Nurturing Secure Attachment Through the Lifespan

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Donnelly Snipes and I'd like to welcome you to today's presentation on forming a foundation that nurtures secure attachment at all ages. Obviously, one of the things we want to do as parents or as clinicians, helping parents is to help people get a secure attachment and a secure foundation as early as possible. It doesn't mean that, that if they don't, if people don't have that secure attachment before 18 months, all is lost. We actually develop attachment throughout our life and as we get older, our attachment changes a little bit and we're going to talk some about that. However, we can help parents and you know, ourselves, if we are parents, engage in activities that can help enhance that attachment relationship. So we're going to go start out by identifying the CARES approach to treating, to creating secure attachment. And I just kind of created the acronym CARES because I like acronyms. I don't know. We'll explore the needs of children in infancy, early childhood, and middle and high school to identify challenges that parents may face in maintaining that secure attachment. Because, you know, children can be a little bit challenging sometimes. And we'll talk about ways to promote secure attachment in an age appropriate manner. The way we interact with a teenager in order to maintain that secure attachment is going to be different than the way we interact with an infant. The CARES process for secure attachment, the child will or person must experience a sense of consistency from the caregiver or caregivers. They must feel like people are there and they can count on them being there. They must experience attention. And some people need more attention than others, and that's going to be dependent partly on the person. But all of us need our caregivers, our secure bases, if you will, to be able to give us attention when we need it. When we need to return to that home base for that comforting, we need our caregivers to be able to provide that attention, which isn't necessarily as easy. If the parent or the caregiver is dealing with addiction or spousal abuse or mental health issues, they may have a lot more difficulty having the energy and ability to be attentive to, to the individual. Children need to experience responsiveness. When children experience distress, it triggers their attachment behaviors. They return to that home base. They return to the safety of that nest, if you will. Returning to that safety and having that home base there is only part of it. Responsiveness means not only mirroring, validating, active empathy, all that kind of stuff, whatever you want to call it, mirroring those feelings, but we also want to help children learn how to soothe. We want to help them calm down, and we call that up regulation, or just regulation, if you will. We want to help them start learning how to regulate their emotions. Children need to experience empathy and validation. We may not think it's a big deal, but it may feel like a huge deal to them. We, we want to make sure that we don't tell them that their feelings are not valid, that they're being silly or they're being overly dramatic. We want to empathize with how they're feeling and validate how they're feeling and then go back up to that mirroring and upregulation and help them figure out, okay, now what do we do with it? Now that you feel this way, how do we improve the next moment? Which takes us down to solutions. With infants, when my son would get overheated, he got overheated a lot. He had difficulty regulating his temperature, so he would get overheated, he would start crying. I would, you know, first thing I would do is take off his little socks, and that would help him start feeling better. So he started to learn to trust me. He started to learn to trust that the caregivers in his environment were going to take care of his distress. And, and because he couldn't do it. Think about, and I think I'm jumping ahead of myself here, but I will think about if you were in a hospital, you know, heaven forbid you were in a hospital. You were in traction and you couldn't move. You couldn't pull your covers up, you couldn't do anything. You couldn't get up to go to the bathroom. You have one leg up here and your arms are here, and you just, you can't move. That's kind of akin to what an infant feels like. Infants can't get up and say, okay, I need to go to the bathroom, or I'm wet, let me change my diaper. They are entirely dependent on their caregivers. That's a scary place to be. That's a really scary place to be if you can't depend on somebody coming in to meet those basic needs. With older children, we're going to start helping them generate solutions, and we're going to talk about how to do that. The effects of a secure attachment at any age, the person feels lovable and worthy of support. The person says, you know, when I'm having a hard time, I go back to my caregivers or my secure relationships, and they pay attention, they validate my feelings, and, you know, they don't Just say, I don't have time for you right now. Just go deal with it. They are there. They provide the attention. People with secure attachment learn that others are available and responsive people are there to help them. With secure attachment, people develop good emotional regulation skills because from, you know, early on they are being met with attentiveness and responsiveness. That caregiver is teaching them how to self soothe. That caregiver is teaching them how to regulate their emotions. They have frustration and distress tolerance. For the same reason as caregivers, we can't always solve every problem. We shouldn't necessarily solve every problem either. So when that child comes to us and is in distress, sometimes we have to sit there and empathize with them and just sit in that distress for a moment and go, yeah, this really stinks right now. People with secure attachment have a sense of self efficacy because they have had the encouragement and the courage to step out of their comfort zone and to try things and succeed a lot of the times, but not always, you know, and when they don't succeed, they can come back and they can get soothed, they can get attention, they can get love, they can get all that stuff that they need and they've learned that they can get outside that comfort zone. They can try things and they can