Hitting Children Leads to Trauma, Not Better Behavior

February 10, 2022

[This post is about the practice of hitting children to modify their behavior, usually referred to as “spanking.” I choose not to use that term here, in part because I feel it minimizes the seriousness of bodily violence against children, and also because the term has been co-opted to refer to a type of consensual sexual play. Instead, I use other terms like “hitting,” “physical punishment,” and “corporal punishment.” Also content notice: There are references to violence and slavery in this post.]

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Almost every caregiver has experienced that emergency that makes them want to impulsively discipline their child. For example, your child chases a ball into the street, directly into traffic, unaware of the oncoming truck. You bolt after them, grab them by the arm, and rush both of you to the sidewalk. You’ve just saved your child from getting injured, or worse. You’re terrified and possibly angry, too. For some adults, this intense activation leads them to strike a child.

“Now, why would you hit them?” Elizabeth Gershoff said to me when we discussed the effects of physical force on children. Gershoff is a professor of Human Development and Families Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. For the past 20 years, along with collaborators at other universities, she has been a leading researcher documenting the harmful effects of hitting children for “discipline.”

“I agree we need to get the child out of the street,” she continued. “But the child is already scared to death. They see your fear on your face and hear it in your voice. You’re already communicating the seriousness of the behavior by your emotional expression, your words, and your tone. Those are the tools you already have to express that they cannot run into the street, that they could get badly hurt, that you’re scared, and that if they can’t keep their feet on the sidewalk, then they’ll have to go inside. There are many ways you can deal with the situation that do not require hitting them.”

“If you have to hit somebody, you have lost control,” she said.

Why do adults still hit children?

Hitting a child is a failure of the adult in many ways, Gershoff told me. Sometimes adults misunderstand a child’s behavior and ascribe the wrong intention to it. They think the child was purposely trying to make them mad, get back at them for something, show they don’t care, or even take advantage of them. But most often, what an adult calls “misbehavior” is actually just a mistake on the part of the child, Gershoff said. For example, a preschooler may not know that it’s not okay to write on a wall. To them, that big, white expanse looks like a large canvas or the easel they use at school, and they were simply inspired to color it. It can be helpful for adults to learn more about what children are capable of at different ages and channel a child’s inspiration in appropriate directions. (See some resources below.)

Photo Credit: Mauro Fermariello Science Source Images

What many people won’t admit is that hitting a child can provide an emotional release and a fleeting sense of power for the grown-up. An adult may feel frustrated that they’ve lost control of the child, but when they strike the child, the child stops what they’re doing and usually starts crying. The adult feels vindicated by getting the child’s attention, and their pent-up frustration or anger is released. They believe “it worked,” and the strategy becomes reinforced. Many parental feelings are masked by anger—fear, alarm, loss, grief, shock, shame, etc.—and lashing out can momentarily transfer the uncomfortable energy onto the child—a much less powerful target.

Sometimes physical punishment results from an adult’s failure to supervise and plan responsibly—and maybe the feelings of shame and regret that come up when things go wrong. “Our job is to make a safe environment for children,” said Gershoff. “Why was the child near the street to begin with? Why is the pot on a stove in a position where the child can grab the handle? Why is the electrical socket uncovered? We adults are responsible for making a safe environment for children.” Of course, not every misstep can be anticipated; no parent can make the world 100% safe for their child. When accidents do happen, then, it’s the responsibility of the adult to respond in a way that doesn’t involve physical or emotional harm.

Most people who use physical force were on the receiving end of it when they were children. Studies show that children who are physically punished are more likely to perpetuate the practice as adults, believing that it’s not only normal but necessary for raising children properly. Even the small percentage of pediatricians who still support this kind of hitting—in direct opposition to the official position of the American Academy of Pediatrics—tend to be the ones who were hit as children.

“When a child hits a child, we call it aggression.
When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility.
When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault.
When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline.”

— Haim Ginott, Child Psychologist and Psychotherapist

The use of physical force against children has deep roots. Throughout history, children were objectified as sub-human, the property of adults to do with as they pleased. Maltreatment was the norm, and children were “civilized” by routine beatings and worse. In the U.S., it wasn’t until 1974 that child abuse was made illegal. Even then, it was restricted to actions (or failures to act) that caused “serious harm” or death to a child; physical force that did not cause a visible injury, and was intended to “modify behavior,” remained legal. The distinction, though, often falls to the eye of the beholder—a judge or other representative of the state.

Some communities are more apt to rely on physical punishment. Conservative Christians historically believed that children were inherently “depraved” and “filled with the devil,” requiring harsh treatment to become proper adults. Today’s Christian leadership is divided on the issue. James Dobson, therapist and founder of the Christian group, Focus on the Family, advocates the physical discipline of children as long as the adult is “calm” and hugs the child afterward. But two religious denominations, the United Methodist Church, and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, passed resolutions encouraging parents to use discipline that does not involve corporal punishment.

A 2015 Pew Research Center survey showed that in the U.S., Black families use physical methods to punish their children twice as often as White or Latinx families. “Black parents have legitimate fears about the safety of their children,” writes Stacey Patton, professor at Howard University and author of Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America. “And the overwhelming majority believe physical punishment is necessary to keep Black children out of the streets, out of prison, or out of police officers’ sight…a belief [that], however heartfelt, is wrong.” She asserts that physical punishment is not a Black cultural tradition; it’s racial trauma.

Charles Blow, New York Times columnist and author of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, concurs. He acknowledges that some people believe that it is better to be punished at home by someone who loves you than someone outside the home who doesn’t. But that is a “false binary between the streets and the strap,” he writes. “Love doesn’t look like that.”

Stacey Patton considers physical punishment through a historical lens: “We cannot have discussions about corporal punishment in Black communities without talking about history,” she writes. Many Black Americans are descendants of enslaved people who were abducted from West Africa. According to historians and anthropologists, there is no evidence that parents in West African societies used physical force on their children. In fact, they believed that children were gods or reincarnated ancestors, arriving from the afterlife with spiritual powers for the good of the community. Hitting a child could make their soul leave their body. But the slave trade increasingly stole younger and younger people, and by the time abolition was imminent, the average age of captives was between nine and twelve. It was impossible for young people to carry child-rearing traditions from their homeland, and once they were in America, adults were under tremendous pressure to make their children docile and compliant in front of white people in order to survive. Today, a number of Black parenting experts advocate for families to break intergenerational cycles of trauma and adopt constructive ways to guide children without physical punishment.

Why do people who were hit as children often become hitters themselves?

A common psychological defense our minds employ is to act out the hurt we’ve experienced at the hands of others by perpetrating it on other people later, even with those we love. This happens when haven’t become aware of our painful feelings or fully examined them.

Source: Instagram post from the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Trauma experts explain why this happens. Children depend on the adults around them for survival. This dependency takes the form of attachment, something I wrote about in a previous post. So when children experience pain from the person who’s supposed to keep them safe, it’s one of the worst kinds of harm they can experience. Their nervous system, designed to keep them safe, begins to get sculpted around the constant threat, creating brain circuitries that are vigilant, reactive, and dysregulated. At the same time, their attachment system needs to keep them in the relationship, so it devises all kinds of excuses: “It’s not that bad;” “I deserved it;” “It made me a better person,” etc. In other words, children dissociate from their feelings of pain and fear.

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A post shared by Kier Gaines (@kiergaines)

Kier Gaines, a therapist, social media influencer, and father of two, describes the dynamic in an Instagram video that went viral. “The men that were a generation before us, got raised by the men that were a generation before them, and those men didn’t really know warm love….Before you take on a family,” he says, “go see somebody about your past. Go see somebody about the trauma you’ve endured throughout your life, and start healing.”

Hitting children, even for “discipline,” is a form of trauma.

Some adults cling to the excuse that a single swat on the bottom, or one slap on the head, can’t be that bad, and is necessary to “teach them a lesson.”

“Is there any kind of hitting that works to change behavior?” I asked Gershoff.

“There’s no situation that I can imagine where physical punishment is useful or necessary,” replied Gershoff. “It doesn’t teach children to behave well. It’s not effective for reducing aggression, or teaching self-control or prosocial behavior, or any of the things parents hope to teach children. It’s not effective in either the short- or the long-term.”

Physical punishment is one of the most intensely studied aspects of parenting. Hundreds of studies over five decades have concluded that it’s harmful to children in just about every measurable way. Children’s behavior, emotions, intellectual functioning, and physical health all suffer. Gershoff’s most recent 2016 meta-analysis with Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, professor of social work at the University of Michigan, analyzed 75 studies involving 161,000 children. Three important conclusions were drawn:

First, consistent with earlier research, the analysis found no evidence that physical punishment changed the original, unwanted behavior.

Second, there were 13 significant harmful effects of the practice:

Poorer moral reasoning
Increased childhood aggression
Increased antisocial behavior
Increased externalizing behavior problems (disruptive or harmful behavior directed at other people or things)
Increased internalizing behavior problems (symptoms of anxiety or depression)
Child mental health problems
Impaired parent-child relationship
Impaired cognitive ability and impaired academic achievement
Lower self-esteem
More likely to be a victim of physical abuse
Antisocial behavior in adulthood
Mental health problems in adulthood
Alcohol or substance abuse problems in adulthood
Support for physical punishment in adulthood

Third, these outcomes were similar to effects of childhood trauma. A landmark set of studies in the 1990s documented that exposure to certain kinds of childhood experiences—including physical and emotional abuse or neglect, sexual abuse, domestic violence, family mental illness, incarceration, and substance abuse—causes great harm lasting into adulthood. And the more adverse experiences a child has, the greater the impact. The effects include increased risk for serious physical diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and COPD as well as early death, mental illness, suicidality, lower educational and professional attainment, and even reduced income. As a result of these findings, a ten-question screening tool known as the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Checklist is now widely used to identify risk for mental and physical illnesses due to ACEs, in the hope of providing early intervention and treatment.

Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor analyzed a subset of seven studies from their meta-analysis that compared the use of physical punishment to physical abuse and found that the impact was indistinguishable. Both physical punishment and physical abuse led to more antisocial behavior and mental health problems in childhood as well as increased mental health problems in adulthood. In a separate study, Gershoff and colleagues reanalyzed a subset of the original ACEs data and also found that physical punishment was associated with the same mental health problems in adulthood as physical and emotional abuse. In addition, it created an even greater likelihood of suicide attempts and substance abuse than physical and emotional abuse alone created.

Brain imaging studies also show a link between physical punishment and trauma. In a 2021 study, researchers showed 147 12-year-olds pictures of fearful and neutral faces while their brain activity was imaged in a functional MRI (fMRI) machine. Compared to children who were never physically punished, children who were physically punished had greater activity throughout the brain when viewing fearful faces. They also had more activity in regions of the brain related to threat appraisal, emotion regulation, and evaluating the mental state of others. Importantly, the pattern of their brain activity was the same as children who had been physically abused. When children have harmful interpersonal experiences, they become hypervigilant to the emotional expressions of others, because fearful or angry adult faces can be a cue that something bad is likely to follow. This study suggests that children who are physically punished are running the same brain circuitry as children who have been abused.

