their development at all the different ages and stages. So can you please define the difference between behaviorism and developmental theory and discuss why behaviorism is still kind of the norm?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, thanks, this is well. This really underlies, I guess, the whole book and our approach to parenting in our culture today, right? So we inherited a very strong behavioral approach, which is, you know, we grow up having the right lessons or consequences, rewards or punishments that if we could somehow teach a child how to be mature, that is ultimately what we need to do as parents is to be responsible this way. So it comes from the best of intentions and we inherited parenting practices that are based on this belief that you teach maturity. But the reality is is we all know people who had lots of wonderful lessons, ourselves included.
Speaker 3:We often know better than we can do, and the reason for this is a fundamental shift in understanding human development and the human being, how we function, how we operate, how we grow, and that is in behaviorism, which is a couple hundred years old at least. There was an eclipse. There was a key ingredient that went missing that underlies human development, and that is the role of emotion and the role of instinct. We go hardwired with emotion, emotions to scream when frustrated that push us to scream when we are frustrated. Frustrated is a hardwired emotion. It's, in all species, an alarm response when we feel separation or scared or there's some threat, you'll have a huge alarm response, a response to connect and to pursue and to care about other people and other things and ourselves.
Speaker 3:So we come hardwired with these incredible emotions and these instincts that move us and in a behavioral framework there is no room for that. It's all about what we see on the surface and how do we change what we see on the surface. However, a developmentalist says well, what's driving that, what's going on and how do we take that performance or emotion or development and move it towards maturity? What is it that we have to provide? That only really we can provide that helps move that child towards better. You know, responsible, sharing, impulse, control, empathy, consideration, having courage, being resilient. What is it that we must do to support the child developing that way? Because there's an inherent belief in a developmentalist that these things are not taught, but they're grown.
Speaker 2:Grown. I love that. So why do you think in behaviorism that there's not room for these emotions, that we're trying to stop those emotions?
Speaker 3:I think there's many reasons for that. Part of it is the founders. I think their own relationship with their emotions likely drove this. It's a very masculine way of looking at the world through the head and through logic. It's like something got missed here in terms of emotions being invisible, more associated with female, weaker, those kind of beliefs, I think, surrounding emotions really eclipsed it. We fell in love with the head.
Speaker 3:You know, descartes came along and I think, therefore I am, and you know this separates us. And then what do we find? You know, 20 years later, you know, antonio Damasio, a well known neuros, neuroscientist, wrote Descartes' error. We don't think, therefore we are, we actually feel. And then the whole place goes around feelings. And so it pushed science. This finding with technology and understanding the brain and development pushed science to look at emotion, things they couldn't see and measure easily, consciousness and this role in development. And what they found is that, oh my goodness, it is the birthplace of development. And so why was there an eclipse of the heart? Because it's invisible and hard to talk about and not valued. I think those are some of the biggest.
Speaker 2:And I think along the way, we've become afraid of these emotions because they're uncomfortable, um, and if we don't have a good relationship with their emotions, it does not feel good. I mean, just the other day, my six year old, he was happy as a clam, totally fine. And then he wanted to do something and I said, okay, before we clean up or before we do what you want, what do you think we need to do? And he looks on the floor and there's magnet tiles all over the floor and immediately he was just like no, like an angry and upset, and I just stopped. So I got down to this level and I said hey.
Speaker 2:I said does this feel good to be yelling and screaming? And and he was like yeah, and I said doesn't he goes? No, can we make this into a game? I said yes, and then we turned into play and we were. We were I mean I don't know we should be throwing the magnet tiles, but we were throwing them into the box and immediately he had a shift right back out of that. You know, uh, that really upset. But I wasn't afraid of his emotions and I feel like so many parents become afraid of these emotions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think so. I think that's really well said. I think the fear is that they're never going to stop. They're never going to stop being grumpy, frustrated, the tears, oh my goodness. They're never going to want to actually go to bed, brush their teeth, eat their food, and I think we get panicky inside and we get alarmed because we feel we're not responsible if we can't do all those things.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:I think you're right.
Speaker 1:It seems like there's kind of a societal pressure to have your kids, you know, be obedient and do all the things and be able to control themselves and and have this strong sense of inhibition and and it's just not developmentally appropriate. It's not developmentally developmentally normal to see that in young children especially. And then I think the thing that has been so mind blowing to me about your work and all of the research in this area is that it is actually feeling, those feelings, that leads to development. Right, the society is kind of obsessed with independence and confidence and pushing your kids out into the world and we're actually kind of creating this problem by doing that instead of really focusing on the root cause. That leads me to our next question. Here In your book you talk about attachment seeking behavior as like, or just the brain's need for relationship, really as a type of hunger, and I'd love for you to go into that idea. How is the brain's need for relationship and connection a hunger, and what is happening in the child's brain when they're seeking that?
Speaker 3:Beautiful question and reframe. I was just going to say your point about if we can get to our feelings, we can grow. So well said. And if you get that and you understand that and that translates to your parenting, it shifts everything. It becomes the axis which everything shifts in your actions to the child, how you see a child and how you focus. So no, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3:When it comes to hunger, we have many kinds of hunger, but the greatest task of a parent is to invite our children to rest in our care, where our greatest hungers are obviously for food but also for relationship. And the hunger for relationship is actually more significant and more important for development than that of food. Food was actually meant to fall into that caring relationship and my new book called Nourished will address that whole relationship between food and hunger for food and hunger for relationship. And so, in the context of caring relationships, we're meant to have our needs delivered, whether that's for food or safety, a sense of meaning, a purpose. So the hunger for connection is a hardwired emotion. Above all else, we are primed to pursue and to seek proximity from those that we are attached to, whether that's a teddy bear at night or a parent or a grandparent, your teacher, your brother, your sister. You know protecting, protecting, um. You know the insects on the sidewalk, as my kids used to do no, don't step here, this is an ant, or they'd have funeral services, dead bugs on the on the sidewalks and stuff. They were very attached. There's a hunger for relationship. It's not just to it's, it's young children see the world is full of living things and so they are very attached to that and the brain is primed to keep that in the topmost place of attention. So it essentially is seeking contact and closeness all the time, unless there is a delivery, a generous delivery, where a child can rest in the care of those that are responsible for them, and there's a fundamental shift that happens in the brain.