be successful. People with good attachment can tolerate ambiguity in life. They don't have to know everything that's going to happen all the time because they have supports, they know they have resources, they have a sense of self efficacy. So if the wind blows a little bit of a different direction, they can deal with that. They're like, okay, well let's drop back and punt here. They can deal effectively with others. They learn through those interactions, through those caring interactions that they can communicate their needs in an assertive manner and they can get their needs met. But they also learn how to listen. They can effectively problem solve and elicit assistance when needed. How do we make this happen? And that's really what we're going to talk about today. For infants, they have these biological needs. Think about Maslow's hierarchy. All of us have these biological needs. We need food when we're hungry. We need shelter and physical comfort, give or take. You're not always going to be comfortable, but you need to feel safe and secure and, you know, not be getting rained on in the middle of a class or something. You need protection from overstimulation. And this is really true of infants. But more and more it's becoming true of children, adolescents and even adults because the media and the technology can be so overstimulating. It's just constantly coming in. And I know some days I look at Facebook and I just can't even open it. I'm like, I can't take the input. There's just too much. It may be positive, it may be unpleasant. Whatever it is, I just, I cannot take any more input. With infants, overstimulation is easy to protect them from. You know, when they start getting overstimulated, generally they start to close their eyes, they start to yawn, sometimes they start to get fussy and the, it's important to protect them from that kind of overstimulation, which will trigger that HPA axis, that threat response system, make them fussier, more irritable, etc. They need to sleep when they're sleepy. This, you know, seems like pretty common sense, but sometimes we get so caught up in our own time schedules and our, we've got to go to the store and we've got to do this that sometimes we're expecting kids to nap on the way and that's not good quality sleep. We need to make sure that children are getting the sleep they need and they need contact. One of the things that is most helpful for preemies is what's called kangaroo care and that skin to skin contact with the primary caregiver. That contact is really important for developing bonding as well as for regulating a lot of hormones, including oxytocin. Skin to skin contact is great. Obviously you're not going to be doing skin to skin contact with, you know, your 4 year old, but children, you know, even 11 year old, 18 month, 2 year olds, they need hugs, they need touch of some sort and that helps them in their development. Infants as well as the rest of us also need safety. Remember, that's the next level in Maslow's hierarchy. Consistent presence is important. Now we can't be there 247 and we're going to have to go to the bathroom. We're going to have to, you know, maybe you sleep in your own room and the child sleeps in a crib in his or her own room. You know, that's great. Or what we forget is children don't have object permanence. So as soon as you leave the room, you're gone, you've disappeared. Which is why they find peekaboo so incredibly amusing because you disappear behind the couch and then you reappear again and they don't realize that you're just still there behind the couch. Object permanence, until it develops is a source of anxiety because when you disappear, they're like, oh my gosh, it's really, really scary. That's why children, you know, especially young children, often cry more when they wake up because they're trying to elicit their, their caregiver to come in and get them. I know when my children would wake up and they'd be laying in their crib, I'd hear them in there playing with their toys or cooing or doing whatever. I wasn't going to rush in and pick them up. I wanted them to learn to occupy themselves some. But when they would cry, certainly I would go in or I would go in after a little while. But recognizing that children have this need and in order to feel safe, they need to know that when they're in distress, their caregiver is going to show up. We need to protect them when they are experiencing the startle response. Loud noises cause children to startle. Loud noises cause me to startle, for goodness sake. Pain causes people to startle. We need to let the child know that sometimes loud noises are going to happen and will help them self soothe. We need to let them know, just like when they go to the doctor to get their shots, sometimes pain is going to happen. But we can help them self soothe. Pain is only a temporary experience and will help them feel better. Love and belonging. Yes, infants need that sense of love and belonging. They're not thinking to themselves, well, I wonder if he loves me or not. But children need that sense. So when caregivers provide attention, affection and nurturance and unconditional positive regard, children will feel that sense of love and belonging. When an infant caregiver gets down and plays with them, then there's that connection, there's that bonding, there's that release of oxytocin that helps the child feel, we hypothesize that they're loved and they belong. As they get older, obviously there's more cognitive stuff that goes into it. When the 18 month old toddles over and says, you know, play with me. And the caregiver is willing to play with them. And the caregiver, you know, appreciates what they do and appreciates their creativity, even though it may not be your cup of tea. Respecting who they are and giving them a sense of mastery is help. Help. For infants if they develop this sense of trust, which is so important. Trust versus mistrust. This first stage, just like the foundation of the pyramid for Maslow, the foundation for psychosocial development is a development of trust, the ability to trust yourself and your instincts and the ability to trust that others are there to help you. When children develop this sense, they can interpret, trust and act on their own feelings, which gives them a sense of self confidence. It's like, I know what I need. Hey. They have a belief that others will fulfill their needs. Not necessarily always