Data like this shows that the attempt to distinguish between physical punishment and physical abuse is no longer legitimate. What we now know is that inside the child, the response is the same. According to Gershoff, “Research like this may help parents understand that when they’re hitting their children, they’re causing fundamental damage to the child’s brain—not because they’re hitting them in the head. They’re hitting them in other places on their body, and it’s causing a massive stress reaction every time. And it gets worse every time it happens. That stress ramps up and ramps up and causes physical and mental health problems.” As a result, Gershoff and colleagues, and many other scientists, call for physical punishment to be identified and screened for as an additional ACE.

Other countries are far ahead of the U.S.

Worldwide, three out of four (close to 300 million) children two-to-four years of age are punished with violence regularly, including physical punishment or verbal abuse from parents or caregivers. In some countries, children as young as 12 months are regularly hit, according to a 2017 UNICEF study.

But momentum is growing to outlaw corporal punishment of children in all settings, including home and school. (The term “corporal punishment” is used internationally, and in the U.S. it refers to physical punishment in schools. It’s defined as the intentional use of physical force to cause pain or discomfort, or non-physical force that is cruel or degrading.) Currently, 63 countries have a full prohibition on corporal punishment, inside and outside the home. The map below shows the status of each country. (This link takes you to the interactive map, where you can find more details about each country’s progress.)

In U.S. homes, though, physical punishment remains legal in every state. Even in the case of abuse, some judges will excuse it if it was intended to “discipline” children, under a “parental discipline exemption.”

As for schools, corporal punishment is outlawed in 31 states and the District of Columbia, but it remains lawful in 19 states, in both public and private schools. Gershoff consulted with Congressman Don McEachin and Senator Chris Murphy on a bill to ban corporal punishment in schools, Protecting Our Students in Schools Act. “It didn’t get momentum,” she told me. “I don’t think people realize it’s still happening in schools, but nearly 100,000 kids get paddled with boards each year in school, primarily in states in the South.”

Even without progress at the government level, public opinion and practices are gradually changing. A U.S. study of 35-year-old parents conducted every year from 1993 to 2017 asked the question, “How often do you spank your child(ren)?” The graph below shows the decline in the percentage of parents reporting any spanking at all, from about 50% in 1993, to about 35% in 2017.

Source: *Prevalence of Spanking in US National Samples of 35-Year-Old Parents from 1993 to 2017.*

Recently, a colleague and I were facilitating a parent meeting at a school, squeezed into child-sized chairs in a circle, when an older woman rushed in, late, and breathless. After she settled into her chair, she shared: “I’m taking care of my two grandchildren while my daughter is in jail,” she said. “I hit my own kids, and I know that’s wrong. But I don’t know what to do instead.” I was moved by her vulnerability and her determination. One of the most important jobs we have as parents and caregivers is to protect our children from our worst selves. I could see her commitment to stopping the intergenerational transmission of violence.

Parenting is hard. We love our children, we nurture their gifts, and we teach self-control and acceptable behavior. There are many positive, gentle, respectful ways of guiding them forward that begin with our own awareness, education, and self-regulation. This is a larger topic for another post, but as a starting point, I’ve listed a few of my favorite resources below.

“It took us until 1994 to ban violence against women,” Gershoff told me in closing. “Now we look back and wonder why anyone ever thought violence against women was okay. I think we’re in the middle of a similar gradual shift regarding hitting children. We’ll eventually get there, but we haven’t quite had the sea change yet. I’m hoping it will come.”

“…There is no ambiguity: ‘All forms of physical or mental violence’ does not leave room for any level of legalized violence against children. Corporal punishment and other cruel or degrading forms of punishment are forms of violence and the State must take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to eliminate them.”

— United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child

“Parents, other caregivers, and adults interacting with children and adolescents should not use corporal punishment (including hitting and spanking), either in anger or as a punishment for or consequence of misbehavior, nor should they use any disciplinary strategy, including verbal abuse, that causes shame or humiliation.”

— American Association of Pediatrics

“Physical discipline is not effective in achieving parents’ long-term goals of decreasing aggressive and defiant behavior in children or of promoting regulated and socially competent behavior in children….The adverse outcomes associated with physical discipline indicates that any perceived short-term benefits of physical discipline do not outweigh the detriments of this form of discipline….Caregivers [should] use alternative forms of discipline that are associated with more positive outcomes for children”

— American Psychological Association

Additional Resources

Alternatives to hitting:

A secure attachment and an authoritative parenting style set the foundation for closer relationships and cooperation — see my earlier blog posts for more.

In addition, there are lots of wonderful resources on Instagram and TikTok. Look for people who advocate gentle parenting, positive parenting, or respectful parenting. Here are some of my favorites on Instagram:

@respectfulmom, @mrchazz, @biglittlefeelings, @babiesandbrains, @dr.katetruitt, @the.family.coach, @wildpeaceforparents, @greatergoodmag, @ceciletuckercounselling, @kiergaines, @thedadgang, @the.dad.vibes, @laura._.lovee, @gottmaninstitute, @parentingtranslator, @parenting_pathfinders, @dr.annlouise.lockhart, @dr.siggie, @parentstogether

Books:

No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame by Janet Lansbury
The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind
by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
Between Parent and Child, by Haim Ginott
The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More, by Bruce Feiler

What to expect of children at different ages:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Developmental Milestones
American Academy of Pediatrics: Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children and Adolescents

On hitting and trauma:

Many good resources are available at the Trauma Research Foundation
The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
What Happened to You? By Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey
For Your Own Good, by Alice Miller
Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America, by Stacey Patton

Pandemic 2020: Will the Kids Be All Right? Lessons on Parenting from 100 Years of Crises

April 16, 2020

Massive unemployment. Loss of life. Disrupted education. And an economy in free-fall. These are the ingredients for the kinds of tectonic social shifts that alter the arcs of human lives. And parents, as always, are at the fulcrum of the pressures, protecting their families while trying to hold together a semblance of normalcy for their children.

For 100 years, developmental scientists have studied how families and children respond to disasters, manmade and natural. From the Great Depression to Hurricane Katrina, from 9/11 to wars and historic migrations, we’ve learned a few things. Studies of resilience have shown us that certain conditions enable children to adapt well amidst adversity, and other conditions lead to unfavorable outcomes.

The most critical element, according to the research, is the presence of at least one stable, caring adult, someone who provides a secure psychological container and a scaffold for growth—and I’ll explain that more fully below. But there are other levers at play, too.

In times of societal crisis, the following qualities are important to a child’s psychological resilience. I share these with you in the hope that whatever your situation in caring for children during the pandemic, you can focus on what really matters to your family’s long-term psychological well-being and let go of the more minor concerns.

Dosage

Research on children’s resilience began with developmental psychologist Emmy Werner, who was a child during the horrors of World War II in Europe. Many of the 39 million civilians who died because of the war were children, and 20 million children were orphaned. Werner managed to survive with her cousins by “foraging in the ruins of bombed-out houses and in abandoned beet, potato, and turnip fields” when all of the adult males in her extended family perished on the battlefield or in prisoner camps.[1]

In order to explore how children survived, she studied the letters, diaries, and journals of 200 child eyewitnesses on all sides of the war across 12 countries. In addition, Werner conducted in-depth interviews with 12 adult survivors when they were in their 50s and 60s.

In her book, Through the Eyes of Children, Werner writes that many of the children who survived became adults with “an extraordinary affirmation of life.” However, children were affected differently depending on a number of variables. The most important was their level of direct exposure to violence, bombing, and combat. For example, in a study of 1200 British school children targeted in air raids, 18 percent had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), e.g., intrusive fears; nightmares; sleep disturbances; and heightened reactivity to loud noises, like sirens and explosions. These symptoms were present five years later at a rate comparable to those found in combat veterans of WWII and, later, the Vietnam War. When Werner interviewed her adult subjects more than 50 years later, they still reported frighteningly vivid memories of the sounds of air raid sirens, machine gun fire, and low-flying planes.

(Getty Images: Hulton Deutsch, Fred Ramage, Fox Photos)

Studies of children worldwide in other wars and conflicts, from South Central Asia to Rwanda to Ireland, corroborate that the dose is the poison. In other words, the degree or length of exposure to danger is strongly predictive of later disturbance.

This was true, too, for children who were alive at the time of the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York City on Sept 11, 2001. Representative studies of children and adolescents following the attacks showed that the greater the degree of direct or indirect exposure, the greater the symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and separation anxiety, and of course children who experienced the loss of a family member suffered most. The proximity of children to the event when tragedy struck mattered. A study of 844 children showed that those who were below Canal Street when the towers collapsed, and witnessed the event or were out in the dust soon after, had more psychiatric and physical health disorders at ages 17-30. Those same children had four times the rates of both disorders co-occurring, compared to a control group of children who were across the bridge in Queens and only saw media coverage of the event.

But media coverage, too, is a kind of chronic exposure, albeit indirect. A study of middle school children who watched repeating loops of television coverage of the Oklahoma City bombings showed that they were more likely to have symptoms of PTSD seven weeks later (even though none of their families were harmed), compared to children who watched less television coverage.

Takeaway: Children with the most direct exposure to the pandemic—e.g., who lose a loved one or whose family is struggling with the disease, food shortages, or other deprivations—may be most at risk for psychological disturbances and should be prioritized for services and resources.
If possible, shield children, especially the youngest, from media exposure so that caregivers stay in control of the messages. Four- to six-year-olds can handle minimal, manageable facts about why their lives have changed. Teenagers can take in more information and are interested in understanding how the world works and their place in it. But even then, caution is warranted. It’s helpful to have a wise adult in the wings to talk about events and emotional responses, and extra care should be taken with sensitive or empathic teens, as they can become overwhelmed and anxious more easily. Staying constructive and action-oriented helps to mitigate the chances of depression and overwhelm.

Availability of loving caregivers

When uncertainty or danger strikes, children are “wired” to look to their caregivers to determine how safe they should feel. If their primary adult is calm, a child feels reassured. But if their adult is upset, the child feels unsafe, and their body and brain go into threat mode. And when the threat system is on too long without relief, physical and mental health problems can result.

The first documentation of the protective effect of a caring adult also came from observations of children during WWII. Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, founded the Hampstead War Nurseries in England to care for children during the Blitz, the Nazi bombing campaign of the United Kingdom from 1940-41. Freud and her colleague Dorothy Burlingham documented their observations of children in their care in their book War and Children.

Though the children were not exposed to direct combat, they lived through repeated, unpredictable air raids throughout the day and night. Some children saw death up close, some were buried in debris, and many were injured. Freud and Burlingham found that, remarkably, when children were with their family members during these events, they rarely showed “traumatic shock.” They showed “little excitement and no undue disturbance. They slept and ate normally and played with whatever toys they had rescued.” The children seemed to equate their experience with just another childhood “accident,” like falling out of a tree or getting thrown off their bike. That the war “threatened their lives, disturbed their material comfort or cut their food rations” mattered little, according to Freud and Burlingham, as long as the children were with a trusted adult.[2]

But it became “a widely different matter” if a parent was killed or a child was separated from their parents. Children had a much harder time, for example, if they were evacuated for their safety to the countryside. Separation from parents was worse for children than enduring the bombings alongside their family, write Freud and Burlingham. This has been true in every war zone studied, from Rwanda to Bosnia and the West Bank to Syria. Studies show that if children lose the sense of safety anchored by a secure caregiver, the result is often an increase in PTSD, desensitization to violence, anxiety, depression, aggression, and/or antisocial behavior.