Speaker 3:A still point, a resting point. It's kind of like having your bucket of attachment. You can take it for granted, it's like a buffet, it's like, oh, I'm full, I can't take it anymore. And then what happens is the brain shifts gears. It shifts attention out of attachment and food seeking and all that kind of stuff and it moves into exploration, into being able to feel vulnerably. It moves into a relationship with the child, with themselves, into play, and so you can't grow unless you are released from your hunger for connection, because it frees your attention up to pay attention, to focus on things that actually grow. You like play or understanding your inner emotional world. So that's why relationship really matters. It's what it brings to the brain. It brings that resting state from where growth comes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when we're withholding or like demanding independence from kids instead of overwhelming them with our support, like our attachment, there's a great. How do you guys say this at the Newfield Institute? It's something like the pursuit needs to be. You need to provide more attachment than is pursued. How do you tell me that?
Speaker 3:That's exactly it. The pursuit must be greater than the, the oh, you had it, no, no, no. It's a beautiful quote. It's Gordon's quote. It's um, you want to provide more than is being pursued First of all. That's part of it. And the faith must be in the provider and not in your pursuit of connection. So there's two separate things. There is that we must be very generous, or, if we can't provide, be generous in inviting the tears of upset or sadness that might come with a promise to connect, and that the faith in the provision of care and attachment must be in us, not in the child's pursuit of us, not in their commands, their demands, their constant questions or constant queuing us up to take care of them. Their pursuit must be answered in a generous way, with us in the lead. That's really the key point.
Speaker 1:I've heard lots of people say that you should never do something for a child that they can do for themselves. Can you kind of address that?
Speaker 3:That's a behaviorist coming back from God knows where right. That's a long time ago. That might be a hundred-year-old sentiment. To be honest with you, that's a behavioral route. So the idea, of course, was that we push independence.
Speaker 3:That didn't understand the roots of development being based in relationships. There was this feeling of toxicity around dependence because it looks so different from the final product that people wanted to get to this grown individual. It's the same as I love when Gordon Neufeld says you know, it's like the apple seed looks nothing like the apple tree, and yet we're not barking at the apple seed to grow up and hurry up and stand straight, and that's not OK and we're going to, you know, tie you back or you know. There's an inherent belief that if you create the conditions, if you provide for what is needed for growth, that seed knows its potential and where it can go, but it can't get there on its own. There's something inherent to the individual that nature provides. There's the individual themselves, as they grow into teenage years and become more responsible for themselves. That also dictates growth and we have an incredible role to play, especially in those early years, in creating the foundation and the roots from which the growth comes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of people look at kids and we have this problem quote unquote of delayed adolescence where we see a lot of people in their twenties still very dependent and still very they haven't really um they're, they haven't stepped into their individual like responsibility, and I think a lot of people find that to be a large problem and I would agree. But that that kind of puts us into this reactionary, forceful mindset where we have to force independence earlier, cause you can't let that happen to your kids, right? And what we miss is that the pathway, like the goal, is not the problem. Of course we want independent, confident, capable kids. Like the goal hasn't changed. It's just that the research shows that that's not the path to get there essentially. Is that accurate? Yeah, that's not the path to get there essentially.
Speaker 3:Is that accurate? Yeah, that's exactly it. I remember doing research for Rest, play, grow and finding that piece of research done by the Pew Research Center in the US Number one I think it was like 95, 96% of parents interviewed said independence was the primary goal and most important factor in raising a child. So it's with good intentions. We want our children to realize their maturity and their potential. However, we inherited a behavioral viewpoint on how we get there and we don't have a developmental one, and that's where the confusion is coming from. You have to teach.
Speaker 3:The belief in behavior is you have to teach, you have to sculpt, you have to push, cajole, reward, force, and that's usually a knee-jerk reaction that gets escalated when kids are perceived to not be developing or failing to mature. They can get stuck. We can all get stuck. However, it comes back to what are the conditions? We need to feel vulnerable feelings, we need to be anchored in strong, caring relationships, we need to play and we need to find that relational rest, that answer for our deepest hunger, so that all of these other things are possible. But it seems so simple, it seems so invisible. You know, the more you push, well, at least you get some. If, if you say you know, make a child have manners or do worksheets, at least you have an outcome there. Right, but where's the? Where do you get your outcomes in play or in building relationship? This can take time. This can take a lot of time to see the fruits of it, a lot of patience.
Speaker 3:If you're a gardener, you know and you grow, grow things. You have a relationship with development. You have a relationship with the patients. That's required to grow things. But we don't even live on the land anymore. We don't even have a relationship. Our kids don't even know where their vegetables come from half the time, and so we've really lost this developmental framework that used to shape our culture and how we saw each other and what we used to do. It wouldn't feel normal to push, uh, you know, 100 years ago it just in many ways, I think. But today it's really, really ramped up and it's everywhere. We've become huge pushers when it comes to children's development and it's backfiring.
Speaker 2:And we live in such an instant culture. It's just like we went instant and that's why I think behaviorism is still prevalent in today's society. Can we shift a little bit into the brain development and how we help with this with our children? So we know the prefrontal cortex, you know it's slower to develop, takes a pretty long time, and in the prefrontal cortex we have the executive function which is responsible for helping us, you know, pay attention, organize, plan, prioritize, do all these things that we expect a two or three-year-old to do, even though they don't have the developmental capacity to do that yet. So can you tell us a little more about the prefrontal cortex development and the role it plays in allowing feelings, and then also what effects it has on things like executive function and inhibition, and maybe explain a little more about what inhibition is as well?