do it for them, but others will help them fill their needs, which gives them hope. They have a sense of self reliance. And you see that especially when they get a little bit older and they start moving into the terrible twos. They're comfortable with attention, they have an ability to be alone. And I don't mean, you know, leave your kid in the living room and go up to the store. I mean, the child can play independently without having to have a caregiver or another person there entertaining them constantly. Not all children want to play independently for extended periods. Part of that is due to temperament. You need to know your child, but you do want to help them develop the capacity to amuse themselves, at least for short periods of time. And they have a sense of contentment. If they don't develop trust, they have an inability to trust their own instincts, urges and feelings. So they're constantly looking to other people to tell them, okay, how do I feel? What am I supposed to do here? They're dependent on others. They have an inability to trust that others are going to be there and supportive. They're like, well, you know, I, I may have somebody show up to feed me, I may not, I don't really know. And they have discomfort with and craving of attention. Craving of attention? Why discomfort with? Well, because when they have it, it feels good, but they don't know when it's going to disappear and how long it's going to be away, when. And they crave it. At the same time, they want this attention, but they're afraid to revel in it because they're afraid it's going to go away and that hurts, which leads to irritability and anxiety. At this stage, children don't have object permanence and they don't have much of a frame of reference. So they rely on our feedback. If their needs are adequately met, they feel empowered, they feel confident and that helps a lot for encouraging them to develop that attachment. If their needs are being met, then when they have a problem, what are they going to do? They're going to go back to the person who meets their needs. They are going to go back to that secure home base. They're going to go, I'm anxious, I'm scared, I'm tired, I'M whatever. And that's going to start forming that attachment. The parental reaction to children will also greatly impact how that attachment develops. If the child comes back to that caregiver and says I'm angry or they're throwing a tantrum, obviously a young child is not going to walk up to you and go I'm angry. But if they're throwing a tantrum, the parental reaction can be one of dismissiveness, it can be one of anger, or it can be one of responsiveness and mirroring and nurturing and helping the child to self soothe. So let's think about the impact of that. If a parent is too stressed out to be able to deal with Junior, then Junior, whenever Junior has a need, is going to feel like he or she isn't worthy attention and responsiveness because he or she can't get it from caregiver. Which is a problem. When parents are not attentive. When they're constantly on their mobile device, you know, not even hardly looking up to see what Junior's doing and Junior can't get them to put it down, then obviously it can impact the attachment relationship because Junior feels like they're in second place to this mobile device. And when parents aren't consistent, you know, one time Junior throws a temper tantrum and the caregiver meets with all kinds of responsiveness and upregulation and empathy and it's wonderful. And the next time that Junior has a meltdown, the caregiver just gets angry and kind of loses their mind. Well, then Junior is going to go, it's not safe to express my feelings around this caregiver. Which means it's going to put a wall there where the person, where the child doesn't feel like they've got somebody they can turn to. Children need to know that we love them even when they're choosing behaviors that we don't really appreciate. So think about the impact of adverse childhood experiences during this time. If children are in a household where there is addiction or mental illness, the parents may not be able to meet their basic needs. The parents may not be able to meet their emotional needs to give the attention to be responsive, to be empathetic. The parents are, you know, barely hanging on as it is. They're, they're struggling with their own stuff, which means there's probably going to be a gap or a divide in that relationship instead of a strong attachment if there is absence, and sometimes absences are unavoidable. If you are in a military family, the military enlisted person may get deployed somewhere for six months. And to an infant, six months is a lifetime which can impact that relationship. If parents get divorced when children are young, really young, we're still in that infant stage, then separation, even for two or three weeks, can potentially impact the attachment in that relationship. Is it irreparable? No. But it's important to recognize that at that age, they've only been alive. You can count the number of hours they've been alive. So being away for three weeks is a big deal. That's a much more significant chunk of their life for a two year old than three weeks is to a 42 year old. You know, I can blink and three weeks go by. We want to recognize this because these adverse childhood experiences affect the attachment relationship and have reverberating impacts throughout the lifespan. We really need to pay attention to that. So mindful parenting, what do we do at this stage? Be attentive to the baby's cries and cues before they become hysterical. Just like when we work with older kids when we talk about distress tolerance using those skills. They need to start using those skills before they get into the red zone, before they get into the zone where they are just feeling they are out of control. It's really important to know your baby's cries. And there are five or six, depending on which website you look at. Five or six different cries that parents kind of get attuned to. You know, the hungry cry, you know, the sick cry, you know the tired cry. And being attentive to those, instead of just putting a pacifier in it anytime the baby cries, actually figuring out what do they need, that helps children start figuring out and learning what they need. And it also forms a stronger bond because you're actually meeting their need and making the distress go away. It's important that we accept