However, when the parent is present, their own emotional state matters. Freud and Burlingham write that most of the London population met the air raids with a “quiet manner,” so it was extremely rare to find children who were “shocked.” For example, they describe one Irish mother of eight whose windows were blown out in a bomb blast. When she showed up at the clinic, she said that they were “ever so lucky” because her husband was there and could fix the windows. Another mother brought her daughter in for a “cough and cold” but didn’t think to mention that they’d just escaped a bomb shelter destroyed in a fire. Due to the mother’s “lack of fear and excitement,” Freud and Burlingham write, the child “will not develop air-raid anxiety.” By contrast, they noticed that very anxious mothers had very anxious children. For example, one five year-old boy developed “extreme nervousness and bed wetting” when he had to get up in the night, get dressed, and hold his trembling mother’s hand.[3]

More recent research confirms that depression or anxiety in the primary caregiver is a significant risk factor for children’s psychological health. Anxious parents can overlook their children’s needs, and depressed parents usually under-respond to their children; either situation can lead to missed emotional cues and mental health problems in children.

Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University

On the other hand, when a supportive adult is present, the child can tolerate much more than if they were alone. Simply the presence of a calm adult can reduce the levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in a child’s body. In fact, this supported exposure to manageable stress can even be “inoculating,” helping children to be more resilient, whereas complete avoidance of stress undermines the development of resilience.

The supportive adult figure doesn’t have to be a parent. Research shows that any non-parental figure in a caring capacity, including a neighbor, teacher, counselor coach, sibling, or cousin, etc., can be just as effective.

In addition to her study of children in WWII, Emmy Werner also conducted a 40-year longitudinal study on the Hawaiian island of Kauai to investigate the long-term effects of poverty and family dysfunction on children. She found that one of the strongest predictors of a child’s resilience was an emotional bond with an adult outside the immediate family.

This correlation was also found in a study of children in New Orleans who survived the flooding and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Children who fared the best seven years later were the ones who’d had the most supportive connections—family members, teachers, pastors, or shelter workers. By contrast, those who fared worst had lacked any constructive connections, and the ones who floundered marginally had had only one person as a solid anchor.

Werner also studied the records of pioneer families who travelled across deserts, mountains, and rivers in wagon parties. The Donner Party is perhaps the most tragic and well-known story of westward migration. A small band of 87 travelers took an ill-advised shortcut away from the Oregon Trail and onto a lesser known route around Salt Lake. The path eventually ended, and they had to cut through forests and brush to clear their way. The delay caused them to get trapped in the heavy Sierra snowfalls, unable to move for four months. As supplies dwindled, travelers resorted to eating their animal skin rugs and animals, and a few resorted to cannibalizing their deceased companions. Of the 41 children in the party, a third died, mostly infants and toddlers.

The ones who survived, according to Werner, had the strongest social supports from mothers, aunts, cousins, and a teacher who pooled what resources they had, maintaining whatever shreds of structure and normalcy they could muster. Werner details the particular significance of the sibling bond. Siblings shared food and drinks, nursed the sick and injured, and were confidants and supports to each other when the going got tough. The majority of children who survived went on to lead “long and productive lives,” becoming lawyers, ranchers, writers, prospectors, and heads of large families.[4]

Takeaway: Children are most resilient when they’re embedded in a network of social support: a parent, a caring parent figure, and/or siblings. Accounts like these suggest that the support that works for children doesn’t have to be overly-precious or hyper-conscious. Rather, practical, positive decency offered by ordinary people will suffice.
The message to parents who aren’t able to care for their own children because they’re essential workers—or are sick and quarantined away from their families—is that other committed adults can pinch-hit as caregivers just fine.
For stressed parents at home caring for children 24/7 and trying to work, too: Put on your oxygen mask first. Your self-care is essential. It’s a consuming challenge to bring your best self to this quarantine day after day, but your wellbeing is essential to you and your children. And rest assured, you don’t have to be perfect. Even in the healthiest relationships, parents are only “in-tune” with their children 30% of the time. What matters more is your flexibility to repair, to come back together, and perhaps to reunite at the end of a long day. Apologies, forgiveness, and self-compassion are key. Remember: the biggest lesson your children are learning from you is how to handle themselves in stressful situations.

Child characteristics

What about the characteristics of children? Do some kinds of children do better than others?

First, there is no “resiliency gene,” but difference in biological makeup does affect how children register and regulate stress. These foundations are created by genetic and epigenetic transmissions across generations and by childhood experiences, especially during sensitive periods. The physiology of the stress regulation system is established from the prenatal period, through the first three years of life, so the stress experienced during that time is very influential in shaping stress-sensitivity of a child’s system. However, research also shows that in puberty—a period of brain remodeling—a child’s stress physiology can be recalibrated for better or worse, depending on how much stress they’re experiencing.

About one in five children is more biologically “sensitive” to stress than others. Their “fight-or-flight” systems react more quickly, easily, and intensely to mild stressors. They can become more devastated in difficult conditions, even more susceptible to respiratory illnesses. But they bloom more brilliantly in favorable conditions—becoming the world’s artists, poets, inventors, and empaths.

The first wave of resiliency research presumed that children who were more easygoing and sociable (i.e., could enlist other people’s help), and “intelligent” did better. Newer research has refined those generalizations into more specific abilities.

Recent studies have pointed to certain kinds of cognitive and emotional skills related to resilience. Executive control involves the higher-order thought processes in the prefrontal cortex. These include self-management abilities like setting goals, devising a plan to accomplish the goal, problem-solving, flexibility, and monitoring progress along the way. Historical studies show that a family’s survival often depended on the contributions of children, and that the mastery and competence the children developed through these tasks served them well in their adult lives.

Emotion regulation is the process of monitoring feelings and using strategies to minimize unpleasant ones (down-regulation), increase pleasant ones (up-regulation), and maintain desirable ones in order to accomplish a goal. Positive strategies include reframing, acceptance, and finding a purpose. Drawing on children’s unique inner resources, like friendliness, musicality, humor, building, organizing, or creating can help keep their focus constructive. Unhelpful strategies include ruminating, numbing, escapism, venting, blaming, and disengaging; all of these lead to greater anxiety and poorer mental health outcomes in children.

Resiliency studies show that a combination of executive control and emotion regulation leads to the best outcomes and the lowest anxiety in children.

Takeaway: Some children may need a little more attention and support than others because of their age or their sensitivities. Pregnant women, infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and young teens need extra support and stress-buffering. It’s a good time to model, demonstrate, and teach executive control (e.g., through planning and completing projects) and emotional skills. Many professionals have suggested that during this time, traditional school lessons may be less important than social and emotional ones.

Prior vulnerability

Whatever the future effects of the pandemic on children and families, according to Jack Shonkoff, pediatrician and director of the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard, they will not be evenly distributed across families. Vulnerable families who already struggle with difficulties such as poverty, food insecurity, racism, immigration stress, and disabilities will experience more breakdowns like substance abuse, family violence, mental health problems, and later educational and employment challenges.

We’re already seeing news reports of faltering families. Divorce rates spiked in China following the peak of the pandemic, and early reports are signaling a similar trend in the U.S. The United Nations has reported a “horrifying” increase in domestic violence. As of this writing, calls to police and domestic violence hotlines are up 15-20% in New York; they’ve doubled in Lebanon and Malaysia, tripled in China, and increased 75% in Australia. Quarantined victims are trapped at home without access to teachers, counselors, or doctors who could support their emotional and physical safety. Part of the U.S. government relief package provides funding for shelters and hotlines. It seems that disasters that immediately threaten mortality like 9/11 or wars are less likely to spike family disturbance, but those that become chronic stressors like unemployment and the quarantine bring out the worst.

The disruption of education is a serious risk for vulnerable children. Educational consistency is a stabilizer for children in uncertain times, and teachers play critical roles in keeping disadvantaged children on track. Schools give structure and focus amidst disruption; many studies show that disasters interrupt children’s education, leading to unfulfilled lives, as well as a loss of human capital to society. UNESCO estimates that 91% of the world’s students are currently affected by school closures. While many schools are shifting to online education, the approaches are ad hoc and unstudied. Digital access is not available to everyone, though schools are struggling to provide students with internet hotspots. Some schools report that large numbers of students have “disappeared,” i.e., fewer than one half are engaging in online courses.

During the Great Depression, schools reduced their hours or closed. A million children lost access to school, and a quarter of a million children hit the road and rails, becoming “drifters” in search of work. For the first time, the federal government was spurred to take an interest in children’s well-being, because it was afraid that large numbers of disaffected youth could be susceptible to a rise of authoritarianism, similar to what was happening in Europe. The New Deal launched the first free school lunch program, free nursery schools, the first federally funded work-study programs, and the National Youth Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed over seven million young people. The schools were funded to reopen, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children helped poor families. The government ended child labor and raised the mandatory school attendance age to 16 in order to eliminate having children compete with adults for jobs. The first safety net for children and families was cast, and the word “teenager” entered the vocabulary for the first time.

On the other end of the economic spectrum, affluent families that tend toward “overparenting” can be at risk for fostering anxiety, as they strive to perfectly recreate the school learning environment at home in order to keep up with standardized testing and the college admissions cycle. These families might benefit from broadening their definition of learning to focus on simply reading, problem-solving, communication, and social and emotional skills.

“When children are involved in things they’re really interested in, a project or an exploration, they will be learning. Everything around them is a learning experience. Parents should think about how to take advantage of that,” advises Linda Darling-Hammond, professor at Stanford University Graduate School of Education and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute.

Takeaway: Vulnerable and disadvantaged families, especially with multiple stressors, should have access to and seek help from mental health and legal services. Local schools and each states’ Department of Education list educational guidance and resources for students and families. Staying connected to education is especially critical for children with any kind of disadvantage, while families who tend toward overparenting may benefit from dialing down excessive traditional educational demands.

A higher calling

Many studies of resilience find that survivors who do well have philosophies or spiritual traditions through which they interpret events and derive hope and optimism. Ann Masten, professor at the Institute for Child Development at the University of Minnesota, is a noted theoretician in the study of children’s resilience. In her book, Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development, she writes that many faith traditions—including Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—naturally incorporate all of the ingredients for resilience. They offer parenting guidance; identify moral conduct; provide role models, mentors, and community support; teach and practice self-regulation; and value the greater good. A connection to some definition of the divine and a philosophical framework help survivors make meaning of their experience and in the process, help them keep calm. Studies show that some homeless families in shelters persevere because of their faith. African American communities find connection, spiritual guidance and a coherent vision through their churches; and orphans in war-torn Sri Lanka find acceptance and peace through Buddhist and Christian practices of meditating, storytelling, and reading scripture.

