Taking attachment parenting to a whole new level: A thoughtful interview with Chris White

Meet Chris White and his site Essential Parenting. I love what he has to say.

Did you see his comment about my last post? Leave you hungering for more from him? I know. Me too. Just so happens that I had asked him to answer some interview questions which he did. Thankfully. As I read them last night, I was pretty much hanging on every word. I do believe this is the BEST explanation (evolution) of Attachment parenting and there is much in here to explore. I hope you like it and I hope you will check out his classes, too. Thank you, Chris. (This is a long post. I've given it all to you right here instead of splitting it up. Enjoy.)

1. How did you become so passionate about this work?

I think that all my life I have been aware of the tension in my soul between being open, courageous, and loving on the one hand, and closed, afraid, or angry on the other. The more I looked around I saw that everybody is struggling with this in their own way. I especially saw in myself how thick and tenacious the defenses could be; defenses that were there ostensibly to protect me, but that were mostly cutting me off from intimacy and from a full life.

Somehow, someway I just have this fire in my heart to break free and to help others break free of the chains of history. And then I look at a child and the fire melts into a deep love and compassion. I see a beautiful, free, unbridled expression of the Divine in front of me, and more than anything I want to find a way to protect and nurture and support that being in her journey towards her full potential. So that is my primary motivation – to help children reach their full potential and not get locked down in patterns of self-protection. And quite beautifully, the best way I have found to do that is to help parents continue their own journey of maturation simultaneously. And so here I am, doing my best to open up a little more each day. And I am simply sharing what I learn about this process as I go. I feel pretty darn lucky to be doing what I love.

 

2. What is your greatest challenge in your own parenting?

Patience. I am a really fiery guy with a quick mind and my system likes to take the lead. I grew up in a house as one of three Aries males, my mom is a Leo, and it was a really feisty environment. I may have been the mellowest of the whole clan. In any case, my parents had reactive nervous systems, were young when they had me (22 and 24), and did not model patience very well. So sometimes it is hard for me to just let the mess happen and not “head it off” by directing Kai. Sometimes I can just hand him his bowl of food to bring to the table and not add “careful buddy….don’t spill it….keep it flat,” but many times these directives compulsively come out. I personally would want a little more space than that, so I am trying to move in the direction of saying less, which is really my own work of relaxing back into a state of trust that it’s all going to work out one way or another.

One thing that has been helpful for me is to have some “child-lead” time each day where I do not lead at all; I simply follow and play and let anything that is not dangerous happen. It’s a trip watching my system react during these periods. It always wants to get in there and “help things go smoothly.” But instead of acting on those impulses, I just watch them arise and then fade away. It’s a very freeing practice.

So yes, patience and relaxing into the flow is probably my biggest challenge these days. And it seems to be related to a lack of basic trust in the intelligent unfolding of reality.

3. What are the fulfilling changes that you see in parents and children that you work with?

One of the best “results” that I see is when a parent has a renewed sense of confidence that they are up to the challenge and that they are “on the right track” with their parenting style. So many parents in our generation have become nervous about “screwing their kids up.” This anxiety is contagious and is a major road-block to easeful maturation as well as simple enjoyment of the everyday moments that are so precious and fleeting. So when I can help parents relax back into a state of confidence where they can access their intuition about what is needed in any given moment, that is when I feel that I have done my job well. And that is why in my classes we engage in mindfulness and somatic practices, and why I read poems and stories that open the heart again. There is such power in being able to simply be in the present moment with an open heart. The details have a way of taking care of themselves quite nicely from there.

 

4. Resilience. I'm interested in this and think there is something so valuable here for us as parents to consider. those of us who are devoted to nurturing our relationship with our children, offer empathy and consistently try to see the world from their point of view, listen and value their ideas, opinions, experiences, want to help them believe in abundance and goodness in the world....and yet shit happens. Tell us about your ideas about resilience and please offer some practical ways that nurturing resilience in children might look like day to day.

 

Well this is a great question and a huge topic. We might want to consider a whole interview or post on this question alone, but here is a basic outline of how this seems to work:

As I wrote in one of my posts, there are 3 ways that “resilience” seems to be used (and I learned most of this from Gordon Neufeld):

1. The ability of an organism to survive in the face of harsh living conditions
2. The inner protection from hurts and difficulties that a strong attachment relationship provides
3. The capacity to confront vulnerable feelings that arise in the face of adversity, to let them sink in emotionally, and to emerge out the other side of the difficulty stronger and more hearty as a result of the experience.

I won’t talk about the first kind of resilience here because it is more of a hardwired survival tenacity that probably does not depend so much on the parent-child relationship.

The second kind of resilience I think of as a buffer that is created around the heart (not the physical heart, but more a center of emotional vitality) that serves to protect the heart from too many hurts and traumas. This exists in anyone who has a secure attachment relationship to at least one caregiver, and is probably a result of the internalized memories/images/feelings of that nurturing relationship which can be drawn upon in difficult times. As social mammals, when we are severely stressed we have a drive to be with those we love in a safe place and we use this internal relationship (a felt sense in the body-mind) to buffer us in these difficult times. Kids who are bullied but have this kind of buffer will be OK. Kids who don’t have a secure attachment at home are usually looking for their attachments in the kids at school. If they are bullied by these same kids they are longing to be close to then this is devastating. No buffer, nowhere to turn, alone and in pain. This is the most dangerous situations and probably where many of the suicides occur.

This is an area that I think “attachment parents” do very well most of the time. As you mention in your question, as a group we attachment parents are very empathic and nurturing. This generally provides a great psychological buffer for the child in the way I just described. And I would say that there is still some fine-tuning to do with the current attachment parenting models that are out there. I will lay them out now, but you might want to move this to another post because I think it’s going to be fairly extensive. In fact, it’s a whole post that I had planned to write down the road so thanks for getting the ball rolling!