the baby's needs as they are to create a validating environment. My son, when he was born, he was a micro preemie and he was fed through a gavage tube for the longest time. So he had gastric reflux really bad when he came home from the hospital because he had had a tube down his throat for so long he couldn't sleep. Every time he would lay back, he would have reflux and projectile vomiting and everything else. It was exhausting. And it got very frustrating. And it was hard not to get angry. It was hard not to get frustrated. I knew he wasn't doing it on purpose. I knew he was hurting. And it frustrated me that I couldn't make his hurt go away. But I wanted him to sleep because I wanted to sleep. It was important there that my husband was able to tag team so we could accept Sean's needs as they were at that point in time. And he had to be vertical and moving until we discovered Zantac. That was a wonderful thing. But creating a validating environment, not putting him down, going, you're just, you're being fussy. I'm just going to let you cry it out for the next three hours. Making sure that we met his needs, being consistent. If you're going to keep a consistent schedule, if you are going to be consistent and responding, you know, not let the kid cry for three hours one time and then meet their needs immediately the next time. Making sure that you're consistent in meeting their needs, making sure to calm yourself. Because stressed parents produce stressed babies. They pick up on the hormones and the signals that we're sending out. And when a parent is stressed, the children naturally mirror that stress. We want to be able to keep our own calm, which is really challenging. That's one of the most effective and in some ways the easiest skills to teach new parents is if you start calming yourself down, your baby is going to calm down in turn most of the time, not always. I mean, if they're in agony because they've got a double ear infection, they may not calm down or. But if they're in agony because they've got a double ear infection and they're crying, that's one thing. If you start to get stressed, it's going to feed and intensify their distress on top of the pain they're already experiencing. Keep a routine to help set baby circadian rhythms. A routine for feeding, a routine for sleeping. Some kids are a little bit loosey goosey in their routine. Some kids are, you know, you could set the clock by my son. I knew, you know, exactly what time it was when it was time to put him down and exactly how long he would sleep. He was like clockwork back then. That helps for children because then their body gets used to setting those circadian rhythms. Their body gets used to being awake when it's supposed to be awake, so their mood is a little bit better. And when baby's mood is better, then parents mood is better and joint activities are more pleasurable and the bonding is stronger. And encourage parents to view the world from their baby's eyes. You know, lay down there like I talked about earlier, imagine your attraction or wrap yourself up in a blanket where you can't get out. You know, burrito baby yourself if you've ever heard that term, you know, swaddle yourself so you can't move and then see how it feels. You know, you may get hot, you may have to pee, you may have an itch, and you can't move. So that can be a little overwhelming. Now, sometimes it feels good to be, you know, swaddled for a minute, which is why some of the weighted blankets can really help with sensory issues. But that's a whole different podcast. Lay down on the floor and look up. You know, when the dog comes over to give you a lick on the face when you're laying there. Number one, if you can't control your arms well enough to make the dog go away. But when you're looking up and this big old dog face starts coming at you, that can be kind of scary. You know, for us, we're bigger, we're looking down, we see this little dog. We don't think anything about it. For a little kid, that's a big old face coming at him. View the world through the baby's eyes. Children with autism or FASD or sensory impairments may experience the world more acutely than the rest of us do. Noises may feel louder, lights may seem brighter. Things may startle them more. We need to be aware of that, because things that don't bother us at all may be excruciating or terrifying to someone who has heightened sensory responsiveness. For toddlers and beyond, in addition to those biological safety, love, and belonging needs we already talked about, the toddler starts developing self esteem. They're learning I'm lovable for who I am, and I'm lovable even when I make a mistake. And toddlers make mistakes. They make lots of mistakes. You know, thankfully, I never had anybody try to put a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the vcr. But, you know, they made other mistakes. And that's just part of growing, because they're still experimenting and trying to figure out this world by trial and error. They can't read a book yet to figure out how it works. So they're like, oh, I wonder what would happen if. You know, what would happen if I put the vacuum cleaner in the fish tank. Not a good thing. They're also developing self efficacy. They're starting to learn, hopefully, that they're capable of trying new things and sometimes succeeding. And they're learning that if they make a mistake, their caregiver is there to help them. If that happens, then they develop self efficacy. Think about your own kids, or if you can remember back that far, think about yourself when you were little and you would Try things. And sometimes they'd work out, and sometimes it wouldn't go so well and you'd have to figure out how to fix it. Think about the oh game, or that's what we called it. When children are just old enough, they're sitting in their high chair and they discover that if they throw their bottle off the high chair and it falls on the floor, you pick it up. Oh, boy, that's a good game. And so you go, oh, you pick it up and you put it back on their high chair. Trey, guess what? They throw it on the floor again and you pick it up again. And they've learned. Now I can cause an effect. I can make this big human do something that I want. I can make them get my stuff for me. Or when they learn how to start asking for food. I remember my son signed first, and when he was hungry, he would come up to me and he'd do this, which is technically