Sometimes, cultural practices offer meaningful support. A study of 1000 Afghani adolescents showed that in prolonged periods of armed conflict, Afghani cultural values of faith, family unity, service, effort, morals, and honor shored up resilience. Werner’s longitudinal research in Kauai showed that many adults who eventually created happy lives drew from their cultural heritage, becoming involved in Hawaiian conservation efforts, going to the ocean in times of trouble, or caring for their elders.

Recent psychological work suggests that having a sense of purpose may be enough to get you through. Surviving, ensuring your child’s well-being, volunteering, keeping your job, or finding awe in the moment may just be enough for now.

Takeaway: A connection to something greater than ourselves—whether it’s a spiritual practice, cultural beliefs, or a sense of purpose—can help families and children orient their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Participating in a larger flow can feel supportive and calming. Children, even very young ones, enjoy and benefit from these kinds of feelings and experiences.

* * * * *

Children are neither inherently resilient nor vulnerable. Instead, their well-being arises out of who they are as individuals together with the cascades of experiences they have. Some children may luck into a combination of resources that set them on a good path early on. But even for children who don’t do well initially, studies of the life course show that many can still find happiness later in life from a new opportunity, education, a good relationship, or a fulfilling career.[5]

For now, the world is in a difficult state of uncertainty. We don’t know how long we’ll be sheltering in place, the course of the virus, or what kind of “normal” life we will return to. But the enduring lessons for our children will surely be the emotional ones. These are the lessons they will remember as adults when they inevitably experience upheaval again—only then, it may be without us. So let’s stay focused on, and grateful for, what really matters.

What Does Your School Do to Prevent Bullying?

October 28, 2019

[Note: This post draws from a scholarly paper I wrote with a colleague summarizing what does and doesn’t work in bullying prevention. Full disclosure: I work with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, which implements and researches the social and emotional learning approach called RULER.]

If you’re the parent of a school-age child, or an educator, it’s hard to miss that October is Bullying Prevention Month. And while a campaign to raise awareness can sometimes feel contrived, it does present an opportunity to learn more. So if you’re not sure what your school’s approach is to bullying (or other mean or aggressive behaviors, for that matter), this month’s campaign is an invitation to find out.

Here are a few ideas that will be helpful to be aware of before you have that conversation.

First, it’s worth knowing that every school is required by state law to have some kind of bullying prevention policy. There are websites listing your state’s regulations on bullying, cyberbullying, sexting, and even revenge porn. Many states also identify the purview of the school’s responsibility—for example whether a school is responsible for a cyberbullying incident that happens off-campus. (In many cases, they are, if the incident spills over to create an unsafe or hostile learning environment.) The laws do not intend, though, that bullying should be dealt with through the legal system, which would be inappropriate for children; rather, the laws are there to hold schools accountable for what happens in their environment.

When you ask your child’s teacher, division head, or head of school what their approach is to preventing bullying, there should be three parts to their answer: how they address true prevention, intervention, and evaluation.

First, schools should be able to define bullying (aggression that is repeated and involves a power imbalance) and describe their plan for preventing it from popping up in the first place. True prevention would cultivate the behaviors, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that would make bullying less likely to happen—which, of course, is effortful and complicated to do.

Traditional approaches have focused simply on raising awareness, making new rules about bullying, monitoring “hot spots” better (like hallways and bathrooms), and administering stiffer consequences. But that approach does not consistently work. National data shows that bullying rates have flatlined in the last decade; worse, there’s been a slight uptick in all forms of bullying in the last three years. Students consistently report that teachers don’t see most of the bullying that happens (bullies are skilled at hiding below the radar) and that many educators don't actually help students in need when asked.

The specific kind of prevention matters.

Many programs are trendy but lack any rigorous evaluation of their efficacy:

· Programs that rely solely on punishment and zero tolerance aren’t healthy or successful, and they disproportionately target students of color.

· Programs that place sole responsibility on the students for working out the conflict (like peer mediation) can be contraindicated and may actually increase bullying and aggression.

· A peer conflict-resolution approach can be useful under certain conditions, as when the students are of equal social power, positive skills are taught proactively, and the adult facilitators are skilled in conflict resolution. But a bully by definition always has more power, and placing the target and the tormentor in the same room can be clinically unethical. (Adult victims of abuse are never asked to “work it out” with their abuser.) Additionally, children have extra legal protections because of their developmental status.

· Programs that rely solely on bystanders to intervene also have mixed results. Bystander intervention has been successful in some homogenous societies like Finland, and it can be effective when students are empowered to make positive changes in the norms of the school culture. But as for intervening in an active bullying situation, it’s not always safe, not all students can do it, and it deflects responsibility from the adults who have convened the school environment.

What does work to prevent bullying?

Data consistently show that creating a positive school climate and teaching specific skills of emotional and social intelligence are the two best bets for reducing all kinds of hostilities, including bullying, mean behaviors, micro-aggressions, conflicts, and aggression. This makes sense. After all, just because you’ve punished the behaviors you don’t want doesn’t mean that you’ll create the behavior you do want. To create appropriate behavior, you have to proactively guide children, scaffolding the desired skills in age-appropriate steps. In other words, if you want to turn a ship around, you first have to know where you’re going, and then you have to give everyone the sailing skills to get there.

The research on social and emotional learning (SEL) shows that when an evidence-based approach is implemented correctly, it improves classroom relationships and prosocial behavior among the students and teachers—and it simultaneously reduces conflicts, aggression, bullying, and even hostile attribution bias (the tendency to believe that others have mean intentions). For example, a study of 36 first-grade teachers showed that developing SEL skills was more effective at reducing aggression and improving self-regulation than traditional classroom management techniques.

Children from preschool to high school have typical emotional and social challenges that play out in, and even dominate, the school day. They need constructive skills to learn how to:

· change friendships (which spikes in mid-elementary school and again in adolescence), without prompting accusations of exclusions

· resolve peer conflicts without ganging up or resorting to power-assertion

· manage their own difficult feelings constructively

· foster feelings of inclusion

· manage feeling vulnerable and support others in a vulnerable exposure

· express their sense of agency and assertiveness appropriately

· allow others to shine without feeling diminished

· maintain close friendships inside and outside of school and balance closer friendships within a wider circle of peer acquaintances

· express their needs constructively

· care for all students

· spot—and counter—the hegemony of the outside world inside the school environment

· foster empathy for others without giving themselves away

· manage the volatility of feelings of sexual attraction

· know the difference between having fun and harmful teasing

Some people will judge this kind of educational focus as inappropriate for schools. But research shows that emotional and social skills are predictors of success. Schools report increases in academic engagement and decreases in aggression; organizations that track employment success recommend social and emotional skills more and more; and the teaching of social and emotional skills has been demonstrated to be cost-effective.

The second part of an educator’s response to your query should describe the action (intervention) that a school plans to take once bullying happens. Educators need to respond swiftly and skillfully, without avoiding or minimizing. This requires a lot of discernment.

Sometimes parents may not have all the information about a situation. Sometimes it takes time and gentle investigating to elicit the full story from the children involved. Sometimes it’s not actually bullying (i.e., repeated aggression involving an imbalance of power) but simply hurt feelings, a distinction that leads to different kinds of interventions. But if true bullying is happening, everyone needs to step up quickly to end the day-after-day abuse and suffering of the bullied child. And while there isn’t one prescriptive silver bullet, educators should have a plan that draws on the culture and skills they have been cultivating in the school environment for healthy and swift problem-solving.

And finally, the third part of an educator’s response to your query should address exactly how they’ll know if their approach is working. How will they assess whether bullying and other unwanted behaviors are decreasing? A red flag should go up if educators rely on parent surveys. The data should come from the children themselves, for example in regular school climate surveys.

Parents have an important role to play:.

· Harsh parenting is associated with bullying and victimization. Authoritative parenting—a style that combines warmth and support with limits and structure—has been repeatedly shown to lead to better school engagement, stronger prosocial skills, and emotional wellbeing in children.

· Sibling and family dynamics that are respectful, where children’s agency, assertiveness, and negotiating skills are cultivated and where consent is a value, lead to better outcomes for children.

· Parents can support their children’s friendships by making home a welcoming place for their children’s friends. Parents should encourage their children to have multiple friendship groups, not only in school but in their extended family, neighborhood, and/or larger community.

· It’s also useful for parents to network with each other. Establishing open lines of communication can help everyone stay on the same page and may head off trouble in the early stages.

Bullying is a complicated issue, but it’s also not a mystery. At this point, we have plenty of research showing us what works and what doesn’t—not only to reduce and prevent bullying but to create positive home, school, and community environments that give our children the social and emotional skills they need to succeed. Once you find out which approach your child’s school is using, you may want to take an active role in guiding and supporting the implementation of the best evidence-based approaches.

Dads Want to Co-Parent — And It Matters

June 15, 2018

When co-parents tend to their relationship first, everyone benefits.

Note: This blog post is primarily about fathers (in honor of Father's Day) and particularly fathers who are partnered with women. This is just one of the many types of family structures that exist and I'm interested in all types of family structures. However, much of the detailed research on co-parenting involves heterosexual relationships. The good news is that many of the findings here that apply to fathers in heterosexual relationships also apply to co-parents of all kinds.

Arms heavy with meals I had prepared, I crossed the sunlit porch, slipped off my shoes, and walked through the front door. I found my friends, new parents, standing quietly side by side in their darkened kitchen. Shaye, their tiny newborn, had just awakened from his nap and was resting on his mama’s shoulder. A hushed atmosphere of disheveled slumber lingered.

Jed, Shaye’s father, turned to investigate the food I’d brought, lifting lids from the containers and filling his plate with chicken. “Do you want some?” he asked Emily, his wife.

“Later,” she said, sitting down on the couch to talk. Little Shaye lay quietly on her lap, attentive to sights and sounds, while Jed ate beside us.

Soon it was time to breastfeed, and Jed stood to bring Emily a pillow and a glass of water. When feeding was finished, Jed brought Emily her lunch, took Shaye from her arms, and burped him; then they disappeared for a walk in the afternoon sunlight while Emily turned to talk with me. After a while, Jed came back in, changed Shaye’s diaper, and, standing, started to rock the baby back to sleep. When Shaye fussed, his parents passed him back and forth until he settled.

I was in awe of this ballet, of Jed and Emily’s seamless choreography. Each shift in task was preceded by a considerate, “Do you want…?” “Could you please…” Or a “How are you doing?” This was true partnership in action.

Co-parent collaboration is good for the entire family

Carolyn Pape Cowan and Phil Cowan, psychologists emeriti at the University of California at Berkeley, have studied families for over 40 years. Parenting is hard, they acknowledge, and the transition to parenthood is an especially vulnerable time. More than 50 studies worldwide show that, as joyous and welcome as a new child might be, trouble usually starts to brew in the parents’ relationship after a birth. There’s too much to do, sleep is short, and freedom is seriously curtailed—a recipe for conflict and dissatisfaction that can place everyone at risk.

