I’ve found myself quite tired recently, and so my old coping patterns come up… like bullying through my day, moving from one task to the next to keep me going. I end up shunting my kids around town, or not really being available to them at home. When things become too much for me, I shut down into my own busy jobs and miss good quality time with my children. Their attention is my number one job, and I know we can’t be on for them every second, but I feel I could do better.

One day my daughter came up to me all excited, asking me to come look at something she spent a lot of time building. I said sharply: “Not now.”  I was trying to figure out our health insurance situation and was almost at some clarity. The look on her face, the sadness and the disappointment, caused me to pause. In my pre-attachment parenting days, I would have felt the right to keep on going with what I was doing. Although these are feelings she should learn to manage, I do see it as my job to guide her through those emotions. But when I’m the ‘busy’ or ‘automatic pilot’ me, there is no connecting to me.

A pause can get you straight to the cause

Sure, I could be saying I stopped what I was doing to give her my all. But at this point I’m happy with having learned to pause, bend down to her height and look at her while I say, “I know you are excited to show me, and I’m excited too. I’ll finish what I’m doing shortly and be right there to see it” saves her moving into a fit and gives her the chance to say, “I’m sad Mama.” followed by an “I know you are Sweet Pea” from me. Then we calmly go on with our day, with only a short pause to discuss and acknowledge her sadness at not getting what she wants in that moment. Sure beats a long meltdown with my four-year-old daughter on the floor screaming or sitting alone in her sadness.

Written By: Nicole LeBlanc Charlwood

Parents in the Kootenays should be grateful to know that support workers in our communities are being exposed to research and ahead-of-the-curve perspectives on caring for and raising children. Success By Six, Selkirk College, The Family Place, School District 8 and others sponsored “Love Grows Brains”. My attachment-parent heart was aflutter when our daughter’s pre-school caregiver Laura brought this conference to our attention. Dr. Gabor Maté was going to be speaking. We couldn’t wait!

At the lectures, I and many others were like giddy school kids in the presence of a rock star. So when he walks in, wearing all black, looking tired and disheveled, I thought, great and he’s human too. Here is a smattering of what stood out for me.

Friday May 8, 2009 – Selkirk College, Castlegar BC

Inspirational with a swift boot-in-the-ass reminder that parenting well these days is a lot of work.  Dr. Maté and his co-author friend Dr. Gordon Neufeld both like to say, and I paraphrase: It shouldn’t be this hard. But despite knowing more about how to parent, it is more difficult than ever to do it well. Attachment parenting is made more demanding because it does not fit the modern day mould that encourages the punishment-reward model of altering our children’s behaviour.

Maté talked about the confusion we seem to have between “bad behaviour” and the “process of a person becoming a person.” A mom in the audience asked about coping with her kids bad behaviour. Dr. Maté returned with a question: What is the poor behaviour your child is exhibiting? She described it as: He’s one and a half and gets into things he shouldn’t. Maté’s response: Well that is what he should be doing at his age. He is acting instinctively curious, demonstrating the behaviour we would want to see developmentally.

As parents, how often do we say, “I hope this is a stage”? If it takes us understanding the development of our children better to give them more compassion, let’s try to find a simple model to follow along as our kids grow.

A father in the audience asked if: in the heat of a melt-down or siblings at each other physically, is it o.k. to physically address a child… such as picking them up and removing them from a situation.  Maté came back with: sure, when it is reducing harm and not creating it. Do the least amount necessary to keep anyone from harming themselves or others. Love them and calm them down – demonstrate how to do this by modelling the behaviour you want them to do.

My daughter has pointed out to me in heart-breaking ways that I have picked her up hard and upset her a couple of times. When she is scared of me, she acts out. When she is loved, we find our middle ground. I’m also learning how to communicate with her after the fact, when everyone is calm and rational, to apologize to her for my poor behaviour and sometimes to discuss why something she did was upsetting to me. This approach has really cut down on unnecessary melt-downs, those that happened because I was too unaware of my own issues and how I played them out on my kids. If being yelled at, for example, by someone is stressful for you, think of how much more true it would be for a child who’s not yet developed the capacity to cope. Conversely, just because you think your kids should handle whatever you throw at them, doesn’t mean that you are teaching them how to handle it. And that is your job, not theirs.

Many times during the five hours of lecturing and discussion, Maté raised the issue of expectations. If we as parents and caregivers could get over our neurotic selves (my words, definitely not those of Buddhist Maté) change our perspective on what we expect of our kids, we will reduce stress in our and our childrens lives. This will provide for them a better environment in which to grow healthy and productive lives. On Saturday he discussed that we put too much emphasis on genetic inheritance of disease and behaviour, that both are related to prenatal and early childhood stresses. As people get more and more serious illness and as more of us and our children are not emotionally equiped to handle the stresses of life, we need to go back to the idea of strengthening our relationships. We should really be stepping up to our responsibility as parents and communities to provide much less stressful environments for our children. One that provides more love, attention and presence.

I really appreciated how the audience was willing to say: “But can you tell me exactly how you would handle blah blah blah situation?” He could eventually be brought to advice… reluctantly.