more. But I'd say, are you hungry? And he would say yes, or thirsty or whatever. But that was empowering for him because he knew that when he was hungry, all he had to do was ask and we would go, you know, take care of business. During this phase, according to Erickson, children are going through two different stages. Autonomy versus shame and doubt. And that's toddlers, your two to three years. This is kind of your toilet training. Can I do things myself or am I reliant on others? Children at this age are starting to dress themselves a little bit and they are starting to toilet train and they're figuring out whether they can. If their parents are overly permissive, then they may have difficulty grasping the concepts. And, you know, maybe they're three years old and in preschool and still the only one in diapers or whatever the case may be. Or if their parents are overly strict, then they may not get a chance to try. And so they don't get a chance to learn. The next phase, which is the preschool age, children begin asserting control and power. And this is when they start taking initiative to pick out their own clothes, to do different things. And, you know, sometimes they're going to take too much initiative, sometimes not enough. We need to be there to help nudge them and figure out what that level of initiative is, what level of initiative is helpful and appropriate in different settings. The biggest interferences at this stage with the attachment relationship is parents who are overly permissive or overly strict because they don't feel. Children don't feel safe and accepted if they are not able to try anything or if they get punished every time they reach out and try, they're like, okay, it's not safe to try to do anything. So I'm just gonna sit here. If I sit here, I don't get in trouble. Overly permissive parents, they may try a bunch of stuff, and they may have more failure experiences than successes, which can also be problematic. Or overly permissive parents that just don't even shape their children's behavior, they don't pay attention. Can contribute to a child's lack of secure attachment because the parent is not attentive. It's like you can stand up and wave flags, and you're just not going to get that parent's attention. Lack of praise for exploration and experimentation can also be a challenge at this age. Yes, it can be frustrating sometimes when children do things that you're not expecting, or they start exploring when they're not supposed to and touching things. Like when they go to the museum and they want to touch everything. But you want to encourage them and put them in places where it's okay to explore and experiment and guide those things so they start feeling that, hey, my desire to explore, that's okay. Preschoolers have difficulty discerning the truth from fiction, dreams, and imagination. This is one of our challenges. Again, we know there's no monsters in the closet or. Or under the bed, but children don't. They really believe that there may be a monster there. My son, bless his heart, he'd kill me if he knew I was talking about this. But when he was little, he was sure that all of his stuffed animals came to life at night. So before he went to sleep, he would turn all of them around so they were facing the wall, which was no small task, let me tell you. Now, I could explain this to him, but that didn't make sense to him. In his world, that's what happened. And he had difficulty differentiating between truth and fiction. Sometimes I felt like it was working, like I was talking to a patient who is schizophrenic. Eventually, I just joined him in his reality. And, you know, that's how we discovered turning, turning the stuffed animals around, because that made him feel safe. But we don't want to lack empathy and validation when children bring their fears and their concerns to us. There's a monster under the bed. Okay, what do we do about it? And then maybe you make a plan, because you don't want to get up three times a night, every night, to make sure the monster's not under the bed. So you need to make a plan. That's over here in that generate solutions. We want to empathize that it's scary when you feel like there's a monster under your bed and validate that child feels that way. And then we want to talk about, okay, how can you feel safe? What can we do that would make you feel like that is not going to happen again? Toy Story. You know, when kids watch the movie Toy Story, those are all inanimate objects that come to life, so it's difficult to differentiate. It's like, okay, does that happen in real life or not? Children at this age often have imaginary friends, and it's a parenting choice how much you want to support that. But recognizing that most children have imaginary friends. So we don't want to necessarily tell them that there's nobody there. You're just. You're making that up. Well, that may be their imaginary friend they're talking to, and they're developing some social skills with that person. Okay, so is, you know, your imaginary friend going to have tea with us today or whatever? Preschoolers tend to be egocentric, centric, and dichotomous. Egocentric. They think everybody interprets the world the way they do, and they think what they see is the same thing everybody else sees. That can be a problem. If they feel scared or they feel angry, then they feel like everybody else feels scared or angry. They think in centric terms. They focus on only one thing at a time. You're at the playground, and Jimmy has the basketball, and Sally wants the basketball. Okay, egocentric and centric. Sally is focused on the basketball. She's not focused on, what else could I do? How would Jimmy feel if I took the basketball from him? Sally's focused on, I want the basketball, and that's what I'm focused on right now. And they think in dichotomous terms, all or nothing. I either have the basketball or I don't have the basketball. We want to help children at this stage develop empathy without invalidating how they're feeling. And this goes back to that. Consistency, attention, responsiveness, empathy, and solutions. Children are going to have disagreements. Children are going to get into situations where their egocentrism is not helpful. Lots of situations. Okay. We want to validate how they're feeling and empathize with them. But then we also want to help them soothe, to get into their wise mind and then generate solutions. And when