Speaker 3:sure, yeah, I think if we got this as parents first of all, it would transform our dance, you know, our caretaking with our younger kids. In fact, that was a lot of the feedback that I got from Rest Play Grow when I wrote about this in the chat in early on in the chapter is that they're just not like us. Preschoolers have a distinct personality. They don't think twice, they don't have a pause button, they have no impulse control, self-control. The consequences are lost on them. They might tell you well, I knew better, but I just forgot. If they have a particular feeling, it comes right out of them and that feeling could change within 30 seconds and it would be another one. They don't really tell a lie. They live in the moment.
Speaker 3:And so what is this a function of? It's a function of a brain that can only experience one feeling, one thought, at a time. The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. It takes five to seven years for the frontal parts of our brain to come online, which gives us the capacity to think twice. Pause, have a filter before you speak. They start to be able to tell a lie and keep a secret. No preschooler keeps a secret. You tell a preschooler secret, it's out their mouth in another minute.
Speaker 3:But this capacity for impulse control is an incredible developmental miracle. That happens when the brain and the child, the brain, has sufficient rest, when it has sufficient support for growth, it will start to wire up the connections so a child can have mixed feelings and mixed thoughts and you'll start to see it in the. In this threshold of five to seven, sometimes even at four and a half, you see little glimpses of it where they might just go. Oh, I'm so frustrated and we just shake and shudder and there's kind of this paralysis and you see that they're not lashing out, they use their words. It's like a miracles happened and they've remembered everything you've said up until this point. But it's not developmentally possible until, uh, this, this um integration in the brain from top to bottom, left to right hemisphere, comes into fruition. And you can't teach it, you can't force it. The more sensitive your child meaning, the more reactive and stirred up that they are through the senses to their outside world, will probably require a little bit longer period of time for brain development, because the brain has to wire around the sensory signals it receives and so, again, you know it's, it's, it's, it's a miracle. When it happens. You're just like, wow, they just seem to be less reactive, they seem to be a little bit more, they seem to remember, and it's like what happened.
Speaker 3:There's that poem by you know, robert Fulgram everything I learned in kindergarten, um, and it's not Gordon you follow. He says you know, it's not in kindergarten that taught you all these things. You know how to share, how to be a good friend. It's actually the fact that your brain develops so you're more fit to be around other people without them lashing out, being mean or preoccupied with yourself, self-absorbed, I mean. Preschoolers are hilarious.
Speaker 3:They would fit the characteristics of most of our, um, you know, personality disorders, behavior, but it's got nothing to do with this order. Their brain is just not developed. They don't have any impulse control. I just oh, my goodness, it would change our dance. It doesn't mean, though, and I really want to just emphasize, that we don't say to him, them, him or her, um, you know, use your words. Uh, you know, brothers aren't for hitting. You know, I know you're frustrated, right, we can acknowledge where they're at. We can, you know, take the lead through difficult circumstances doesn't mean it's a free for all by any means. It just means that, while we're laying the foundation for what is civilized conduct.
Speaker 3:There isn't an expectation that they can actually meet those outcomes until five to seven, or seven to nine for more sensitive kids. It's the age when reading starts to take off. Why? Because the brain is integrated. You get lying, you get secrecy. They're ready for school. They're capable of work. It's not always about play. Chores are much more likely to be received and appropriate because they're built for work. Then they can delay gratification. They're ready for more work-based stuff at school. Although we shouldn't really throw too much at them, they really benefit more from play. So it's a wonderful, miraculous development in the brain.
Speaker 3:The prefrontal cortex kicks in. Finally, just the last thing. The reason why the brain, the prefrontal cortex, um, kicks in it. Finally, just the last thing. The reason why the brain develops this way is because it allows the child to see the world one piece at a time. They pick up a rock, they lick the rock, they throw the rock, they do a million things with a rock and you'll see them just blast through that rock and they just they're absorbed in it and then, when their brain has said I got it, that's a rock, the rock is gone. Then they're on to grass and they're exploring the ground, the brain come and the world comes into view, one person at a time. That's why you know they do. They don't do threesomes, they only do one person at a time. They have one parent. The other parent comes in, they're like you go away. I'm locked into my relationship with this one singular person. The world comes in one view at a time, one thing at a time, and the brain says thank you very much, I've got it.
Speaker 3:Let us work Locked in when the brain is capable of mixing things together so that they're not they there's because they're separate enough. Then the brain says, okay, now we can bring them together, now they can conflict, now it's. It's a beautiful developmental uh uh, you know um pathway, but we just don't, we don't have insight into it.
Speaker 1:So pulling that, that beautiful nature example into behavior, then they, a child, can feel frustration, and that's one thing that they're feeling, and they can also feel compassion and love, like I love my brother, I don't want to hurt him, but then they can't hold these two things at the same time. So if they're feeling love, then that's what happens, and if they feel the frustration, then they get. The brother gets a hit maybe, but then as we allow these feelings and we have this integration, that's where we get inhibition, where the second thought I love my brother slows down the hits right and then we can. We can get some better control. But before that, that developmental phase putting a kid in timeout or punish like a consequencing them talk about that a little bit. How do you handle those situations before they're developmentally appropriate?
Speaker 3:You touched on it a little bit either get more alarmed because there's more separation, they now feel a sense of a lack of invitation for who they are, and so that that creates a huge alarm response which then basically serves like a straight jacket on all of their emotions so that just paralyzes them, like alarm can just paralyze you, so it exacerbates those emotions. But I mean, you know and it comes back to what you said earlier is is, if we see the child as being immature, then we use our relationship to resolve the issue of immaturity. I can't let you do that. I'm going to hold on to that. We're going to do something different. We'll talk about it later. Brothers aren't for hitting. No, I can't. You know this is not going to work. You know this is not going to work. You know the consequences.
Speaker 3:Yes, there's oftentimes consequences to maturity, but they're usually for us. I'm not going to bring out 1000 piece puzzle and expect my child to do it with me and not throw it everywhere. Okay, that's the last 1000 piece puzzle we do together. You keep that little nugget to yourself, but oftentimes consequences for us. Or you know, I took my child to the supermarket on an empty stomach and, wow, that was not a. You keep that little nugget to yourself, but oftentimes consequences for us. Or you know, I took my child to the supermarket on an empty stomach and, wow, that was not a great idea, you know.