Saturday, May 9, 2009 – Rossland, BC

The Biology of Loss – What happens when attachments are impaired and how to restore our children’s mental and emotional health

Dr. Maté started the morning by noting the large audience – approximately 200, and the clear interest in understanding our relationships with our children better. Referencing his books on addicition, stress, parenting and AD(H)D, Dr. Maté wove for us the connections between the loss of good relationships with our children, the level of stress parents face today and the large and growing number of children on medications for developmental and psychotic behaviours. He quotes:

“The paradox remains, how could the absence of something or somebody [attached relationships] create such disturbances… There must be a biology of loss, and we must find it.” Dr. Myron Hofer

“Developmental experiences determine the organizational and functional status of the mature brain.” Dr. Bruce Perry.

The brain is responsible for the following functions: pain relief, pleasure, attachment, impulse regulation, emotional self-regulation, stress regulation – all not fully functioning in people with addictions. Adicts brains are not fully developped. “The necessary condition for all these brain circuits to exist is access to a consistently available, emotionally stable, non-stressed nurturing parental care giver.” Dr. Daniel Siegel says: “Human connections create neuronal connections.. For the infant and young child, attachement relationships are the major environmental factors that shape the development of the brain during its period of maximal growth… Attachment extablishes an interpersonal relationship that helps the immature brain use the mature functions of the parent’s brain to organize its own processes.”

The effects of biology of loss can be experienced as prenatal stress of parents, early separation – emotional and physical, postpartum stress and childhood abuse (including emotional unavailability of parents). We are told now that “… people are influenced by past experience without any awareness that they are remembering.”

Maté blames the general malaise of parents today on their loss of power to parent. He described how the pervasive use of coercive power – use of punishment and rewards, win or lose – only pushes children away from parents and into the arms of less capable and usually less mature people – their peers, or as Maté refers to them: the enemy. He used a simple example both days to demonstrate the human instinct to counter coersion – what Dr. Neufeld calls “Counterwill.” He asks someone in the audience to stand and put up a hand to touch his hand, like they are going to play the mirror game. With hands touching, Maté starts pushing. In both instances, the people instinctively met his force with an equal and OPPOSITE force. An analogy for when we demand our kids do things rather than having the patience to guide them to be motivated to do it on their own.

We are equipped with the coercion model of parenting that doesn’t work. Combine that with being less and less physically and emotionally available to our children, and they naturally seek support they need in other places. Read Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peersfor more on how we are driving our children into the arms of other children to teach them their life skills. It is a lot of work to raise kids well, and he is opptomistic that the shifts we need to make to get on the right path again are really doable.

And parents can’t do it well these days because the ideal of a neuclear family is pervasive, separating us from each other. We need to build ourselves new villages and focus on rebuilding our relationships, not just with our kids, but with everyone.

The he says emphatically: “Don’t take your kids to play groups and preschools.” At once I got a huge lump in my throat and up went my hand. Choking back tears I asked him to reconcile for me the need to build village and the need to keep our kids collected, or close. ” We connect with our community and find like-minded parents at playgroups and our daughter goes to preschool”… I start pointing at Laura who is a row ahead of me, taking deep breaths and babbling to everyone about what a wonderful elder she is. We chose to have Laura in our lives, to help support us in raising our daughter. Maté moved from the black and white, don’t do it, to the grey, do it well. He reassured me that if I am going to these playgroups and participating with my children, not sitting on the side, then we are doing fine by our kids. If my daughter’s teacher is loving and supportive, and we as caregivers are connected, then it can be done without injuring our relationship with our child.

Later I asked Laura if it was ok to call her an elder – she laughed and said, “Well I am. I am a mountain with snow on top.”

Another mom asked Gabor Maté about reconciling where we come from and who we are trying to be for our children. She talked about a challenging relationship with her father, wanting to honour his role in her life, and the stress she feels because they don’t see eye-to-eye on parenting. “Don’t worry about what other people want, just do what you can and feel you should do ” .  This really hit a chord for me. My husband and I have both struggled at times with what was going on for our parents when we were raised and wanting to shift things for our children. Maté suggested: “Just polietly thank them for their advice, and go ahead and do what you want.” Sounds so simple…

Maté’s final quote: “Action has meaning only in relationship and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action.” J. Krishnamurti

Yesterday I was at Mother Goose – teaching parents and kids to bring song into their lives – and a mom, Meredith, asked me how the conference went. I answered that it was affirming of our choice to attachment parent, and a strong reminder of how hard it is to do so. Her perspective is that we are evolving, and we can only do what we can do in the grander shift that needs to happen. I hope the amazing woman and mom I met, who fell into a depression after the conference, can find some comfort in this idea.

Written By: Nicole LeBlanc Charlwood

I invite those who were present at either of the Dr. Gabor Maté sessions to comment below with your perspectives.  To all readers, we are interested in your real examples of his perspectives working for you and your family or clients.