OK, here are my thoughts on how attachment parenting can be brought to a whole new level and it very much has to do with the latter two definitions of resilience. This will likely meet some resistance and that is OK. But I hope everyone will at least consider what I am saying and especially check out if you already do some of these things intuitively and just have not recognized it before.

1. Attachment is not simply baby-bonding at the physical level. As your child’s mind and brain mature they can be attached to you in different ways. In the first year or so, it is very much about physical closeness and contact through the senses: touch, smell, sight, hearing, etc.. And then the toddler begins to attach through acts of sameness. “Daddy sit on his potty too….Kai and daddy both sit on potty!” Doing things like mommy or daddy or speaking like them become ways that we feel close to another. Then the layer of belonging and loyalty to the group comes on-line. Being part of the same team, rooting for the same teams, working together towards a goal together, etc., all become means of attaching. I used to push back against my dad’s “teams,” not really caring of preferring my own favorite football team. But now that I understand that this is a way that he is (unconsciously) trying to connect with me, I dress Kai in Boise State clothes and send grandpa pictures, we taught Kai to say “Go Boise State!” and I make sure to talk with my dad about the game. Not because I care that much about the game or the team, but because it is part of the glue that holds us together from 600 miles away. Next comes significance where the child loves hearing stories about how happy mommy was when he was born, how there is a picture of his favorite boy on daddy’s desk, and so on. This usually comes around 4ish. Next there is a deep emotional connection from the heart that is best described as Love. Kids around 5ish, and especially little girls, begin making hearts all the time, wearing hearts on their shirts, expressing love profusely to their parents and loved ones. It is a whole new kind of attachment. And lastly people will connect through being known; through telling people about their innermost feelings and desires, their foibles, their secrets. This is a very deep psychological intimacy and many people can not tolerate this level of attachment: it is too vulnerable.

So the point here is that our children can attach in non-physical ways as they mature, and that these deeper attachments are what buffers the child when they go out into the world to face the inevitable hardships. The more conscious we are about these numerous ways of attaching, the more layers of buffer we can build around our children’s heart through these various kinds of connecting. Hopefully, this will give us greater confidence to let them move out in to the world on their own and practice their emerging autonomy without the presence of a “helicopter parent.”

1. The other thing that children will need to weather the hard-knocks of life is the capacity for adaptation. The third kind of resilience is a direct result of the adaptive process. Sometimes attachment parents – probably because they don’t know about the importance of this process – short change their kids by not helping them sink into their feelings of futility.  Some seem to compulsively work to make everything work for the child and try to avoid all tears. This is not healthy. (kris' underline)

There are limitations of all kinds in life. We can’t make people think or feel or act any old way we want to. Sometimes they are nice to us; many times they are not. Sometimes we get invited to a birthday party; other times we are left out. We can’t just hop on an airplane just because our three year-old “wants to ride on an airplane NOW!” We each have personal limitations that we would rather not have. We might want to be prettier, smarter, able to run faster and jump farther. There are many kinds of limits in life (despite the claims from many new age teachings that you can just manifest anything you want) and our inability to face feelings of disappointment, sadness, powerlessness, and loss leads to a poorer capacity for emotional regulation and more narcissistic traits. Children must experience boundaries and limits of all kinds, be held firmly but lovingly in their feelings of futility so they can really let them sink in, and ultimately be shown that these difficulties are weather-able and actually make one stronger for having gone through them.

Now to do this well, many things are required (too many to talk about here, but here are a couple of key aspects). First, the parents must have some capacity for staying with their own vulnerable feelings themselves and can experience the power of emerging out the other side more open, refreshed, and resilient than before. Parents must also find some equanimity in the face of their child’s tears, which is tough. It hurts us when our kids cry, are disappointed, or feeling a hurt deeply. But we must know that this is part of developing maturity – that if our children do not face these difficulties now with a supportive loving other nearby to help support them, then it will be ten times more difficult out on the playground and likely will not occur. If this layer of the psyche is not experienced – the layer of the vulnerable heart – then defenses will predominate which lead to all kinds of problems including poorer emotional regulation and capacity for persistence, increased frustration and aggression, narcissism, attention problems, and the general numbness and malaise that so many of us experience in our culture. An emotionally rich and vital life absolutely depends on this adaptive process. Our western proclivity for “no fear,” “never say die,” and “all things positive and light” is leaving us shallow and fragile. We are more hearty than we have been taught, and our kids need our vote of confidence and loving guidance through this process.

 

So that is all I have for now. hope it is what you are looking for. Sorry not much in the way of practical examples, but maybe down the road we can revisit that. But for now I have to get back to finishing the recordings for the Essential Parenting Home Course. There are actually 2 sections deveoted to the adaptive process with many details and practical examples. So that may be a good way for you to get the “download” on that.

 

Thanks for this opportunity.

Take care,

chris

 

 

Comments

[Lindsay]

just spent a while checking out his website, and am just now beginning to explore the blog. i have a feeling this will account for lots of upcoming online reading time! thank you so much for sharing...looks amazing.

[heidi]

what a fantastic and helpful interview. perfect questions and the answers made alot of sense to me and have given me renewed vigor for what we're doing.

[Jennifer]

Wow! This is so great. Thank you both for taking the time to write this out. These are thoughts that I will come back to again and again. I would be interested in the practical examples, when you have time. It is nice to know that we are doing lots of the things that support the attachment at home. But I do worry about my sensitive, often-shy son on the future school playground, and how I don't want him bullied like my husband was.
Thanks again for the insight.

[Kimberley King]

I like this Kris. This fits with our experience of the natural evolution of attachment parenting as well. He writes it in a way that makes so much sense.