But when parents tend to their relationship and learn to collaborate constructively, everyone is much more likely to stay on track and thrive. Through several major studies involving more than 1,000 couples in very diverse walks of life, the Cowans found that when parents nurture their own bond, it maintains relationship satisfaction across the challenge of parenting—for years. It also improves the parents’ relationships with their children. In turn, the children are happier, and more sociable, and secure. Notably, tending to the co-parents’ relationship creates more benefits for the family than even parenting classes, men’s groups, or moms’ groups that tend to overlook couples’ issues.

Why is nurturing the couple relationship so powerful, even for the children?

“The relationship between the parent figures creates the atmosphere in which children are growing,” replied Carolyn. “If parents have unresolved high conflict, it makes children nervous and preoccupied with their parents; they end up not doing as well socially or academically. But if parents are warm and respectful, and treat each other kindly and gently, the children feel secure and therefore, free to explore life. They also have a positive model for their own lives as to how relationships should work.”

Phil added, “There are ‘spillover’ effects. That is, if a partner is unhappy, it’s very difficult to turn around and be a nurturing, supportive parent to the child. And our research shows that when a couple functions effectively as a team, it helps them ward off stresses and strains from outside the family, like job stress, poverty, or difficult life events.”

A healthy relationship invites dads in

One of the benefits of this early collaboration, the Cowans report, is that fathers feel more welcomed into the emotional labor and rewards of parenting.

“We know from our own and others’ research that one of the best predictors of father involvement is the relationship with the mom,” says Phil. “And that’s true regardless of the family structure, whether they are biological parents, adoptive parents, stepparents, divorced, cohabitating, or married. If you improve the relationship between the co-parents, partners are happier, and it draws dads in, not only to the relationship but into the family.”

And dads matter.

They want to be involved in parenting. A recent survey on parents of 2200 Millennials and Generation Xers revealed that 90% of the fathers said being a parent was their greatest joy, and 73% said their lives began when they became a father.

“Most of the fathers we’ve worked with want to be more involved with their babies and young children than their fathers were with them,” said Carolyn. “Some of them say, ‘I want my son or daughter not to be afraid of me and be able to talk about anything with me.’ Regardless of ethnicity—African-American, Mexican-American, European-American—all the fathers we’ve worked with either want to emulate some aspect of their own father, or they’re really eager to do it differently.”

Parenting has benefits for fathers, too. Research shows that fathers who are more involved in their children’s lives have better physical and mental health, are more stable, and live longer. Kyle Pruett, a psychiatrist at Yale University who with Marsha Kline Pruett collaborated with the Cowans for the past 15 years, quipped that health insurance providers should lower premiums for men when they become fathers.

When fathers are involved, moms also benefit. Women are still spending an average of twice as much time than men providing care for young children, even though dads have increased their involvement over the last 30 years by 65%. More support from fathers is welcome.

Dads are just as capable as moms

For a couple of decades, research has shown that mothers and fathers are equally capable of parenting well. Both mothers and fathers:

Are warm and responsive to their babies’ smiles and happiness;
Provide comfort when their babies cry;
Encourage exploration;
Engage in developmentally sensitive teaching;
Encourage their children’s autonomy.

Research shows that, as a general rule, mothers and fathers are equally sensitive and attuned to their children’s feelings.

Natasha Cabrera, psychologist at the University of Maryland, has been studying fathers, especially poor fathers, for 20 years. Many dads she sees are very hands-on. “They know how much their child weighs or what makes their baby cranky,” she says. “In a study we have going on right now, almost half of the children are soothed better by the dads than the moms.”

According to Cabrera, sometimes people assume that dads are incapable, and sometimes dads hide their capability so the mothers don’t “look bad.” “But often dads can be more understanding of their children because they have less of an agenda. They’re more laid back, less stressed, so they see the child more clearly,” Cabrera explains.

Dads and moms make different contributions to development

Language development: Cabrera has found that mothers and fathers talk to their children in different ways. One at a time, she gave moms and dads the prompt to “just talk to your child.” Then she recorded how many words were said, and which types of words were used. She found that fathers talked to their children in longer and more complex sentences and included more diverse kinds of words than mothers.

“The quality of their language was higher,” Cabrera said. “As a result, the two-year-olds knew more words, and more diverse kinds of words. So fathers are making important contributions to their children’s language development.”

Emotion regulation and risk-taking: Worldwide, dads seem to take on the role of exciting their babies. They’re more likely than mothers to engage in rough-and-tumble play, sweep the baby high into the air, or go for hysterical giggles, while still paying attention to what the baby can tolerate. Scientists think that this experience of excitement and energetic feelings—within the safety of the father’s watchful care—contributes to a baby’s emotion regulation and healthy willingness to take risks.

Fathers tend to hold babies differently—facing out, like a hood ornament, Kyle Pruett says—as if they’re “getting their child ready for the world.”

Less aggressive problem-solving: Ruth Feldman, psychologist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, found that fathers who were sensitive and attuned to their children’s feelings and behavior benefitted their child’s social development. When these children, especially the sons, first encountered peer groups in preschool, their social problem-solving was more constructive and less aggressive or passive. These benefits continued into the early teens and were more attributable to fathers’ than mothers’ contributions. In other words, good fathering was critical to these children’s interpersonal problem-solving. They learned how to stand up for themselves respectfully, neither shying from conflict nor resorting to aggression.

Parents can relax and appreciate the diversity that each one brings to their parenting role, Cabrera points out. “There are similarities, and differences, and they complement each other to contribute to a child’s development and resilience.”

There’s an early, sensitive period for fathers’ involvement

Nature seems to draw fathers into parenting from the start.

Several studies examine the hormonal and neurological changes that occur in expectant and new fathers. For example, in a study of 34 couples, the hormones prolactin and cortisol—related to bonding behaviors in animals and humans—increased in women and men as childbirth approached. While the women’s cycle was driven by pregnancy, the men’s changes were related to their partner’s changes; that is, closer involvement with partners correlated more closely with men’s hormonal changes. And the greater the hormonal increases in men, the more “couvade” they experienced—i.e., the behavioral changes in weight, appetite, emotions, or energy some men experience during their partner’s pregnancy.

After the birth, men’s testosterone dropped to low levels, perhaps in preparation for their first interaction with their babies. And men who had higher prolactin before birth and lower testosterone after birth were more responsive to infants, looking, smelling, holding, and responding to their cries more. Other studies confirm that lower testosterone in fathers is related to a more sensitive “attunement,” or synchrony, with their babies in the first six months of life. While the caregiving system is “plastic”—e.g., adoptive parents bond just as closely as biological parents—nature seems to have provided this easy on-ramp to parenting.

Interestingly, men and women fall in love with their babies in different ways.

Women’s brains are primed by pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding to get drawn into caring for their baby. Changes in the subcortical, “bottom-up” limbic regions of the brain connected to vigilance, mirroring, and emotional connections can even be identified in brain scans post-delivery.

By contrast, men’s brains are remodeled by their participation in caregiving. The more fathers engage in activities like soothing, changing diapers, and feeding, the more oxytocin (the bonding hormone) they produce, and the stronger the activation they show in the “mentalizing” regions of the brain. These are the more “top-down” processes from cortical regions that help a father to imagine and figure out what another person needs. And there doesn’t have to be a biological connection. Adoptive gay dads showed neurological changes similar to bio-moms and bio-dads.

The takeaways from the brain science are twofold. One, the caregiving system is “plastic,” and human brains are wired to change in ways that make room in a person's consciousness for caregiving, whether they're biologically related to a child or not. And two, dads shouldn’t wait until their children can talk to get involved in parenting.

“If you’re not involved in this sensitive period, it’s going to pass you by,” says Pruett.

About half of fathers—and mothers too—underestimate the importance of the earliest weeks and months of a child’s life. The hormonal and neurological changes that occur in fathers when they're involved with their pregnant partner, and later when they help with the physical acts of caregiving, actually pave the way for them to become more connected with their baby in ways that can have long-lasting effects.

What stands in the way?

Unfortunately there are a lot of barriers to full father participation in America. Structural barriers like lack of paid parental leave force both parents to choose between their paycheck and caring for their baby. Even if fathers have paid leave from work, many fear taking advantage of it, lest they be punished or ostracized by employers.

The Cowans and Cabrera react when I ask them about barriers to father involvement.

“There’s a pervasive cultural bias against fathers,” says Phil Cowan. “Often, in social service agencies, men are the ‘bad guys,’ especially to providers who are used to seeing family violence. But most men are not violent and would like to be caring, involved fathers if we would just make space for them. Outreach programs tend to focus exclusively on moms, like the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. And in our own experience we’ve found that sometimes dads’ names are not even listed on a family’s file.”

Cabrera agrees saying that research findings have important implications for decisions society makes about fathers, including custody arrangements, mental health interventions for fathers, and incarceration.

“Fathers, especially poor men, are often considered optional except for the financial support they can provide, and often visitation is denied or strictly limited,” Cabrera says. “Or we’re more concerned about mothers’ mental health and depression than the mental health of fathers. In most cases fathers love their children, and now research shows they are important for children in ways besides financial. I think we’ve done a lot of injustices to many men who would be very capable.”

“And the bias is not just in family service agencies, it’s in psychology, too,” says Phil. “Ninety percent of the parenting research is on moms.”

Cabrera agrees: “By using the maternal template for research, we miss things fathers do that might be interesting and required in kids’ development. Dads are not just babysitters, backups, or paychecks. They’re important for development.”

Mothers sometimes stand in the way. In a 2015 representative survey of parents, 40% of dads (versus 17% of moms) said they’d like to be more involved in parenting but their co-parent didn’t let them. And 43% of dads (versus 16% of moms) said their co-parent was too controlling.

What’s important about couple collaboration?

The Cowans described the five aspects of collaboration they focus on in their work with parents of young children:

Individual well-being of each parent: Are they anxious or depressed? What do they worry about? Do they feel effective, or not? How is each partner feeling?
The couple relationship: What are some helpful strategies for problem-solving in the relationship? How can couples approach solutions and maintain their sense of calm?
Parenting and co-parenting strategies: What is the authoritative parenting style and which specific strategies reflect that style? They encourage couples to make incremental changes and to plan time to reflect together on how things are going.
Three-generational reflection: How have parents’ own childhoods, especially the relationship between their own parents, affected them? What approaches would they like to carry over from their childhood experiences, and what would they like to do differently?
Stressors: Are there other stressors pressuring the family that should be addressed and where might they find support to lower their stress?

Six months after my first visit, I followed up with Emily, Jed, and little Shaye—and I experienced them as a solid, well-coordinated unit who were really enjoying each other. They were navigating the challenges of new parenting with thoughtfulness and care.

They recently helped their baby to sleep through the night. How? “We spent hours and hours arguing over strategies, and had months of conversations," Jed said. "Finally I said, ‘Emily, you need sleep. Something needs to happen here.’”

Now they’ve established a pattern where Jed manages much of the nighttime so Emily can sleep. He thaws and warms the breast milk, feeds Shaye, and then puts him down for sleep. If Shaye wakes up, Jed briefly comforts him, and then rolls back to bed.

“It can be challenging,” says Jed. “But the whole process is sweet and I love the interaction with him. It feels important to me that I can be that nurturing and effective.”

