4 Simple Ways To Improve Your Relationship With Your Child

(Leading to Improved Behavior and Greater Sense of Self)

Children seek attachments to feel safe, accepted, and included. Children seek this attachment from those they spend the most time with usually. If you are not being intentional about collecting your children, your children will prioritize their attachments to their peers instead of the attachment they should have with you.

“We need to make a habit of collecting our children daily and repeatedly until they are old enough to function as independent beings.” -Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., and Gabor Maté, M.D. authors of Hold Onto Your Kids.

Nature intended that children learn from elders because it makes sense that being older, you are more equipped to teach and guide your children as opposed to them learning culture, habits, and mannerisms from their peers.

So how do you help your children to stay connected to you, learning from you, and seeking your counsel?

To "collect your children," means to draw your children under your wing, making them WANT to be with you and follow you. Without it being your child's desire to be close to you, you can not possibly force your way back into their graces.

Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., and Gabor Maté, M.D. lay out four (4) steps that can function as a dance to woo your child back under your wing, as nature intended.

“Collect Your Children” for a Secure Attachment

1. Get in the Child’s Space/Face in a Friendly Way

At the beginning of toddlerhood, 90% of the time, parents' behavior consists of affection, play, and caregiving. But now imagine this, between the ages of 11-17 months, a toddler receives cues to inhibit his exploring every 9 minutes! You need to be sure you are still getting in front of your children in warm and inviting ways. Correct and direct but so not forget to collect them emotionally.

The most important time to collect your children is after separation, whether that is after being apart during the day or even after sleep. To show your child that they are so loved, welcomed, and warmly received by you for no other reason than by just being in your presence, will strengthen their attachment to you because they feel secure.

You can set aside a few minutes after sleep, school, or work, to collect your child with a warm embrace, eye contact, and interest in them and what they’ve been up to.

2. Provide Something for the Child to Hold Onto

Offer an invitation to connect. With infants, it’s a finger in their palm and they grab, very direct and instinctual. As children get older, this can be offering them emotional warmth and enjoyment and showing them that we feel delighted in who they are. When children can feel that they matter to us, they will “want to hold on to the knowledge that they are special to us.”

If you’re trying to regain your attachment with your child, you’ll want to begin by demonstrating and pointing out some sameness between the two of you or demonstrating loyalty. For example, this can begin with small similarities or taking their side for a point they have made. Help your child to feel your loyalty by remembering a small detail about them, surprising them with a gift, or keeping a promise. Remind them you are on their side and you two are more alike than they might know.

Providing something for the child to hold onto only works when it is not connected to an event like a birthday, a reward for something, or even when they ask. The reason for this is that true attachment is fostered by spontaneous attempts to show your child they matter to you.

3. Invite Dependence

The more your child knows they can depend on you, the better they will fare on their own as they grow into independent adults.

“to invite dependence in the baby is to say, in effect, here, let me carry you… To invite an older child to depend on us is to convey to the child that she can trust us, count on us, lean on us, be cared for by us.”

Our society has a fear that by inviting dependence we are developmentally stunting our children, but nothing could be further from the truth. When a child does not feel they can depend on their parents, they feel insecure about where their safety and security should be coming from. The child, not feeling that they can depend on their parents will not truly feel secure enough to venture out and gain independence and all that comes with it. When a child is willed to be independent too soon, it is not true that this fosters independence. What is true instead is that dependence is then transferred to the peer group. We cannot expect our adolescent children to feel secure and independent without us first offering them plenty of opportunities for them to be dependent on us.

4. Act As the Child’s Compass Point

Whenever you wake up, your first order of business is to orient yourself to where you are. This happens daily and it happens again many times throughout the day, being able to orient yourself in time and space is a necessary skill for basic survival.

Some ways that you may orient younger children but forget to orient older children include “introducing them to those around them, familiarizing them with their world, informing them of what is going to happen, and interpreting what things mean.” These are natural ways that you can be their guide and make it simple and easy for them to remember, feel secure, and understand that they can depend on you.

A huge problem in this area is that peer culture has become a place where the adults need orienting, the music is different, the language seems different, the curriculum has changed, and for each of these things that the parent is not able to grasp it knocks their confidence down for being the child’s guide.

Another problem with this is that peer-oriented children feel they do not need orienting, they are not to show vulnerability, and the issue with seeming like they know what’s what is that they get less guidance from the parents because it seems they don't need it.

In order to gain some position back as the guide for your child, a small bit of orienting in the morning might be helpful to start. These are good examples to get you started,

“This is what we’re doing today,"
"This is where I’ll be,"
"What I have in mind for this evening is..."
"I would like you to meet so and so,"
"Let me show you how this works,"
"This is who will be taking care of you,"
"This is who to ask if you need help,"
"Only three more days until..."
"You have a special way of..."
"You have a real gift and you have what it takes to..."
"I can see you’re going to go far with...”

Hold Onto Your Kids

It is our responsibility as parents to provide our children with the secure attachment they need and the benefit of doing this grants us the beauty of being a prominent voice in our child's life by their choosing, being on the receiving end of their stories and secrets, and having more opportunities to make positive memories that last a lifetime and can influence future generations.

Each quote incorporated into this post comes from the book Hold Onto Your Kids.