Hold On to Your Kids - by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté
ISBN: 0375760288Date read: 2024-09-16
How strongly I recommend it: 9/10
(See my list of 360+ books, for more.)
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Great parenting insights, mostly around the importance of the guiding relationship between parent and child, without which they seek attachment from friends who are less capable guides.
my notes
For a child to be open to being parented by an adult, he must be actively attaching to that adult, be wanting contact and closeness with him.
Attachment will evolve into an emotional closeness and finally a sense of psychological intimacy.
The secret of parenting is not in what a parent does but rather who the parent is to a child.
Peer orientation eroded authority.
If no parenting adult is available, the human child will orient to whomever is near.
The child’s brain must automatically choose between parental values and peer values.
“Normal,” in the sense of conforming to a norm, is not necessarily the same as “natural” or “healthy.”
What is missing in that relationship leaves the greatest scar on the child’s personality.
The more peers matter, the more children are devastated by the insensitive relating of their peers, by failing to fit in.
To mock is the opposite of closeness.
Children may know what they want, but it is dangerous to assume that they know what they need.
Parenting that takes its cues from the child’s preferences can get you retired long before the job is done.
Imagine that your spouse or lover suddenly begins to act strangely: won’t look you in the eye, rejects physical contact, speaks to you irritably in monosyllables,
It would be obvious you’re dealing not with a behavior problem but a relationship problem.
Disorientation, to be lost psychologically - a state our brains are programmed to do almost anything to avoid.
Attachment creates a compass point.
As long as the child can find himself in relation to this compass point, he will not feel lost.
She will look to her peers for cues on how to act, what is important.
Vulnerability is something peer-oriented children seek to escape.
Closeness will often be defined by the secrets shared.
When primary attachments compete, one will lose out.
A child pursuing closeness with one person will likely resist anyone he perceives as competing with that person.
The attachment order can become inverted, because the parents have unresolved needs they project onto the child.
Parents who would rely on their children as confidants, complaining to their children about problems:
The child becomes a listening post for the parent’s emotional distress.
Role reversal with a parent skews the child’s relationship with the whole world. It is a potent source of later psychological and physical stress. In short, the attachment brain of the adult-oriented child renders her receptive to a parent who takes charge and assumes responsibility for her. To such a child, it feels right for the parent to be in the dominant position.
Most significant of all: the child’s desire to be good for the parent.
The impulse to be good arises less from a child’s character than from the nature of a child’s relationships.
If a child is “bad,” it’s the relationship we need to correct, not the child.
Never intentionally make a child feel bad, guilty, or ashamed in order to get him to be good.
Abusing the attachment conscience evokes deep insecurities in the child and may induce him to shut it right down for fear of being hurt.
When a child is resisting contact with us instead of wanting to please, the instincts are to repel and to irritate.
It doesn’t feel good to seek favor in the eyes of those one is seeking distance from.
If the desire to be good for us is not treasured and nurtured, the child will lose his motivation to keep trying to measure up.
Counterwill is an instinctive, automatic resistance to any sense of being forced.
It is triggered whenever a person feels controlled or pressured to do someone else’s bidding.
Counterwill also fosters the growth of the young person’s internal will and autonomy.
Behind this wall, the child can gradually learn her likes and dislikes, aversions and preferences, without being overwhelmed by the far more powerful will of the parent.
Counterwill may be likened to the small fence one places around a newly planted lawn to protect it from being stepped on.
Until the child’s own ideas, meanings, initiatives, and perspectives are rooted enough and strong enough to take being trampled on without being destroyed.
Figuring out what we want has to begin with having the freedom to not want.
The child will resist the “shoulds” of the parent in order to discover her own preferences.
The child’s brain is simply blocking out any ideas or thoughts that have not originated within him.
Anything that is alien to him is resisted in order to make room for him to come up with his own ideas.
It’s a psychological immune system, reacting defensively to anything that does not originate within the child.