Juggling two work schedules and baby care without outside help is hard, and Jed is candid about that: “The most stressful part is when you’ve got 400 things on your mind and you’re racing against a deadline, and there’s nothing else you can do but be with your child. I’m more tired than I’ve ever been, and drink more caffeine now than in my entire life. I’ve hit my edges a few times, but it’s grown my capacity.”

"There’s not a lot of social support for new fathers," he continues. "Now I'm more interested in other dads. But it's not like we give a lot of advice to each other, it’s more like, ‘hey, what’s it like to be you right now?’”

How has fatherhood changed him?

“I feel more joyful and playful and fulfilled,” he says.

* * * * *

Additional resources

An Interview with Dr. Kyle Pruett, 2014

Conversation with Dr. Ruth Feldman and Dr. Kyle Pruett, 2014

More video talks by experts on the importance of fathers: Simms/Mann Institute

When Partners Become Parents: The Big Life Change for Couples, by Carolyn Pape Cowan and Philip Cowan

Do Fathers Matter? What Science is Telling Us about the Parent We’ve Overlooked (2014), by Paul Raeburn.

All In: How Our Work-First Culture Fails Dads, Families, and Businesses—and How We Can Fix It Together (2015), by Josh Levs

And for fun

Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood (2009), by Michael Lewis

Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces (2018), by Michael Chabon

What is a Secure Attachment? And Why Doesn’t "Attachment Parenting" Get You There?

April 3, 2017

A few months ago, a young friend of mine had a baby. She began a home birth with a midwife, but after several hours of labor, the baby turned to the side and became stuck. The midwife understood that the labor wouldn’t proceed, so she hustled the laboring Amelie into the car and drove the half-mile to the emergency room while Amelie’s husband followed. The birth ended safely, and beautiful, tiny Sylvie emerged with a full head of black hair. The little family of three went home.

When the baby was six weeks old, Amelie developed a severe breast infection. She struggled to continue breastfeeding and pumping, but it was extremely painful, and she was taking antibiotics.[1] Finally she gave in to feeding her baby formula, but she felt distraught and guilty. “Make sure you find some other way to bond with your baby,” her pediatrician said, adding to her distress.

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. “Pooh!” he whispered.
”Yes, Piglet?”
”Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”

— A. A. Milne

Fortunately, sleep came easily to Sylvie; she slumbered comfortably in a little crib next to Amelie’s side of the bed. Still, at four months, Amelie worried that the bond with her baby wasn’t forming properly and she wanted to remedy the problem by pulling the baby into bed. Baby Sylvie wasn’t having it. When she was next to her mother, she fussed; when Amelie placed her back in the crib, she settled. Again, Amelie worried about their relationship.

“Amelie” is an amalgam of actual friends and clients I have seen in the last month, but all of the experiences are real. And as a developmental psychologist, I feel distressed by this suffering. Because while each of the practices—home birth, breastfeeding, and co-sleeping—has its benefits, none of them is related to a baby’s secure attachment with her caregiver, nor are they predictive of a baby’s mental health and development.

“Attachment is a relationship in the service of a baby’s emotion regulation and exploration. It is the deep, abiding confidence a baby has in the availability and responsiveness of the caregiver.”

— Alan Sroufe

“Attachment is not a set of tricks,” says Alan Sroufe, a developmental psychologist at the Institute for Child Development at the University of Minnesota. He should know. He and his colleagues have studied the attachment relationship for over 40 years.

Why the confusion about a secure attachment?

Over the last 80 years, developmental scientists have come to understand that some micro-dynamics that take place between a baby and an adult in a caring relationship have a lifelong effect, in very specific ways, on the person that baby will become.

“Attachment,” Sroufe explains, “is a relationship in the service of a baby’s emotion regulation and exploration. It is the deep, abiding confidence a baby has in the availability and responsiveness of the caregiver.”

A secure attachment has at least three functions:

Provides a sense of safety and security
Regulates emotions, by soothing distress, creating joy, and supporting calm
Offers a secure base from which to explore

In spite of the long scientific history of attachment, psychologists have done a rather poor job of communicating what a secure attachment is and how to create one. In the meantime, the word “attachment” has been co-opted by a well-meaning pediatrician and his wife, William and Martha Sears, along with some of their children and an entire parenting movement. The “attachment parenting” philosophy promotes a lifestyle and a specific set of practices that are not proven to be related to a secure attachment. As a result, the movement has sown confusion (and guilt and stress) around the meaning of the word “attachment.”

The attachment parenting philosophy inspired by the Searses and promoted by an organization called Attachment Parenting International is centered on eight principle concepts, especially breastfeeding, co-sleeping, constant contact like baby-wearing, and emotional responsiveness. The approach is a well-intentioned reaction to earlier, harsher parenting advice, and the tone of the guidance tends to be baby-centered, supportive, and loving. Some of the practices are beneficial for reasons other than attachment. But the advice is often taken literally and to the extreme, as in the case of my “Amelie,” whose labor required hospital intervention and who suffered unduly in the belief that breastfeeding and co-sleeping are necessary for a secure attachment.

Attachment parenting has also been roundly critiqued for promoting a conservative Christian, patriarchal family structure that keeps women at home and tied tightly to their baby’s desires. Additionally, the philosophy seems to have morphed in the public consciousness into a lifestyle that also includes organic food, cloth diapers, rejection of vaccinations, and homeschooling. The Searses have sold millions of books, and they profit from endorsements of products that serve their advice.

“These [attachment parenting principles] are all fine things,” observes Sroufe “but they’re not the essential things. There is no evidence that they are predictive of a secure attachment.”

Sroufe unpacks feeding as an example: A mother could breastfeed, but do it in a mechanical and insensitive way, potentially contributing to an insecure attachment. On the other hand, she could bottle-feed in a sensitive manner, taking cues from the baby and using the interaction as an opportunity to look, talk, and play gently, according to the baby’s communication—all behaviors that are likely to create secure attachment. In other words, it is the quality of the interaction that matters. Now, one might choose breastfeeding for its digestibility or nutrition (though the long-term benefits are still debated), but to imply, as Amelie’s pediatrician did, that bottle-feeding could damage her bond with her baby is simply uninformed.

There is also confusion about what “constant contact” means. Early on, the Searses were influenced by the continuum concept, a “natural” approach to parenting inspired by indigenous practices of wearing or carrying babies much of the time. This, too, might have been taken up in reaction to the advice of the day, which was to treat children in a more businesslike manner. There is no arguing that skin-to-skin contact, close physical contact, holding, and carrying are all good for babies in the first few months of life, as their physiological systems settle and organize. Research also shows that the practice can reduce crying in the first few months. But again, what matters for attachment is the caregiver’s orientation and attunement: Is the caregiver stressed or calm, checked out or engaged, and are they reading a baby’s signals? Some parents misinterpret the prescription for closeness as a demand for constant physical closeness (which in the extreme can stress any parent), even though the Searses do advise parents to strive for a balanced life.

“There’s a difference between a ‘tight’ connection and a secure attachment,” Sroufe explains. “A tight attachment—together all the time—might actually be an anxious attachment.”

And what of emotional responsivity? This, too, has a kernel of truth, yet can be taken too far. It is safe to say that all developmental scientists encourage emotional responsiveness on the part of caregivers: The back-and-forth, or serve-and-return, is crucial to brain development, cognitive and emotional development, the stress regulation system, and just authentic human connection. But in my observation, well-meaning parents can become overly-responsive—or permissive—in the belief that they need to meet every request of the child. While that is appropriate for babies in the first half to one-year year of life (you can’t spoil a baby), toddlers and older children benefit from age-appropriate limits in combination with warmth and love. On the other hand, some parents feel stressed that they cannot give their child enough in the midst of their other responsibilities. Those parents can take some comfort in the finding that even within a secure attachment, parents are only attuned to the baby about 30% of the time. What is important, researchers say, is that the baby develops a generalized trust that their caregiver will respond and meet their needs, or that when mismatches occur, the caregiver will repair them (and babies, themselves, will go a long way toward soliciting that repair). As long as the caregiver returns to the interaction much of the time and rights the baby’s boat, this flow of attunements, mismatches, and repairs offers the optimal amount of connection and stress for a baby to develop both confidence and coping, in balance.

What is the scientific view of attachment?

The scientific notion of attachment has its roots in the work of an English psychiatrist named John Bowlby who, in the 1930s, began working with children with emotional problems. Most professionals of the day held the Freudian belief that children were mainly motivated by internal drives like hunger, aggression, and sexuality, and not by their environment. However, Bowlby noticed that most of the troubled children in his care were “affectionless” and had experienced disrupted or even absent caregiving. Though his supervisor forbade him from even talking to a mother of a child (!), he insisted that family experiences were important, and in 1944 he wrote his first account of his observations based on 44 boys in his care. (Around the same time in America, psychologist Harry Harlow was coming to the same conclusion in his fascinating and heart-rending studies of baby monkeys, where he observed that babies sought comfort, and not just food, from their mothers.)

Bowlby went on to study and treat other children who were separated from their parents: those who were hospitalized or homeless. He came to believe that the primary caregiver (he focused mainly on mothers) served as a kind of “psychic organizer” to the child, and that a child needs this influence, especially at certain times, in order to develop successfully. To grow up mentally healthy, then, “the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with this mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment.”

But the attachment figure doesn’t have to be the mother or even a parent. According to Bowlby, babies form a “small hierarchy of attachments.” This makes sense from an evolutionary view: The number has to be small since attachment organizes emotions and behavior in the baby, and to have too many attachments would be confusing; yet having multiples provides the safety of backups. And it’s a hierarchy because when the baby is in need of safety, he or she doesn’t have time to analyze the pros or cons of a particular person and must automatically turn to the person already determined to be a reliable comfort. Research shows that children who have a secure attachment with at least one adult experience benefits. Babies can form attachments with older siblings, fathers, grandparents, other relatives, a special adult outside the family, and even babysitters and daycare providers. However, there will still be a hierarchy, and under normal circumstances, a parent is usually at the top.

photo credit: K. Merchant

photo credit: D. Divecha

In the 1950s, Mary Ainsworth joined Bowlby in England, and a decade later back in the U.S. began to diagnose different kinds of relationship patterns between children and their mothers in the second year of life.[2] She did this by watching how babies reacted in a sequence of situations: when the baby and mother were together, when they were separated, when the baby was with a stranger, and when baby was reunited with the caregiver after the separation. Ainsworth and colleagues identified the first three of the following patterns, and Mary Main and colleagues identified the fourth:

When babies have a secure attachment, they play and explore freely from the “secure base” of their mother’s presence. When the mother leaves, the baby can become distressed, especially when a stranger is around. When the mother returns, the baby expresses her joy, sometimes from a distance and sometimes reaching to be picked up and held (babies vary, depending on their personality and temperament, even within a secure attachment). Then the baby settles quickly and returns to playing.

The mothers who fall into this pattern are responsive, warm, loving, and emotionally available, and as a result their babies grow to be confident in their mothers’ ability to handle feelings. The babies feel free to express their positive and negative feelings openly and don’t develop defenses against the unpleasant ones.