we help them develop empathy, we can ask them, especially the younger children, just start out with, how would you feel if Jimmy came over and took the basketball from you when you were playing with it. And then once the child identifies how they would feel, you can say, okay, so how do you think Jimmy felt when you went and took the basketball away from him? Try to help them start taking different perspectives. There's going to be a lot of coaching at this age. Children at this age typically love to play make believe. And for some of us parents, it's really hard to find our make believe. I struggled with that the entire time my kids were young. But make believe and playtime can be great for teaching interpersonal skills. You can teach turn taking. We'll play cars for a while, and then we'll go over here and do a puzzle. You can take turns on, you know, who's doing what in different games. You can use playtime and imagination to teach communication. Asking the child, what do you want to do? Or why don't you tell me how we play this game? My kids always were making up games. Or if you're imagining that you're going into space on a spaceship, you know, tell me where we're going, who's going to be there? Really have them flesh out that story a little bit and learn to communicate. Learn, but learn to listen as well. And in playtime, kids learn effective conflict resolution. If they don't want to stop an activity, you know, they're having fun, but it's dinner time, they've got to stop. So it's important for them to learn how to manage that distress that happens when they've got to stop doing something that they're enjoying. Conflict resolution. When you've got two kids that want to do two different activities, or if you've got two action figures that are fighting, you know, sometimes we see children acting things out. We can help them help the action figures navigate that discussion or navigate that problem and start learning conflict resolution. So make believe can be really helpful. Playtime can be really helpful for encouraging kids to develop skills for solutions. And when we engage with our children during playtime, we're giving them that attention. When we are consistent with engaging them at play with them during playtime, they recognize that we want to be there, we want to spend time with them. They feel validated, they feel loved, they feel like they belong. And when they get upset or hit a snag or get frustrated during that time, we can help them learn those regulation skills, which increases our connection. Because now we've been through another obstacle and we've done it together. Think about the par courses that sometimes we have to go on for our jobs to do team building. Well, this is kind of like Team building with your kid, and the more obstacles you have to traverse together, the stronger generally that bond becomes. Children often have difficulty putting into words how they feel or what's going on inside. So we need to help them identify their feelings and needs. A lot of times children act out how they feel. If they are feeling frustrated, they may throw a toy down or throw a temper tantrum. Okay, we want to look at what is this behavior? Getting very gestalt here. What is this behavior saying to me, what feeling might prompt this behavior? We pay attention to the child and we can admonish them from the behavior, but recognize that they are loved for who they are. You know, I'm sorry you're feeling so frustrated right now. Throwing the toy is probably not the best choice. You know, what can we do to calm down for a few minutes? You know, and young children, you probably have to just help them, whether it's taking them on a walk or taking a timeout of some sort and then helping them generate solutions for how to solve that problem. Go back to the problem that they were facing and go, okay, how can we fix this problem that's going on? Help children identify and address feelings and needs before they get into the red zone. If you're being consistent and paying attention and being responsive, you notice when your child is starting to bubble up, and that's when we pull them aside and say, you seem to be getting overwhelmed. What do you need to do to help you feel better? Or with much younger children, let's take a walk for a minute. And sometimes you need to do this even at the playground. You know, why don't we just go on a walk for a minute and get a drink of water and then we'll come back and figure out what's going on. Children use everyday objects in conventional and unconventional ways, which, you know, I said can be kind of frustrating sometimes. And we need to honor their creativity in the right time and place. We don't want to be the no person because that sets a divide between us in our relationship. We want to be the sometimes person and respect their creativity. And when we have to say no, we want to give them a reason for why, you know, you can't bang the pots and pans when daddy's trying to sleep. You know, what can we do that's quieter? You know, provide a. Provide an alternative for them. Children, you know, pots and pans, they'll pull them out and they will make their own little one man band. My children were a little bit of a strange group, but my daughter Wanted to make a froggy amusement park. She loved the little frogs that hung out in our pond. And so she got a baking sheet out and we figured out we put some mud in it and made a little amusement park for them. Okay, you know, whatever. Not using that baking sheet again, but you get where we're going. My son hated taking a bath and he decided one day that he was going to go out and play in the rain. And he took his shampoo with him and I looked out in the backyard and he's like sitting there lathering up his hair and I'm like, what are you doing? He's like taking a bath. Okay, you know, that's fine. And then here, you know, unconventional ways. My daughter used a little six month old onesie for her, for her dog. She was very proud of that, that she was dressing up her dog. And you can tell the dog's thrilled. And she used one of her toy purses to carry around one of our foster cats for a while because it was easier to carry him around that way and he couldn't claw her. Okay. Made perfect sense. I don't think he's really happy, but you know, he wasn't being strangled or anything. He was saf and respecting that because, you know, that was important to her. Preschoolers love