Speaker 3:Or I should have maybe forewarned my child and got some good intentions before we went to the park and said listen, we're going to go to the park. Here's the deal. When we're leaving the park, I'm going to come, let you know, and then we're going to go, but there's no fussing and fart when we go. That's just the way it is in the park. We come, we go. Can I count on you right, because I'm not chasing you around the park to go. This is what comes with the park. Can I count on you? Okay, all right, and then you've already got ahead of the problem, so you're not using consequences and adversarial approaches. Do we have to take the lead on problematic behavior? Oh, yes, we do. But how do we remain in a place of relationship while being caring and firm, taking the lead to compensate for what is a very immature and aggressive time of life without impulse control?
Speaker 1:So let's talk about aggression a little bit. I'd love we've touched on futility and how kids just experience so much futility, no answers in their life and that's naturally logically frustrating for them. In your book you talk about the roundabout or traffic circle of futility. Can you take us through that idea and kind of describe what the parent or educators like role in guiding that process is?
Speaker 3:So number one children aren't born with a brain that is shaped by futility, so they don't know stop and start, they don't know rules, they don't have limits, like. The brain is mostly open-ended, and the reason for that is so that we shape it so when they are met with something that they don't like or they get frustrated by that, they want, they have an agenda. No, you know babies. A baby will scream. You know holler for milk. A three-year-old Whoa. They want their toast cut a particular way. They've got their favorite pants. You see, this agenda increases.
Speaker 3:So, by three or four, a child starts to really feel the futilities, the limits and restrictions. So what is the emotion that gets stirred up? Frustration. Frustration has three outcomes. The first outcome is a child will try to change it. They become a telemarketer, they try to negotiate, they try to talk you out of your own mind. Simply put, if it's a no, it's a no. Just be generous. It's a no. And that means that the second alternative, the second pathway in this roundabout, would open up, which is adaptation. They have to adapt to the things they can't change. If they're not going to change it, and it can't change, then they have to change and that's how they learn limits and restrictions. It can't change, then we, then they have to change, and that's what they, how they learn limits and restrictions, and that's usually a pathway of tears. Usually we just it's a no, you can be upset, you can be frustrated, whatever you want. It doesn't mean you can go punch your brother. It just means you know you're welcoming and inviting the frustration.
Speaker 3:Young child will often have very physical forms and older child, for three, four and up, will oftentimes have verbal forms poopoo face, I hate you. Whatever, you're not my favorite person. And then, five to seven, we get this tempering. So oftentimes they'll either try to change your mind, change the circumstances, change the rules. Again, it's for us to say no, caring, but firm, invite the child to cry or feel sad, frustrated, disappointed, just to land in that place where it's a no With young children.
Speaker 3:Oftentimes they just don't go and dissolve into tears. They often go into the third doorway, which is aggression, and that's when the frustration turns foul and that's where you get a physical or verbal form of attack or self-attack. And that's usually what happens in the very immature, when there's no, um, uh, you know mixed feelings and thoughts. And so again, usually what happens in the very immature, when there's no, you know mixed feelings and thoughts, and so again we have to come back around and focus on frustration and either change what isn't working or help the child to feel the futility, sadness, upset that comes with it. You can't say to someone you know it's okay, you can cry.
Speaker 3:Now, I know, I understand, it's okay. Nobody cries to that. It's usually it's going to be a no, I gotcha, yeah, it's upset, you really wanted a yes. Whatever, it is some way to invite and make it safe, to feel that the frustration is futile. It will not change and if you always make something work for a child, it's going to be harder to get there, but you can get there. I just have to make sure that your no's mean no and your yes's mean yes's like yay, you can do it.
Speaker 1:No's mean no, yeah. So with that, how can, like, if I'm in that situation, my kid is crying, what I want as a parent is for the crying to stop right. Like I, my ears just cannot handle this. And then my brain, the next step of my brain, my processing of this, is they are ungrateful or they are. I go into judgment and then that becomes a bigger problem for me as a parent, Right? And then I'm like I can't believe you're upset about this and you have no right. Like we, I pushed back on their feelings. Can you talk about what goes on for the child when that happens? Well, what's going on?
Speaker 3:for us, I mean we're highly frustrated, can't change the child's feelings, we can't make them learn fast enough. We're tired and exhausted from our own days and our millions of responsibilities and the stress we have, like you know, throwing in a pandemic for good measure, right? So one of the greatest challenges of parenting is our own emotions that are stirred up in the face of trying to be our child's answer. What I can say is that I know when I'm in that position, where it's about my emotions, I can't take care of my children very well. It's only by focusing on what's going on for my child and having my caring being greater than my own frustration. So my own mixed feelings it's not to say my frustration goes away, no, it's still there very loud but my caring. I have to try to find a way to make my caring bigger, and that's why this work gives me access to that, because it gives me greater insight.
Speaker 3:I can understand, you know, if you see your child is frustrated because they can't get what they want and their child, their brain is immature, they don't come programmed that way. That changes my lens. If I see my child is ungrateful, I've told them a hundred times this is on purpose they're out to get me, then, wow, that reaction is going to be a lot different. You know, if I see my child is somehow, you know, flawed, resistant and oppositional, then I'm going to maybe push. If I see my child is having an instinct to oppose, um coercion, because that serves their healthy growth and development and helps them become their own person one day, and that I went in too fast, too hard to whatever, then it changes what I do. So insight if we don't have culture to guide us, we're going to have to have consciousness and we're going to have to have insight. And that's why insight that they're immature, don't take it personally.
