This is the first session of a Saturday parenting conference with Adam Young and Dan Allender. This is session #1.
Session #1: What Children Need
Adam Young
Delight is the NORTH star of parenting
You should be in awe of your child. You should delight in them. Our longings for our children come from gaps in our own stories. We have to be aware of how our own desires affect our children. Children need to be delighted in for who they actually are -- not who we want them to be.
You want to have a sense of joy that this child is the greatest creation ever! What do I need as a a parent to restore a sense of delight in my son or daughter.
There are things that block our delight in our children. We will talk about that later. But for now, let's just ponder: What do you absolutely love about your son or your daughter?
Two book suggestions:
A General Theory of Love
Parenting From the Inside Out
Limic Resonance
Whenever your child feels fear or sorrow or joy or surprise or anger, their limbic brain is all lit up.
Your child has a limbic brain. Only mammals have limbic systems. Mammals have developed the ability to attune to one another.
Your ability to attune to the inner emotional state of your child or children. Your state can leap between your own mind and that of your child (or a friend/spouse). Your thoughts can't leap. But your feeling can. And they do. This is why watching a movie in a theater is a different experience than watching at home by yourself.
Secure attachment is a result of limbic resonance. Another world for that is attunement. Securely attached children aren't hugged the most. They are hugged when they want to be hugged. They are put down when they want to be put down.
The first superpower you have as a parent is the ability to resonate with your child's emotional states. You should be trying to intuit what they are feeling and what they are needing. Participating in this process of reading your child, no matter how clumsily you do it, allows your child's brain to develop in a very healthy way. It gives the child the physiological experience of, "My emotions matter to my caregivers. I will be responded to in a meaningful way." The child feels pursued about someone who cares about them on the inside. There are few greater gifts that you can give to a child then this.
Limbic Regulation
Your second superpower is interactive/ regulation. A young child can't regulate their emotions. You provide this to their brain when they are dysregulated and needs support and care. The way children develop the brain structures to self-regulate their emotions is by having their emotions interactively regulated by caring, supportive caretakers.
This is why one of the greatest gifts you can give to your child is to provide interactive regulation to their emotions when that child is struggling. Emotional steadiness and resilience comes from interactive regulation by nearby attachment figures.
The brain is a very social organ. Our brains and our children's brains require a source of stabilization that is outside of ourselves. We can't always be emotionally stable on our own. We need others to help interactively regulate us at times. Emotional states are contagious. Skin is not as thick of a barrier as we tend to think of it as being. You have the ability to provide emotional regulation for your child.
Your children need you to learn what they are feeling in the first place. We don't come out of the womb being able to identify our feelings. A child can't know themselves emotionally until they are known themselves by another caring adult.
Your children are different from you. They need different things than you needed at their age. To grow in your parenting is to cultivate a capacity for wonder, a capacity to discover the utter uniqueness of your child.
None of our children are who we want them to be.
No Drama Discipline by Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
Your child has an upstairs brain (prefrontal cortex) and a downstairs brain (limbic system). Your child can enter a reactive mode instead of a responsive mode. It is important to understand that when you are upset with your child, they are probably in a downstairs/reactive state that is unconscious in how they respond.
When our child is already dysregulated, they don't need anger and instruction. They need connection, attunement, and comforting touch. Your child cannot process your words when they are in that state. When they are in a reactive downstairs brain state they don't have the option of calmly listening to what you are saying. They need quiet, soothing, physical touch. That will help the move from their downstairs brain to their upstairs brain. This helps them strengthen their upstairs brain.
The goal is to grow descending neural networks in our children so that they develop the capacity to develop self-soothing when they are dysregulated and upset. The way you grow these descending networks is by emotionally and physically connecting BEFORE you give instruction or redirection.
When you physically touch your child, their upstairs brain comes back online and they learn to come back online. You want to connect with your child and offer some measure of connection with them. Even if you are exasperated with them. This begins to change the trajectory of the interaction.
Why are emotional interaction and comfort so important to your child? Because it shifts from the reactive downstairs brain limbic state to a state where the upstairs brain is back online. They can then process what you are saying.
Most misbehavior is a child having a hard time dealing with what is going on inside of the child. There are big feelings inside of them that they don't know how to deal with. Misbehavior is a cue that the child is overwhelmed and that the child needs support and care. Misbehavior is a bid for attachment from your child.
Emotional connection is the dimmer switch that keeps emotions from getting too big. When you connect with the child, you are turning it down a bit. Don't underestimate the helpfulness of physical touch. It releases oxycotin that is very helpful.
"Connection should be our first response in virtually any discipline situation."
The prefrontal cortex has descending neural networks that go down and connect with the limbic brain.
When your child becomes emotionally dysregulated, connection is the modulator that keeps the feelings from getting too big. Do not ignore them during these times either. This is the opposite of connecting with them. This results in some measure of isolation for the child in the very moment that their nervous system most needs connection with you.
When your child is having a meltdown, cortisol is moving through their body. And that causes suffering. What they need is comfort and connection from you.
A helpful three-step process to keep in mind when your child is dysregulated and misbehaving:
Step 1 -- Turn down the Shark Music: When our child loses it, we become filled with fear. Just notice it playing. Notice what is happening inside of your body.
Step 2 -- Curiosity: What would it look like to bring to some curiosity to the situation by asking yourself, "I wonder why my son is doing this right now? I wonder what is going on in their body?"
Step 3 -- When you speak to your child, focus on your nonverbal communication rather than your words: How you say something, tone of voice, facial expression, is way more important to your child's limbic brain than the actual words you speak.
Delight and Wonder
Do you have a sense of delight at the mysteriousness of who this amazing kid is. Whether they are 3 or 33. Is it because they aren't who you wished them to be? What might God be inviting you to ponder about the mismatch for you desire for your child and who they really are. Our longings often come from our own longings from our own childhoods in our stories. Are you aware of how your grief from your growing up years is playing out in how you are parenting your children?
Regret -- Conclusion
Don't forget Romans 8. "There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." We have a hunger for goodness for ourselves and for others. Worry is anticipated regret with regards to the future.
Don't forget that discipline if used as punishment -- that is just trauma -- and creates division between you and the child. Discipline has to be a form of coregulation.