to ask questions both to learn facts as well as how to interact with others. We need to try to be patient. And with the mommy, why is the sky blue? Why does the bird make that sound? Why does this happen? It's like, oh my gosh, why don't you ask Google for a while? We don't want to push kids away when they're curious. Sometimes it can get overwhelming for us. It's good to be authentic at that point in time and tell them, you know, mommy's feeling really overwhelmed right now. How about I answer three more questions and then we take a break and do something else or turn it back on them. You know, they say, mommy, why is the sky blue? Why do you think the sky's blue? What other things are blue? You know, start asking them questions and encourage them to think Socratically. Help children learn how to answer their own questions by using scaffolding. We're going to talk about that in a minute. And help children learn to self regulate in mutual conversations instead of dominating the conversation or not saying anything. Helping them learn to take turns to listen and to engage and participate in active listening. And yes, small children can participate in active listening. So what can we do at this age? We can encourage children and Ourselves because we want to model all of these behaviors to explore and experiment, you know, try new things. My daughter wanted to learn how to paint. I am not a painter, but we explored and experimented together and we would work on paintings at the same table. And I would ask her, you know, what color do you think I should use for this flower or whatever? And she would give me her input and it made her feel so good when she was able to help me. And obviously if she asked me for something, I would help her, but most of the time she was helping me and that made her feel very proud. Praise children and yourself for trying even if you fail. And one of my favorite books when I was little was the Little Critter book Just for your. And it's about this little kid who wanted to do all this stuff just for his mom, but everything he did kind of came out wrong. That's a good book to read with children and to talk about it. Reassure your children and again yourself. Model this that their loved ones for who they are as they are. Create an all about me book with the child and use lots of adjectives like helpful, kind, polite, creative, energetic, determined or good at. And include a section for good or nice things that the child does. You know, I have my adult clients do these things and it's great to do for your child. So if they're having a bad day or even if they're not, sometimes you just go through and you look through it kind of like the old fashioned photo albums that we used to have. Do be aware of your opinions and how you endorse them to prevent unintended consequences. Especially in this age because children are thinking dichotomously and if you are being disparaging of something, then they, if, if that's something they identify with, they may think that, they may think that you don't like them. For example, if you are being disparaging of people with different sexual orientations and they are, you know, as they start to grow up, they start thinking that they may have a non binary sexual orientation. Well, if they've heard all this stuff when they were little, that being bad, then they may be afraid to tell you. So it's important to be aware of what you say in front of your children. Practice family mindfulness at breakfast, after school and at bedtime. Ask what the best and worst things that happen that day. Pay attention to verbal and nonverbal cues to help children label their feelings. And this is even older than preschool. I still do this with my kids. I'm like, you seem Kind of flat today. You want to tell me what's going on? Use feeling words and pictures. For most children that are toddler preschool age, happy, frustrated, angry, jealous, sad, guilty, overwhelmed and scared hits most of them. You don't need that huge vocabulary at this time. However, using those picture posters with those words and images can help children start developing that emotional vocabulary. Help children learn to identify sensations, urges and feelings that are associated with their emotions. Because in order to upregulate themselves, in order to learn to self soothe, they've got to know what's going on and they've got to recognize those sensations, urges and feelings so they can start emotion regulation before they get into that red zone. Teach children to check in with themselves periodically, you know, just regular mindfulness. And help children to learn, learn to tolerate emotions. And not all of the distress tolerance activities are great for young children, but some of them that are include activities when a child is having a bad moment, when they're having a meltdown, when they're overwhelmed. Sometimes they need to do like my son used to do and just go sit in his room quietly because he was overstimulated. Other times children need to go on a walk or color. Kids will get a lot of information out when they're coloring or play something. Maybe they need to act out something. Encourage them to find activities that they can do that might be able to distract them for a few minutes until they can, you know, get more into their wise mind if you will. Encourage them to do things that elicit the opposite emotions. You know, start telling them knock knock jokes or tickling them or whatever. After you've empathized and validated and everything, we're going to start talking about improving the next moment and then start offering encouragement. Provide instructions objectively or pictorially to enhance your effectiveness. I used to take a picture of my kids room so they knew what clean looked like. In my definition, this is what the room should look like when it's clean and this isn't their room. But it was a picture I found for their nighttime routine. Use pictures because you know, this age they're probably not reading so they know what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it. Only provide one task at a time. Children can't remember, you know, three or four things. So if you want them to go take a bath, then have them take a bath and then ask them to brush the teeth, their teeth and then tell them, okay, let's go read a story. Start encouraging empathy. When you're watching a show together you're paying attention to them. Stop it