Speaker 3:It's likely developmental. It is developmental and it's probably never. I don't know. I can't say never because I don't know what it was like to parent 100 years ago. Our parents are working really hard to change tracks from a behavioral to a developmental point of view. They're trying to survive in a climate that isn't always friendly to parents and supportive. And so be patient with yourself and be patient with your feelings. It's okay that you have them, but try to let your caring be bigger and try not to interact with a child unless your caring is, because oftentimes you're really going to mess it up.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, I'm just speaking from personal experience and for me I had, like, no other choice. So my kids are neurodivergent and my middle son is, you know, I know PDA is not technically a diagnosis but pathological demand avoidance technically a diagnosis, but pathological demand avoidance and so his meltdowns, even at 10, are big and his anxiety manifests as anger. So I literally had no other choice, because some of his meltdowns when he was seven, eight, nine, would last over an hour and if I picked up that rope or if I would allow my frustration to come out, it would be another hour. So I got to the point where I had no other choice but to parent this way and I'm so thankful because I see that the neural connections are finally developing and he's starting to have some ability to regulate and be mindful. Just the other day we were talking about it and there's certain things that trigger him and he's like and he calls them tantrums. You know I call them meltdowns, but he's like, you know, when I have a tantrum, this is what's happening for me.
Speaker 2:It's like, you know, when you're riding a bike. I mean, he's totally giving me this analogy, which was so amazing. He's like, it's like when you're riding a bike and you know you're going pretty slow. You can put your foot down, you have brakes right, you can just stop the bike. He was like but then if you're going on a hill and you're going really, really fast and that's what's happening for me, and then you're you know, if you start getting frustrated with me and I try to put my foot down, I can't, I have no access to brakes and I'm just like keep going. And I was like that is so beautiful for him to start realizing what's happening from the inside. It's still hard and I have to do a lot of things to heal my own nervous system. Um, but yeah, what you're describing is it really is beautiful and leads itself to a really strong attachment, um with our kids and just helps their development. So much, yeah.
Speaker 3:And what you said is so beautiful your son's attachment and his relationship to himself and his own feelings, right Like as he grows and matures. That's the way through is he's got to govern himself. He's got to understand those reactions inside of him. I mean, can you imagine being 10? Like, think back to when we were 10. I might have a few years on you, but not many. Can you imagine back to 10 and saying that, like nobody talks like that, your parents don't even understand?
Speaker 3:So it would allow you and you don't even have to say it publicly out loud he's saying that to you because he feels safe to say it but to be able to have that inner conversation, to sort it through, reflect on it, think about and feel what you want to do and how you want to show up. I don't want to hurt the people. When I'm going 100 miles an hour down the hill on my bike and I have this feeling inside of frustration, I actually want to be able to deal with those feelings and not hurt the people I love. Like that's the essence of maturity, that's the conflict and that reflection that's required. But so it's incredible that our children have this invitation to their inner world of emotion.
Speaker 3:It's remarkable and I can't wait to see what this is going to look like in 20 years for those kids who have it. I think it's. I think we're going to be very pleased. I know with my kids, who are 19 and 17,. It's incredible to watch their relationships with people now outside of the house, in their community, how people look at them, how they're responsible, how they're caring and I think, wow, you know, be a patient gardener, be a patient gardener.
Speaker 1:So while we're talking about this, I have a few other little questions. So can you talk about counterwill? What is counterwill? And I mean this kind of goes along with just the frustration roundabout and everything. But how can we give kids more autonomy and just kind of talk about their relationship with needing to be their own person and getting this direction from us all the time?
Speaker 3:is probably responsible for a lot of trouble Parent and child, child relationship and marriages, families. Oh my goodness, if we understood this emotion and instinct that goes hand in hand. So the emotion is resistance and opposition and the instinct is counter will, which we call it, which is basically an instinctive reaction to do the opposite or to preserve one's own thinking and to basically push back against any types of coercion. So you feel resistance and opposition. So it might be simple as let's brush your teeth? No, okay, let's not brush your teeth. No, okay, let's not brush your teeth, I'm gonna brush my teeth. And what is going on here? Let's just use reverse psychology. Well, what's at play here is is counter will. You know, you get a ticket, I don't want to pay that ticket, even though you know you have to pay the ticket. Like we have reactions all over the place when we feel pushed. You will, you know, believe this, you will learn this, you will do this. It's like no, I won't. So counter will is tricky. We are meant to develop a strong will. We're meant to have our own minds, because this is what serves ultimate maturity and independence. You've got to know where, where you begin and end. You have to chart your own life. You have to emerge as a separate person. So the whole path like preschoolers and teenagers have tons of counter will uh, very easy to trigger, press into it. You won't get away with not doing it, but that is helping them, the preschooler become more independent and functioning as a separate self, able to go out into the world, go to school, whatever. And then the teenager has to emerge from these teenagers as an adult and be viable as a separate being. So, my goodness, you know if I had a couple. I mean, I wrote a whole chapter on this and you could write a whole book on counter will. To be really honest with you, I wrote a whole chapter on this and you could write a whole book on counter will. To be really honest with you, it's everywhere. Once you see it, it's humorous. Just turn on TikTok or any of those little videos and stuff. It's all over the place. It makes me laugh so hard when I see it often because it's like well, you know what's coming.
Speaker 3:You gave the direct request. What do you think? But the parent isn't wrong for having an agenda. So usually when our kids are pushing back, I'll give just three things, three ways to look at it?
Speaker 3:Number one did you collect them and harness their attachment instincts and their attention before you gave them direction? If they're not yours and they're not in connection to you especially the immature they're not inclined to follow you, not like they're holding on to you. The preschooler feels like you've, just if they're in the middle of play, it's like you've come out of nowhere and now you're telling them what to do. Come to dinner. They might be hungry but it's like yeah, that just hit me upside the head. You got to have a hello first. You have to collect it in their face in a friendly way. We're not meant to follow people. We're not attached to Preschoolers, only attached to one thing and like in focus. And if it's not you, it's somebody else or their play. So collect them before you direct them. Collect them before you have to. You know, direct them to play. You know anything that you need there or not. Play um, dinner time, washing hands, any kind of tasks that you need their cooperation on. Collect, collect, do everything in the context of connection Um, and, by the way, structures and routines are a form of collecting. So if a child just gets used to doing something every morning, it doesn't mean you have to be in their face every morning, get dressed If they have their own routine. That's a form of moving along in a particular agenda.
