parenting advice

i’ve been spending my life trying to putthe pieces together of how attachment unfolds. and in fact, i had a wonderful opportunityof taking a whole year off just to be able to study all the attachment theories throughoutthe ages, actually, and see how it is that attachment is meant to happen. and it’sa beautiful story, really. i’ll try to tell it very quickly and very simply. in the firstyear of life, a child does attach through wanting to be with, to be in sight, in smell,in hearing, in touch. but by the second year of life a new way of attaching should openup in which the child wants to be liked, not only with, but liked. and this is the keyto language acquisition, to stamping out form on their behavior; it’s a key to so manythings. if that goes well, the third part

by the third year, a child becomes preoccupiedwith belonging and becomes preoccupied with loyalty to be on the same side as which isa different way of closeness, to take the same side, to serve and obey. and that’swhen the obedience instincts begin to be there. by the fourth year of life, you should seein a child a huge quest for significance – to matter, because he feels close now when heis dear to those that he’s attached to. now if everything unfolds properly, the fifthyear is incredible. the limbic system, the command center or the amygdala of the commandcenter, the limbic system, the emotional brain pulse – all of it stops and the child giveshis heart to whomever he is attached to. he falls in love. and he’s deeply emotionallyattached to his kitten, to his grandma, to

anything that is there. and this is amazing.and it’s so important because when the child develops at that level, that’s a stage forthe rest of parenting. we cannot parent children whose hearts we do not have. we can’t parenteven our grandchildren whose heart we do not have. or our adult children. this is absolutelyessential. so children need to fall deeply into attachment and we need to make it easyfor them. the last stage is a very interesting stage. if it’s safe to attach, there’sno defendedness emotionally, then the child actually wants to share all that is withinhis heart. and so the 6-year-old is busy telling her secrets, and not to have any secrets thatdivide. this is the beginning of psychological intimacy, which should characterize our marriagesand our best friendships. and so we’ve got

all kinds of intimacies: with, like, belonging,mattering, our heart, emotional intimacy and then finally psychological intimacy. and thisis a context in which children are meant to be raised. so the beginning – the infancyand toddler – is just the beginning of a wonderful unfolding and development of thecapacity for a relationship.