periodically and say, you know, how do you think Dora felt when that happened? Encourage them to start thinking about how other characters might have felt. Use scaffolding to assist with problem solving and efficacy. Scaffolding steps or parts. Make suggestions for what they could do. Ask probing questions. Include limited response. So if you want your kid to start figuring out how to dress themselves, you may not say, well, what are you going to wear today? And let them have free reign of the whole closet. You may put four outfits out on the bed and say, which one of these would you like to wear today? And then gradually let them have more choices. Use demonstrations like when you're teaching a child to tie their shoes. Introduce a prop. You can use a pictorial poster for what they do first, second, third, and fourth. Provide support. You know, discuss their plan. You want to make a grilled cheese sandwich. That's advanced for toddlers, but whatever. What do you need to do first? You need to get the bread out. Okay, what do you need to do next? You need to get the pan out. You see where we're going with that? We're just going to make step by step instructions, offer encouragement. And some things that you can use scaffolding with, with this age group are tying their shoes, cleaning up toys. And a lot of times, if you have bins, you know, kids may not want to put everything away neatly but have bins that they can sort their stuff into. Coloring. It can be tempting to tell children what color to make something or to make sure they stay in the lines. Or we can let them, you know, start coloring on their own and then gradually make suggestions for puzzles. You know, we used to do puzzles all the time. And I'd go, well, what do you think is going to fit in this spot right here? Which one of these pieces you think might fit? Making lunch. You can do it together. You can scaffold how to make lunch together. Baking cookies. We used to love doing that together. And obviously I would do all the stuff with the hot stove and everything, but I would measure it and he would dump it and he would mix it, and we could work together. And then he would, you know, make the cookies with the cookie cutters. Washing the dog, playing ball. All of these things can be scaffolded so the child can learn to do this, those things more independently. Middle and high school. Is the industry and inferiority or industry and identity stages. What am I good at and who am I? This is a time of exploration physically, recreationally, academically, and socially. So they're doing a lot of stuff. They're away from the house a lot and they're trying a lot of new things and they're learning a lot of new things. But they need that secure home base to come back to. But their needs are changing. There are differences in physical development between them and their peers which can make them feel like they don't belong. You know, if they haven't started to develop yet or if they've developed faster than everybody else. There's a lot of desire to fit in and to belong and also to become more independent. What we face as parents or challenges we face are allowing those secure attachments with others, allowing them and being okay with them. Turning to their best friend when they've got a problem instead of coming to us, which the first few times it can feel devastating. But recognizing that that is how they are starting to expand their attachment network. Understand increasing conflict as an effect of individuation. As they start to cut that proverbial umbilical cord, they are going to become more resistant to sometimes doing the things that we want to do because they're trying to decide what they want and what matters to them. We need to set and maintain consistent limits and rules, but use rationales and we want to be responsive. Validate how mad they are and how unfair they think we're being and explain to them why we're putting that rule in place. We're empathizing, we're validating, and we're helping them again learn to regulate those really powerful hormones and emotions. We need to negotiate increased responsibility to let them individuate so they feel safe and accepted. They don't feel like we're mad at them or they're not afraid that we're going to turn our backs on them as they get older. We need to be authentic and empathetic even during disagreements, recognizing that they're going to have their own points of view at a certain age and we are going to accept them and love them for who they are, regardless of whether we share the same opinions. We need to model emotion regulation and distress tolerance and give praise. Help them prevent vulnerabilities because it's easier to deal with life on life's terms when you do prevent those vulnerabilities. And you can look into dialectical behavior therapy for that. Sustain a goal directed partnership. Be able to sit down and have discussions about, okay, this is what I need to happen and this is what you want to happen. I need your room cleaned. You want to go to the football game tonight? How do we make this a mutually acceptable situation? And ensuring children that, you know, ensuring children know that you're supportive in school spirit. We're not going to be there a lot of the time in person anymore when they get to be teenagers. But knowing in their hearts that we're there in spirit and we can be there is really important to maintaining that attachment in adolescence. Children need different things at different developmental stages due to their cognitive capabilities as well as their psychosocial needs. The key to attachment is creating an environment in which children feel safe, loved and unconditionally accepted. CARES is the acronym that represents what you need to do to establish secure attachment. And represents consistency in attending, in messages and in rules. Attention to the child in a meaningful way to them, you know, doesn't have to be a lot of attention as long as it's quality attention. Responsiveness to help children identify emotions and self regulate empathy to children's feelings and perspectives in order to create a validating environment and solutions that are generated at first by the parents, you know, when they're younger, and then by the youth in order to help them learn how to solve problems. We want to help them create a sense of resilience, but a knowledge that we are going to be that safe place that they can come back to.