If you use time-outs as a punishment technique for your child’s bad behavior, then you are not alone. It is a highly popularized “convenience parenting” technique, and appears to work well in the short term. If you watch any American TV, then you’ll see this concept promoted by “SuperNanny” or “Jon and Kate Plus 8″. The reality is that using time-outs can be harmful not only to you and your child’s relationship, but also to their personal development, self-esteem, and their ability to generally think for themselves. It separates the behaviour from the moment, treats only the symptoms and not the root cause, and puts your relationship in the back seat. Leading child development psychologists agree that the last thing you want to do is separate yourself and your child during times of conflict.

1. Relationship Is Being Ignored

When you separate yourself and your child, you are instantly demonstrating to them that your relationship is not important. When your child is misbehaving is when they need you the most, and your relationship with them is vital. You need to listen and empathize and bring them close to tell them that you still love them, but want to understand what they are feeling. Children will open up very quickly and explain the root cause of their actions when they feel loved, and secure with their parents.

By listening and asking them about what their intention was when they hit their sister, they will then be able to explain that they really were upset because no-one was paying attention to them, and it had really nothing to do with their sister at all. Having a solid relationship with your kids and bringing them closer (not separating them to another room) allows you to get to the root cause of behaviours, and work on solutions vs discipline.

2. Time-outs Appear To Work

The reason that timeouts are so popular with parents is that they actually do appear to work in the short run. When a child is told to go to a time-out, and sent away to their bedroom or a quiet area, they do in fact often temporarily stop the behaviour that you were discouraging. The problem is that, most children, younger ones especially, live in the moment, are impulsive and will often forget what the purpose of a time-out was soon after they start one. You are disconnecting them from the behaviour you are looking to discourage.

For children under age 4 to 5 years old, did you know that they don’t understand consequence at all? Their brains simply aren’t yet developed enough to understand cause and effect – so any kind of discipline similar to time-outs is being completely lost of them! Their left and right brains up to the age of 4 to 5 years old are essentially operating independantly. They are unable to think logically, and with compassion or empathy. They are almost primarily governed by impulse and emotions and will act selfishly when playing with others. Concepts such as sharing are foreign to them, though they may mimick or parrot this kind of behaviour back to you if driven home repeatedly.

3. Easy For Parents

Time-outs are a part of a “convenience parenting” movement which puts priority on the ease and speed of discipline, rather than it’s effectiveness at getting to the root cause of the behaviour. Often parents are the ones who need a time-out to settle down and compose themselves when they are with their children, but with busy work schedules, many athletic activities etc.. they feel their is no time to deal with their kids. Attachment parenting advocates will tell you that times of misbehaviour can be opportunities for connecting and really listening to your kids. It’s rare that a behaviour such as yelling, hitting or throwing food is what it appears to be on the surface. By sitting down, empathizing, and listening to your child, they will soon tell you what is really the matter. This does take time, however, and can not be rushed.

4. Treats Only the Symptoms

Time-outs are really only band-aid solutions for more deep seated issues. If you are trying to punish aggressive behaviour or hitting with a time-out, you are really not getting a chance to understand the root cause of this symptomatic behaviour. By connecting with your child, sitting down and hearing them out, you will get to understand the real intention behind their actions. Empathy and compassion is key. Child Development Psychologists such as Gordon Neufeld and others agree that you must “connect, then direct” so that they will ultimately respect you and listen to you.

Extreme punishment, such as spanking or grounding for six months, teaches kids you should treat yourself harshly when you do something wrong.  This offers little instruction on what to do when similar difficulties again arise. Kids then grow up to be harshly self-critical, which saps energy and motivation levels, and can undermine their quality of life. Alternatively, compassionate discipline starts by understanding the child’s point of view and then helping the child change harmful behaviors. The goal is to build habits and social skills that will serve the child well in the long run. For example, if a child hurts his friend’s feelings, he should feel bad about it, reflect upon the pain he has caused and think about ways to avoid such behavior in the future.

5. Child Is Not Empowered

When you tell a child what to do using discipline, you are ultimately calling into question their self-esteem. By telling a child what to do, you are discouraging them from thinking for themselves and developing decision making characteristics and self-worth. By “punishing” them with 5 minutes of silence and isolation, they are now going to continue to look to you, the parent, for direction anytime a tough situation arises, rather than think for themselves. They are disempowered from making their own decisions, and are disconnected from the behaviour that you are trying to discourage. Sure, you will need to let them simmer down from a tantrum or tears before discussing the issues they are having. For older children, they will harbour a resentment towards controlling, aggressive or angry parents that don’t let them think for themselves. Excessive use of discipline and separation technique such as time-outs will often result in teenagers who become disconnected, withdrawn to the point where they will eventually “rebel” away from any kind of connection with their parents. The key is to keep the dialogue going, and always work on your relationship.

What Experts Say

Dr. Gabor Mate M.D. on why he is against time-outs.

Bottom Line

Time-outs are a band-aid solution to what is perceived as a behavioural issue. To equip your child with a mature emotional disposition, let go of your anger and hear-them-out.  I highly recommend this article written by Aletha Solter, PhD, who is a developmental psychologist, international speaker, and consultant.  See her article here: awareparenting.com.

Written By: Chris Charlwood