Speaker 3:The second thing is is when you have provoked counter will recognize it. Try not to take it personally and try not to push back. Try not to push back. If you push back it increases the resistance and opposition tenfold. You have to, you have to do this, you should, you ought to, you must or else. And you can just feel any spunky child with any sense of will is just going to push back and go and before you know it you're taking away their college education and you can't go free and look what I'll take away. And you're upping the ante and you have pushed yourself so far out of relationship, that child wanting to follow you now or seeing you as safe. You have lost more than whatever it was you're arguing about. You've lost a bigger picture. You've lost the capacity to lead that child. But guess what? We have very strong counter will responses as well as parents, because we're mature and we have an agenda and we do know, like 99% of the time we know better. So of course we get triggered by it, but it's just the more mature you are, the more you're going to step on it. So try not to take it personally. Try not to push back. It will test every ounce of patience and maturity inside of you. I can promise you I still get tested on it daily with teenagers. Sometimes they're better than others. But yeah, try to have a relationship with it.
Speaker 3:And the third thing is to diffuse counter will very quickly. You can't seem impotent and at the same time you don't want to seem adversarial. So try to lead through it. I'm going to have this conversation later with you. I can see it's not a great time to have it. It's really hard to hear what I'm saying right now. You're really not happy with what I'm saying right now. We'll get that bathroom cleaned up. It doesn't have to happen right away. We'll come back around to talk about it. Just give it some breathing room. Don't force down the channel like I gotta get this done. Give yourself a little breathing room. Keep the lead. Doesn't mean you have to drop your agenda, but preserve some dignity, integrity between the two of you.
Speaker 3:I found just letting some of the steam out and acknowledging the resistance and oftentimes just turning my eyes. Your eyes, our eyes as parents, are so powerful. It's got all of that right here. Yeah, and you're just looking. They're like oh, I can see that they're watching. Am I doing it? Sometimes, just shifting, I know it'll get done, and having just a bit of arrogance right and just moving on to something else just can diffuse some of that resistance and opposition. It gives the child a little bit, or the teenager some room to, you know, find their own way there. Just, you know we can be a little less explicit. You know that bathroom. What's the plan for the bathroom this weekend, which is cute to my kids, I think it needs a little, you know, love and attention from a spray bottle and a paper towel attention from spray bottle and a paper towel.
Speaker 2:We use a lot of declarative language in this house. I see messy bathroom. I see it.
Speaker 3:So anyway. So those would be some ways to look at counter will. But oh, if you feel it's provocative, it should be if you feel you're in charge. But diffuse the resistance. Don't take it personally. Collect the child before you move in. Recollect them. If you have to use play to diffuse it, personally, collect the child before you move in. Recollect them. If you have to Use play to diffuse it, the more mature they are, the less there might be. You know, the more mature you get, the more you realize that resistance is futile. Sometimes it's futile to resist paying not paying your parking tickets. It's futile to resist the call of your body and going to sleep, or, you know, self-care. Like you realize, some things become futile. So don't worry, there is a pathway here to more maturity. But I believe, outside of your child's frustration and big emotions like that, counter will is the most trickiest dynamic in caring for an immature being.
Speaker 1:I mean, when you read any parenting book, they always talk about power struggles and that's essentially what a power struggle is right. You have a counter will each child and then you have your counter will pushing back against that. And what's helped me, um, is to know that my job as a parent is not to push my will and, like my agenda, it's to maintain influence with that child long-term. And if turning away from that tricky counter-wheel pushback moment and trying to defuse that, that's not losing a battle, my battle's not in that moment. My battle is a long-term influence like developmental growth goal and yeah, and just let those things go.
Speaker 2:And understanding our kids have a different timeline than we do too. It's like I don't know why we feel that things have to get done right now. I don't know how many times I have come out of my mouth and I'm like why does it have to be done right now? And I realized my kids have totally different timelines than I do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, cause we're in a hurry and we have a lot of things on our plate and we don't have a lot of support oftentimes. So we are in a hurry and it's hard. I'm going to enjoy being a grandparent. I think a lot of not being so much in a hurry. That's my goal, yeah, but you know the point being, you know, how do we keep in a place of influence in our children's lives and I would go one step farther is that I know I may back up on something in that moment. We're not back up sidestep. Let's just be honest. I'm sidestepping because I'm like, hmm, that wasn't the right way and that's okay, I'm going to think about it, I'll get there. I'm just strategizing. How am I going to get there?
Speaker 3:And sometimes it's like Deb, you just got to let it go. Like what are you doing? This isn't for you. They're like 19. Let it go, mom, move on. Like this is for her to carry, not for you anymore. You've got to let that go. So I can have that conversation with myself. And then sometimes I'm like, no, this is important, I can't be sidelined. I have to still have my influence and I'll find another way through. I'll collect a different way, I'll get to that child's side a different way. I went in not knowing and I can. I can, you know, look for receptivity in different ways. I can find receptivity in different ways, but if I'm alienated from the relationship, I don't have any receptivity.
Speaker 2:In your book you described the six stages of attachment and how it unfolds, what it looks like, over the first six years of life. The key here is predictability and consistency, right, so if these stages are not supported, they can be arrested. Can you give us an overview of these stages and some of the reasons why kids get stuck?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, a relationship unfolds in six sequential phases, so one unfolds after the other when each one is met, and these phases can open up at any time in life. You could fall in love for the first time when you're 40. They lower you in the grave. You can be working on relationship, deepening relationship, increasing your capacity as a relational being. There's no set agenda here in terms of nature, only that we are constantly pushed to be in relationship, deep and cultivated, in the first year of life, though it's ideal in the first six years of life that we get six ways of attaching that increasingly become more deep and more vulnerable, because it's like a plant the deeper your attachment roots, the greater the potential right. But you can realize that if a child is stuck, you can still get there at 10 and open these, these channels for connection.
Speaker 1:This is what I think is really interesting is that it starts at the beginning of life, but it's not like when we're talking about this. This isn't just for babies. Sometimes people think that attachment oh, I'm going to like do skin to skin and nurse them and then my attachment is done. But this is something that carries through adolescence and right something that carries through adolescence.