The parent can nurture the child’s need for autonomy.
The maturing, individuating child resists coercion whatever the source may be, including pressure from peers.
In healthy rebellion, true independence is the goal.
One does not seek freedom from one person only to succumb to the influence and will of another.
Essential qualities determining a child’s teachability:
natural curiosity
integrative mind
ability to benefit from correction
relationship with the teacher.
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desire to learn and to understand,
interest in the unknown
willingness to take some risks
openness to being influenced and corrected.
What should lead a child into learning is an open-minded curiosity about the world.
The child should ask questions before coming up with answers,
explore before discovering truths,
experiment before reaching firm conclusions.
Peer-oriented students are completely preoccupied with issues of attachment.
Instead of being interested in the unknown, they become bored by anything that does not serve the purpose of peer attachment.
Curiosity makes a person highly vulnerable in the peer world.
Enthusiasm and originality expose a child to the ridicule and shame of peers.
Just as depth perception requires two eyes, depth learning requires the ability to see things from at least two points of view.
If the mind’s eye is singular, there is no depth or perspective, no synthesis or distillation, no penetration to deeper meaning and truth.
Context is not taken into consideration; figure and background lack differentiation.
Before we can learn from our mistakes, we have to recognize them and acknowledge our failure.
We have to assume responsibility if we are to benefit from our errors and we need to welcome help, advice, and correction.
Most learning occurs by adaptation, by a process of trial and error.
We attempt new tasks, make mistakes, encounter stumbling blocks, get things wrong - and then draw the appropriate conclusions, or have someone else draw them for us.
Failure is an essential part of the learning process, and correction is the primary instrument of teaching.
Children who are defended against vulnerability tune out admission of mistakes and failure.
Even being mildly corrected by a teacher or parent may threaten such a child with a sense of inadequacy and shame, the sense that “something is wrong with me.”
Frustration must turn into feelings of futility for the brain to figure out that something does not work.
Registering futility is the essence of adaptive learning.
When our emotions are too hardened to permit sadness or disappointment about something that didn’t succeed, we respond not by learning from our mistake.
Blaming the “idiotic” teacher, the “boring” assignments, the lack of time, or “I’m so stupid.”
Habits are not changed, strategies are not modified.
Develop the resilience to handle failure and correction.
When a child is peer-oriented, learning peaks during recess, lunch hour, after school, and in the breaks between classes.
Children learn best when they like their teacher and they think their teacher likes them.
Ordering children around provokes counterwill - as, for that matter, does bribing them with rewards.
Parenting is above all a relationship.
Relationships don’t lend themselves to strategies.
The fuel of aggression is frustration.
When in trouble, it is better to increase proximity rather than to decrease it.
The first step is to restore the connection.
Connection before direction applies to almost anything, whether asking about homework, requesting help with setting the table.
When something goes wrong, the usual response is to confront the behavior in question as soon as possible. In psychology this is referred to as the immediacy principle and is based on the notion that if the behavior is not addressed forthwith, the opportunity for learning will be lost. The child will have “gotten away” with misbehaving.
This concern is unfounded. The immediacy principle has its roots in the study of animal learning where there is no consciousness to work with, nor any ability to communicate with the subjects.
Working with our children as if they were creatures without consciousness conveys a deep distrust and discounts their humanity. Like adults, children are disinclined to hold dear those who misjudge their intentions and insult their abilities.
Soliciting a good intention: to draw attention not to our will but to the child’s.
Instead of “I want you to…,” “You need to…,”
Try, “Do you think you could?” “Are you ready to…?”
Acknowledge a child’s positive intentions instead of identifying him with his impulses.
“It’s okay, you’ll get there.”
The key to self-control is not willpower, but mixed feelings.
Where behavior is rooted in intention rather than impulse.
In a child full of attacking feelings, for example, we want to draw into his consciousness the feelings, thoughts, and impulses that would conflict with attacking.