Babies in insecure-avoidant attachments seem indifferent to the mother, act unstressed when she leaves, and exhibit the same behaviors with a stranger. When the mother returns after a separation, the baby might avoid her, or might “fail to cling” when picked up.

The mothers in insecure-avoidant attachments often seem angry in general and angry, specifically, at their babies. They can be intolerant, sometimes punishing, of distress, and often attribute wrong motivations to the baby, e.g., “He’s just crying to spite me.” One study showed that the insecurely-attached babies are just as physiologically upset (increased heart rates, etc.) as securely attached babies when parents leave but have learned to suppress their emotions in order to stay close to the parent without risking rejection. In other words, the babies “deactivate” their normal attachment system and stop looking to their mothers for help.

As toddlers, insecure-avoidant children don’t pay much attention to their mothers or their own feelings, and their explorations of the physical world are rigid and self-reliant. By preschool, these children tend to be more hostile, aggressive, and have more negative interactions overall. Avoidance and emotional distance become a way of dealing with the world, and instead of problem-solving, they are more likely to sulk or withdraw.

Babies with an insecure-ambivalent/resistant attachment are clingy with their mother and don’t explore or play in her presence. They are distressed when the mother leaves, and when she returns, they vacillate between clinging and angry resistance. For example, they may struggle, hit, or push back when the mother picks them up.

These babies are not easily comforted. They seem to want the close relationship, but the mother’s inconsistency and insensitivity undermine the baby’s confidence in her responses. This pattern also undermines the child’s autonomy, because the baby stays focused on the mother’s behavior and changing moods to the exclusion of nearly everything else. In insecure-ambivalent babies, separation anxiety tends to last long after secure babies have mastered it. Longitudinal studies show that these children often become inhibited, withdrawn, and unassertive, and they have poor interpersonal skills.

The last pattern of insecure attachment—which is the most disturbing and destructive—is disorganized attachment, and it was described by Ainsworth’s doctoral student, Mary Main. This pattern can occur in families where there is abuse or maltreatment; the mother, who is supposed to be a source of support, is also the person who frightens the child. Such mothers may be directly maltreating the child, or they might have their own histories of unresolved trauma. Main and her colleague write, “[T]he infant is presented with an irresolvable paradox wherein the haven of safety is at once the source of alarm.”

This pattern can also result when the mother has a mental illness, substance addiction, or multiple risk factors like poverty, substance abuse and a history of being mistreated. Babies of mothers like this can be flooded with anxiety; alternatively, they can be “checked out” or dissociated, showing a flat, expressionless affect or odd, frozen postures, even when held by the mother. Later these children tend to become controlling and aggressive, and dissociation remains a preferred defense mechanism.[3]

“The emotional quality of our earliest attachment experience is perhaps the single most important influence on human development.”

— Alan Sroufe and Dan Siegel

How important is attachment?

“Nothing is more important than the attachment relationship,” says Alan Sroufe, who, together with colleagues, performed a series of landmark studies to discover the long-term impact of a secure attachment. Over a 35-year period, the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaption (MLSRA) revealed that the quality of the early attachment reverberated well into later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, even when temperament and social class were accounted for.

One of the most important—and, to some ways of thinking, paradoxical—findings was that a secure attachment early in life led to greater independence later, whereas an insecure attachment led to a child being more dependent later in life. This conclusion runs counter to the conventional wisdom held by some people I’ve observed who are especially eager to make the baby as independent and self-sufficient as possible right from the start. But there is no pushing independence, Sroufe found. It blooms naturally out of a secure attachment.

photo credit: K. Merchant

In school, securely attached children were more well-liked and treated better, by both their peers and their teachers. In one study, teachers who had no knowledge of a child’s attachment history were shown to treat securely attached children with more warmth and respect, set more age-appropriate standards, and have higher expectations. In contrast, teachers were more controlling, had lower expectations, got angry more often, and showed less nurturing toward the children with difficult attachments—and who, sadly, had a greater need than the securely attached kids for kindness from adults.

The MSLRA studies showed that children with a secure attachment history were more likely to develop:[4]

A greater sense of self-agency
Better emotional regulation
Higher self-esteem
Better coping under stress
More positive engagement in the preschool peer group
Closer friendships in middle childhood
Better coordination of friendships and social groups in adolescence
More trusting, non-hostile romantic relationships in adulthood
Greater social competence
More leadership qualities
Happier and better relationships with parents and siblings
Greater trust in life

A large body of additional research suggests that a child’s early attachment affects the quality of their adult relationships, and a recent longitudinal study of 81 men showed that those who grew up in warm, secure families were more likely to have secure attachments with romantic partners well into their 70s and 80s. A parent’s history of childhood attachment can also affect their ability to parent their own child, creating a cross-generational transmission of attachment styles.

But early childhood attachment with a parent is not destiny: It depends on what else comes along. For example, a secure preschool child can shift to having an insecure attachment later if there is a severe disruption in the caregiving system—a divorce or death of a parent, for example. But the effect is mediated by how stressed and available the primary attachment figure is. In other words, it’s not what happens, but how it happens that matters. Children who were previously secure, though, have a tendency to rebound more easily.

Sroufe writes in several articles that an insecure attachment is not fate, either; it can be repaired in a subsequent relationship. For example, good-quality childcare that offers emotional support and stress reduction can mitigate a rocky start at home. A later healthy romantic relationship can offset the effects of a difficult childhood. And good therapy can help, too, since some of the therapeutic process mimics the attachment process. Bowlby viewed development as a series of pathways, constrained by paths previously taken but where change is always possible.

Without conscious intervention, though, attachment styles do tend to get passed through the generations, and Bowlby observed that becoming a parent particularly activates a parent’s childhood attachment style. One study looked at attachment styles over three generations and found that the mother’s attachment style when she was pregnant predicted her baby’s attachment style at one year of age for about 70% of cases.

What about parents who might not have gotten a good start in life and want to change their attachment style? There’s good news. Research on adult attachment shows that it is not the actual childhood experiences with attachment that matter but rather how well the adult understands what happened to them, whether they’ve learned some new ways of relating, and how well they’ve integrated their experience into the present. In other words, do they have a coherent and realistic story (including both good and bad) of where they’ve been and where they are now?

Support matters, too. In one of Sroufe’s studies, half the mothers were teenagers, which is usually a stressful situation. Sroufe found that the teenagers with good social support were able to form secure attachments with their babies, but if they didn’t have support, they were unlikely to form a secure attachment.

How to parent for a secure attachment and how to know if it’s working.

“The baby needs to know that they’re massively important,” says Sroufe. “A caregiver should be involved, attentive, sensitive, and responsive.”

“The baby will tell you what to do,” Sroufe explains. “They have a limited way of expressing their needs, so they’re not that difficult to read: If they’re fussing, they need something. If their arms are out, they want to be picked up. And if you misread them, they will keep on signaling until you get it right.” He gives the example of bottle-feeding a baby: “The baby might want a break, and she looks around. What does the baby want? To look around! If the parent misreads and forces the bottle back, the baby will insist, maybe snap her head away, or pull away harder.”

“How can I know if my baby is securely attached?” a client asked me about her six-month old. Clearly observable attachment doesn’t emerge until around nine months, but here are some clues that a secure attachment is underway:

0-3 months:

The baby’s physiology is just settling as the baby cycles quickly among feeding, sleeping, and alert wakefulness. Meeting the baby’s needs at different points in the cycle helps establish stability.
At this point, the baby has no clear preference for one person over another.
In her quiet, alert state, the baby is interested in the faces and voices around her.

4-8 months:

Attempts to soothe the baby are usually effective at calming her down. (Caveat: An inability to soothe might not be predictive of insecurity but rather point to one of a host of other possible issues.)
The primary caregiver has positive interactions with the baby where the back-and-forth is pleasant.
The baby has calm periods where she is interested in the world around her, and she explores and experiments to the extent she is physically able to—looking, grasping, reaching, babbling, beginning crawling, exploring objects with her mouth, hands, etc.
Infants begin to discriminate between people and start to show preferences. They direct most of their emotions (smiles, cries) toward the caregiver but are still interested in strangers.
They are very interested in the people they see often, especially siblings.

9 months:

The baby shows a clear preference for a primary caregiver.
The baby shows wariness toward strangers, though the degree varies with temperament.
The baby is easily upset when separated from her primary caregiver, though that, too, varies with temperament.
The baby is easily soothed after a separation and can resume her exploration or play.

9 months – 3 years:

The child shows a clear emotional bond with a primary person.
The child stays in close proximity to that person but forms close relationships with other people who are around a lot, too, e.g., babysitter, siblings.

Beyond this age, the attachment relationship becomes more elaborated. With language and memory, the rhythms of attachment and separation become more negotiated, talked about, and planned, and there is more of a back-and-forth between parent and child. By toddlerhood and beyond, an authoritative parenting style deftly blends secure attachment with age-appropriate limits and supports. A sensitive parent allows the changing attachment to grow and stretch with a child’s growing skills, yet continues to be emotionally attuned to the child and to protect their safety.

One of the best resources for how to parent for a secure attachment in the first few years of life is the new book Raising A Secure Child by Kent Hoffman, Glen Cooper, and Bert Powell, all therapists who have worked with many different kinds of families for decades. Their work is based squarely on the science of attachment, and they call their approach the Circle of Security. The circle represents the seamless ebb and flow of how babies and young children need their caregivers, at times coming close for care and comfort, and at other times following their inspiration to explore the world around them. The caregivers’ role is to tune into where on the circle their child is at the moment and act accordingly. Parenting for a secure attachment, the authors say, is not a prescriptive set of behaviors but more a state of mind, a way of “being with” the baby, a sensitivity to what they are feeling. The authors also help parents see the ways that their own attachment history shows up in their parenting and help them to make the necessary adjustments.

The neurobiology of attachment

“Attachment theory is essentially a theory of regulation,” explains Allan Schore, a developmental neuroscientist in the Department of Psychiatry at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. A clinician-scientist, he has elaborated modern attachment theory over the last three decades by explaining how the attachment relationship is important to the child’s developing brain and body.

Early brain development, Schore explains, is not driven just by genetics. The brain needs social experiences to take shape. “Mother Nature and Mother Nurture combine to shape Human Nature,” he writes.

Infants grow new synapses, or neural connections, at a rate of 40,000 new synapses a second, and the brain more than doubles in volume across the first year. Genetic factors drive this early overproduction of neurons, Schore explains, but the brain awaits direction from the social environment, or epigenetic processes, to determine which synapses or connections are to be pruned, which should be maintained, and which genes are turned on or off.

One of the first areas of the brain that begins to grow and differentiate is the right brain, the hemisphere that processes emotional and social information. The right brain begins to differentiate in the last trimester in utero, whereas the left-brain development picks up in the second year of life. Some of the regions that process emotion are already present in infants’ brains at birth—the amygdala, hypothalamus, insula, cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex. But the connections among these areas develop in specific patterns over the first years of life. That’s where input from the primary relationship becomes crucial—organizing the hierarchical circuitry that will eventually process, communicate, and regulate social and emotional information.[5]

“What the primary caregiver is doing, in being with the baby,” explains Schore, “is allowing the child to feel and to identify in his own body these different emotional states. By having a caregiver simply ‘be with’ him while he feels emotions and has experiences, the baby learns how to be,” Schore says.