Speaker 3:and right, If you understand yeah, if you understand the power of attachment, you can't not see it everywhere you go.
Speaker 3:I wanted to work in HR and organizations. I would use my understanding of attachment If I wanted to work in adult development and how we grow as adults or as parents. Um, I do work with the parent side. It would all be about attachment. There's no growth and development in any living thing that doesn't rest on attachment science. But I focus on families and kids because I figure if we get it out of the gate right, we're better off down the road and we're realizing our human potential. So why I focus here is because it's profound. But we must never forget that there's always hope and growth happens in many different ways and we can get stuck and we may have to go through grief, but there is still growth and potential inside of us once that happens.
Speaker 3:So in the first year of life, kids attach infants. Attach to the senses touch, taste, smell, seeing, hearing, feeling. If you fall in love for the first time, you want to hold hands, kissing. It's like wow, the senses open up. It's just like it bonds you, oxytocin pressing you just, and you're just like it's that rush right Of sensory contact. In the second year of life, it's about sameness. This is where kids, if they're unfolding well here they start to copy, imitate. They learn your language. They want to eat like you, you know, they walk like you. They have favorite colors as you. It's the very beginning of identity. They're just a collection of characteristics of the people that they're attached to. It's so adorable, you know. You just look at their favorite color and you're like orange. Okay, is that mom or dad's favorite? Oh, dad's, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:By the third year of life, a child will attach through belonging and loyalty. This is where they become more territorial, they become more possessive. They want to um claim this is my mama, my dad, my toys, my brother. You see this incredible, uh, possessiveness, because what it's doing is it's anchoring them into home in a deeper way. You can really feel those roots going down. They have a sense of place, they have a sense of people. There's security in that base, which then allows a three-year-old to venture out and you'll see that the three-year-olds just starts to pop into play a little bit more, 15 minutes at a time, and they're just gone in a play world. You're like whoa, yes, because they're anchored into possession and belonging. It's like you know my mama, anchored into possession and belonging. It's like you know my mama, my dada, they do not share. They'll have fierce battles at this age, but that's what attachment looks like. It's this incredible possessiveness around whatever, whoever they're attached to, that creates the safe base.
Speaker 3:Then, by age four, from there you see this beautiful movement into significance, where not only they want to, you know, be close to you, they want to sound like you and act like you and be the same as you and belong and possess, but they also want to matter. They want your eyes to light up, they want to be seen, they want to be heard, they want to be special, they want to be held in high regard. You know, they want to see your eyes and your smile. They want to see your delight. I mean, all kids do. But this is a deeper, more vulnerable way of delighting, and if there's a sense that they don't measure up, this really stings at this age because it's it's a lack of significance.
Speaker 3:And so the temptation at this age is to use your significance to make a child work for love, and I can tell you this really sets you up in a very different developmental pathway. A child do they have to work to be loved or can they take it for granted At this age if you can still convey significance to a child, even when they blow it. It's okay, we'll get through it. Everybody makes mistakes. You know. You're just learning. It's understandable. You know you can do something. It's understandable, you know. You know you can do something different next time. I'm still here. That conveys an invitation for relationships and significance that isn't based on performance. Significance must be for the person and not for the behavior. It's really important by age four, by age five, if all is unfolding well, they give their heart to whoever they are attached to I love you and it's not just the simple words that a two-year-old would say I love you, mommy, because they're echoing and they're copying, they're imitating.
Speaker 3:You can actually feel that the limbic system is like opened up and you can feel this warmth and you can feel the vulnerability I love you Like. The heart can really be hurt now and this is really why it's important, especially in the difficult times, not to, you know, be, not to be a sword, you know, and our actions to be sword like for the child, because when they give you their heart, while they can be sure wounded by this, but deep caring, and then, on the heels of that, by age six, the final and deepest form of connection is not just emotional intimacy, it's psychological intimacy, where they want to be known by you. They wish to tell you their secrets. They can tell you when they've blown it.
Speaker 3:Sometimes there's trust in the relationship, there's an invitation for it. Sometimes there's trust in the relationship, there's an invitation for you know personhood that isn't based on just achieving particular performance measures. There's an authenticity to it, a genuineness, a real invitation to exist in their presence and to understand and come to know them. And so you know our young children. This is the antidote to the lying they can now tell and not wanting to keep secrets from us. And so if we can get to this deep level of relationship, then we can hold on to their hearts, we can be a source and a guide and influence them and lead them towards a maturity.
Speaker 3:And that's why those six roots of relationship are really important. Roots of relationship are really important but you know, the thing is is, once you get to that, then they just unfold and they deepen. When, by the time they move into their teenage years, they're going to choose friendships and partnerships based on how deep they go in those relationships. So it is all about possession and belonging. That sets up a very different kind of relationship than it does. If you can share at the heart level and you can share your secrets, there's a deeper level of intimacy in your relationships and of course that can impact how we then move into our own parenthood and our partnerships and other relationships. So it's never too late. But these roots need to be developed in relationship to other people, so we need an invitation.
Speaker 1:So if I have a 13 year old and I feel like they are only connecting at the level of like sameness, what can I do to move them along?
Speaker 3:Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is is obviously connect at the level of sameness. And I've had those kids in my office Um, I've had kids like that and they'll just say, yeah, I'm sort of the same, but that's about it, and you can tell there's a real hunger, there's real anxiety, real frustration, alarm, self harm sometimes. So some of those symptoms get really scary. So you're like, okay, but what do I do? Well, how can connection help? Well, going through that door is sameness. That's the doorway that they're most open to. It's usually the safest in terms of it's not very vulnerable. So find your doorway in. You know they like to go do paintball, you know shooting or whatever it is. You know the paintball guns. Go do that. They like to hike, they like to mountain climb, whatever it is. You know. Find a way to their side and focus on sameness. Don't focus on all the things that come between you, the behavior, the problems. Find a way around that and to hold on to it, to compensate for it as best as you can Read. Hold on to your kids would be the book I would say by Gordon Neufeld.
