Dr. Gordon Neufeld- Why We're Losing the Context to Parent

0:00 why are we losing this context why are children not developing why are they not becoming deeply attached or why are they falling out of attachment that I talk about that a lot in the book and I'll just I'll just touch on some uh points here uh why are we losing the context to parent first and foremost there's a loss of cultural support we simply don't have a culture anymore that supports it our culture has taken an economic turn it now serves the

0:30 dollar not relationships we have lost the wisdom uh one of the things that was so noticeable when we lived in provance while I was gathering material for this book is that we were living in a culture of attachment and literally in a village of attachment and all the customs and traditions one of the most important being the sitdown meal and in the provansal home in the village at least having three sitdown meals a day

1:00 children coming home from elementary school to have to to eat with their families all the rituals and Customs the Sunday afternoon walks uh the kinds of things that happened that connected the the fets the festivals uh that happened at least once every two weeks in which the grandchildren danced with their with their grandparents and the students with their next year's teachers and it knitted the generations and all of these customs of which we don't have uh and we have lost the cultural support

1:33 uh to me the more I study this the more it becomes apparent that the role of culture the primary role of culture is to keep children attached to those who are responsible for them attached to their grandparents now where are our customs that attach children to grandparents in our society and grandparents play such a significant role in this and being the transmission of culture so there's a loss of cultural support but also our dis IPL methods are

2:01 backfiring our discipline methods are backfiring what is the most likely thing for a North American parent to do when a child misbehaves time out send the child away which involves what separation it says to the child that your behavior is more important than the relationship and that creates insecurity in a child which we have known for a

2:33 while a long time now in developmental science that is absolutely essential for the unfolding of Personality health and well-being not only that it puts the child in charge of the relationship in charge of contact and closeness with Mom and Dad it means that the child has to be good to keep connected and that puts the child in charge trying to figure out how to do this and these children who now become in charge in the dominant role become

3:04 anxious they become controlling our message should be to them if we really understood relationship and and we understood the importance of this our message would be honey nothing nothing you do or say could separate you from me at least not emotionally nothing is going to separate it must be the foundation of the relationship and timeouts fly in the

3:37 face of this now some will say to me uh in this context well gour if I didn't send him to his room I'd kill the guy well then obviously it is much safer it's relative Etc but who should get the time out in this case it of course should be us the parents who get the time out to be able to get a hold of oursel because the most important message we can give in the context of misbehavior is the

4:05 relationship can take the weight it's not at stake I'm still your dad I'm still your mom everything is okay