Speaker 3:If you're in that situation, just keep plugging away at it, but also do a good analysis of what happened. What's the story of why the relationship not go deeper? It may be things inside the home, it could be things outside the home that have turned the tables on the relationship. So look around and do a bit of an assessment to say, okay, what's getting in the way of relationship? Who's getting in the way of relationship? We can't just simply cut those things off. But when you make your relationship stronger, when your invitation is deeper, warmer, more secure and safe, what happens? It's like any plant If there's a source of nourishment, the roots grow towards the nourishment. The roots that might have been going in a direction that weren't serving them are atrophied because this is such a strong source of nourishment that over time you see these roots anchoring into that relationship, into that nourishment. So we have to be patient.
Speaker 1:And do you see that? Can that happen in both ways, like towards the parent and also towards like a peer attachment pathway? If that talk a little bit about peer attachment.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, peer attachment is probably it's the greatest phenomena that's taking our children's uh development offline right now that they may have become more oriented towards their peers as the source of relationship than their adults, and so those kids are really lost because and screens in the digital world was built upon peer orientation and delivers them to their peers. And Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate's book in 2004, hold On To your Kids, was acknowledging that this phenomena, this attachment phenomena, this aberration and attachment, had unfolded. And we have only seen greater challenges as a result of this, Although many parents, I think, were highly influenced by their work and have done an incredible job to hold on to their kids. So the work has been profound. I dare say I wonder what would have happened without them bringing this to consciousness. So it is very common today that our children will be lured at least into peer orientation or be going to school with kids who are highly peer oriented, if they're not, and face challenges around inclusion, being wounded, exclusion, bullying. It's hijacking classrooms in a profound way.
Speaker 3:So I'd say get educated, educated. Understand what peer orientation is. Don't court the competition. Friends are wonderful, but it should be peers and parents, not peers or parents. There shouldn't be an, or it should be an and. And if you feel like your kids friends are taking them out of orbit around you, if you're feeling this jealous possessiveness, don't think it's just because you're a coddling parent and you're any of those kind of. You know, maybe you need to correct your own expectations and maybe there's something really there that's saying you're losing influence with your child. You need to pay attention. No, teenagers don't need to go it alone. No, they don't. Actually, they still need to be anchored. The world just widens. Their story starts at home and it just widens as they go into the world. But it doesn't mean they lose that base. It means they venture out into a wider world. So this idea that our teenagers just let us go to be with their friends doesn't understand attachment. That's a reattachment and a detachment from the roots that should anchor you in a wounding world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of my favorite quotes here is that just because something is common doesn't mean it's normal, right? It's like, well, that's what all of the kids are experiencing and doing, so that must be what's good. And you add that to our obsession with independence, it's like, oh, that's the plan. But we were never meant to lose this influence and this kind of core attachment and guidance, this leadership as parents and as educators as well. And if you're listening and you are an educator, the Neufeld Institute also has a wonderful book called Reclaiming Our Students, by Hannah Beach and Tamara Stryjack Awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1:It's a wonderful book. All of the Neufeld Institute books are wonderful. It's a wonderful book.
Speaker 2:All of the Neufeld Institute books are wonderful, great, and this has been amazing. I have one last question about can this be hard for parents that didn't get this secure attachment or go through these stages of attachment themselves as a child?
Speaker 3:I hear that a lot and, of course, not having this as a child of course impacts your capacity to rest. Although we may have found it in different relationships and in nature and substitutes that served us well, ultimately the parent we become is the relationship we have with ourself. That's beautiful. What happened to us is not really the story. It's about how we come to have our own story and understanding of our own journey to where we are. How do we feel about those things? How do we grieve those things? How do we find our caring in the faith despite those things?
Speaker 2:How do we make sense of how we got to where we are today?
Speaker 3:that's beautiful and and I will say this is that there's no greater reason why you rewrite your story, re-examine it and feel it all over again, and because you care so deeply for a child that you want a different story for them. So it's in the face of our love for our children as a parent that we come to rewrite that story and feel differently and yearn to do differently, to find our caring in the face of frustration, to have an invitation for their emotions, even though there were none for ours. Does it mean that you have to heal all your trauma before you become a parent? No, you are going to be doing it, trust me. While you are parenting, just try to be not let your unfiltered emotions come out on your children, and remember that your relationship to yourself will guide you here, and your relationship to your child is what makes you want to have a different relationship with yourself.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's such an incredible place to end. I could feel all the feels. That was so good. So we thank you so much for your time today, and we have one last question that we like to ask all of our guests who is someone who helped kindle your curiosity, motivation or your wellbeing when you were young? Your?
Speaker 3:curiosity, motivation or your wellbeing when you were young. Well, I think the the it might not be a someone I mean I could easily say my grandfather who introduced me to his garden and to play, but I would actually say that it was play itself that delivered me. Um, it was play, yeah, it was play, um that I cherish, and and the people I played with, like my sisters, and um, they it was. I can't even put into words what a special place in making something out of nothing and to feel what came out of me and that relationship that I was able to have with myself in play and with other people in play whether that was my grandparents or my sister's play was incredible.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, thank you. That was a beautiful response. Well, we're so grateful for all the time that you've spent with us and we've learned so much, so we'd like to share with all of our listeners where they can find your work, what, how, where can they find what you're doing and connect with you off offline?
Speaker 3:Best place is, I guess, my website and social media, so just McNamaraca or DeborahMcNamaracom, and, of course, the NewfeldInstituteorg, where I'm there with many of my other faculty and people who offer presentations and seminars, and it's a beautiful place, yeah, so thank you so much for having me. It was lovely to be with you both today. Yes, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:If this episode was helpful to you, please like, subscribe and follow us on social at Prenda learn. If you have any questions you'd like for us to address on the podcast, all you have to do is email us at podcast at Prendacom. You can also join our Facebook group, the Kindled collective, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, the Sunday spark, the.
Speaker 1:Kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy for you to start and run an amazing micro school based on all the things that we talk about here on the Kindle podcast. If you want more information about guiding a Prenda micro school, just go to Prendacom. Thanks for listening and remember to keep kindling you.