The part of the brain that the primary caregiver uses for intuition, feeling, and empathy to attune to the infant is also the caregiver’s right brain. So it is through “right-brain-to-right brain” reading of each other, that the parent and child synchronize their energy, emotions, and communication. And the behaviors that parents are inclined to do naturally—like eye contact and face-to-face interaction, speaking in “motherese” (higher-pitched and slower than normal speech), and holding—are just the ones shown to grow the right-brain regions in the baby that influence emotional life and especially emotion regulation.

The evidence for epigenetic effects on emotion regulation is quite solid: Early caregiving experiences can affect the expression of the genes that regulate a baby’s stress and they can shape how the endocrine system will mobilize to stress. Caregiving behaviors like responsiveness affect the development of the baby’s vagal tone (the calming system) and the hypothalamic-pituitary axis (the system that activates the body to respond to perceived danger). High quality caregiving, then, modulates how the brain and body respond to and manage stress.

Schore points out that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain region in the right hemisphere, both has the most complex emotion and stress-regulating systems of any part in the brain and is also the center of Bowlby’s attachment control system. Neurobiological research confirms that this region is “specifically influenced by the social environment.” [6]

Stress management is not the only important part of emotion regulation. In the past, Schore explains, there was an overemphasis in the field of emotion regulation on singularly lowering the baby’s distress. But now, he says, we understand that supporting positive emotional states is equally important to creating [what he quotes a colleague as calling] a “background state of well-being.” In other words, enjoy your baby. It’s protective.

A baby’s emotion regulation begins with the caregiver, and the Goldilocks principle applies: If the caregiver’s emotions are too high, the stimulation could be intrusive to the baby, Schore explains. Too low, and the baby’s “background state” settles at a low or possibly depressive emotional baseline. Just right, from the baby’s point of view is best.

And babies are surprisingly perceptive at registering their feeling environment. Hoffman, Cooper and Powell write:

The youngest babies can sense ease versus impatience, delight versus resentment or irritation, comfort versus restlessness, genuine versus pretending, or other positive versus negative responses in a parent when these reactions aren’t evident to a casual observer. Little babies may pick up on the smallest sigh, the subtlest shift in tone of voice, a certain glance, or some type of body language and know the parent is genuinely comfortable or definitely not pleased.

Schore explains that in a secure attachment, the baby learns to self-regulate in two ways: One he calls “autoregulation” which is self-soothing, or using his own mind and body to manage feelings. The second is “interactive regulation” which is going to other people to help up- or down-regulate feelings. This twin thread of self-reliance and reliance on others, then, begins in the earliest months, becomes very important in the first two years of life, and continues in more subtle ways throughout the life span.

This all might sound daunting for a new parent, who could still be tempted to overdo the focus on the infant and how the connection is going—potentially leading to the same kinds of stress and guilt that the attachment parenting movement creates.

But fortunately, the caregiver doesn’t have to be 100% attuned to the baby and ongoing repairs are an important part of the process:

“The idea that a mother should never stress a baby is problematic,” Schore says. “Insecure attachments aren’t created just by a caregiver’s inattention or missteps. It also comes from a failure to repair ruptures. What is essential is the repair. Maybe the caregiver is coming in too fast and needs to back off, or maybe the caregiver has not responded, and needs to show the baby that she’s there. Either way, repair is possible, and it works. Stress is a part of life, and what we’re trying to do here is to set up a system by which the baby can learn how to cope with stress.” Optimal stress, he explains, is important for stimulating the stress-regulating system.

Still, both Sroufe and Schore acknowledge the emotional labor of parenting. And they are vehement that parents need to be supported in order to have the space and freedom to care for babies.

“It takes time for parents to learn to read their baby’s signals,” Sroufe said.

Schore calls America’s failure to provide paid family leave—and we’re the only country in the world that doesn’t—the “shame of America.”

“We are putting the next generation at risk,” he explains, pointing to rising rates of insecure attachments and plummeting mental health among American youth. Parents should have at least six months of paid leave and job protection for the primary caregiver, and at least two months of the same for the secondary one, according to Schore, and Sroufe goes further, advocating for one full year of paid leave and job protection. And a recent study showed that it takes mothers a year to recover from pregnancy and delivery.

Intellectual and cognitive development have been privileged in our society, but it is our emotion regulation that organizes us, our existence, and how we experience life, Schore says. A study from the London School of Economics draws the conclusion that “The most important childhood predictor of adult life-satisfaction is the child’s emotional health…. The least powerful predictor is the child’s intellectual development.”[7]

So where does this leave my friend Amelie? The hard part will be navigating the distracting advice and creating the workarounds she needs for the lack of cultural support. But she enjoys her baby immensely, and I’m confident that she’ll form a secure attachment with Sylvie, as she trusts her own “right-brain” flow of empathy, feeling, and being, and tunes in to Sylvie’s own unique ways of communicating.

And Sylvie will do her part to draw her parents close. Because regardless of babies’ individual personalities—and whether they cry a lot or sleep very little, whether they’re breastfed or bottle-fed—they draw you in with their wide-open gaze, their milky scent, and their tiny fingers that curl around your big ones. Before you know it, they light you up with their full-body smile that’s specially for you, and they draw you near with their plump little arms clasped around your neck.

And the sweet elixir of the attachment relationship is underway.

References:

[1] While many medications are considered safe to take while breastfeeding, complete side effects may not be fully understood. For example, recent research suggests antibiotics may change the test baby’s microbiome (the implications of which are unclear), and some antibiotics are thought to discolor developing teeth.

[2] This section refers to primary caregivers as mothers since this research focused just on mothers.

[3] This section was adapted from the chapter on Attachment, in D. Davies’ Child Development: A Practitioner’s Guide, Guilford, 2011.

[4] Sroufe, A. & Siegel, D. “The verdict is in: The case for attachment theory.”

[5] From Schore, A. (2017). Modern attachment theory, in APA’s Handbook of Trauma Psychology, p. 6.

[6] Schore, A. (2017). “Modern attachment theory.” In APA Handbook of Trauma Psychology: Vol 1 (publication pending).

[7] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecoj.12170/full p. F720, in Layard,R., Clark, A.E., Cornaglia, F., Powdthavee, N. & Vernoit, J. (2014) What predicts a successful life? A life-course model of well-being. The Economic Journal, 124, p. F720-F738.

What Does a Developmental Psychologist See in a 40th Class Reunion?

July 23, 2016

When I told people I was going to my 40th high school reunion, I might as well have said I was jumping off a cliff. Almost across the board, the reaction was shock, though the reasons varied. Granted, I hadn’t been in touch with my classmates, so some degree of surprise was legitimate. But my friends and family also projected their own reasons: high school had been the “worst time of their lives”; that they had never “fit in”; they didn’t want to open their present lives to judgment. But I’m a developmental psychologist, and I wanted to understand what a reunion ritual might mean. Nothing is more interesting to me than discovering how children grow up and their lives turn out.

As the date approached, I finally became apprehensive myself. Most of us had been together since kindergarten, but what if I didn’t recognize people after forty years? After all, I now have silver hair and 40 additional pounds; others would also have changed. Or what if we didn’t have anything to talk about? How would I react to an old “flame,” or he to me? Could I finally uncover the story behind a friend who had so traumatically “dropped” me in sixth grade? When nervous jokes started showing up on the Facebook reunion page, I saw that I wasn’t the only one with anxiety. I recruited a childhood friend to go with me.

“I’m only doing this for you, you know,” Vic joked when she greeted me at my hotel. Our mothers went to high school together and been friends long before we were born. Vic remembers the fuzzy socks I wore in second grade and how my father had carried me into school in his arms when my broken leg was in a cast. I remember making vinegar and baking soda volcanoes at Vic’s house and singing soprano next to her in choir.

We arrived at the Curling Club (home to the winter sport of sliding granite stones on ice) to a frenzy of slightly boozed-up greetings. About a third of my class of 140 was there. A current of excitement crackled through the crowd—hails from across the lawn; flying wisecracks and boisterous teasing; and enthusiastic, if somewhat self-conscious, hugging. It was a relief to find my old friend Dave, who was just as unruffled as I’d remembered him—a straight shooter, unperturbed by his surroundings. He had worked for a time for my father, a milkman; his mother had been my beloved third grade teacher. I was happy to meet Dave’s wife, and a meaningful conversation ensued about parents, illness, children, and more.

Sociologist Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi has observed that high school reunions can trigger a sudden threat to one’s identity. In the space of a short gathering, we are called upon to reconcile past expectations with our present reality, among people who shared that past. At my reunion, the actual list of predictions that our peers had made about each other 40 years ago hid amidst the memorabilia. “Diana will run a computer dating service,” it read, and the old memory of craving connection amidst my chaotic environment flashed. Other predictions were equally unpredictive: that a high school romance would end in marriage (it didn’t) or that a career would peak in a grocery store stockroom (it didn’t); and predictions for women centered on marriage and children. Predictions can be entertaining, but since these weren’t about activating our best future selves, I regretted their presence. Reunions are not just happy gatherings, Vinitzky-Seroussi writes. They “telescope the life course” and create pressure to evaluate, or protect, or project our choices, often in the space of a very short, catch-up conversation.

But this was not our tenth or even twenty-fifth reunion, the early ones that Vinitzky-Seroussi studied. This was our fortieth, a time when life achievements are behind for most of us and some are even looking toward retirement. Fortunately, I felt well-anchored in the present, and I think others did, too.

The conventional wisdom about reunions is that people can surprise you, and I found that to be true. Who would have known that the quiet boy in the back of the band would be a pillar of the community as the trusted funeral director? Or that the guy who seemed lost in high school would be so crisp and successful at 58? Psychologists use the terms “equifinality” and “multifinality” to describe how very different paths can lead to similar outcomes, or, conversely, how similar paths can lead to very different outcomes. At the same time, our perceptions of what’s important changes, too: The kids who once dominated in popularity might now appear boring and superficial, and the former “outsiders” often turn out to be the really interesting ones. And yet when I asked Vic if she recognized everyone, she replied, “Not so much from their faces, but their energy—it’s the same.”

Even though we all shared a large part of our pasts, we couldn’t have truly known each others’ lives while we were children. A few kids had seemed to sail through with equanimity—they ran the student council at school and collected maple syrup at home–but even then, there were hints of malaise. I knew that it wasn’t right that the gentle, deer-like boy who sat in front of me in seventh grade homeroom smelled like alcohol and cigarettes. Another child was rumored to have been abused, though there was no action taken to protect her. I was a high achiever but suffered with parents who were in constant conflict; they struggled with mental health and substance use issues. Many parents were alcoholics before the disease was even named.

Psychologists now know that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are predictive of later physical and mental health problems, including heart disease, depression, and suicidality. Research suggests that about a third of kids are lucky enough to escape trauma, but about a quarter suffer such high doses that it affects brain development, immune and endocrine functioning, and can create mental and physical disease systems that reduce the lifespan by an average of 20 years. How different might many students’ lives have been if an adult had recognized their feelings and had the skill to approach them and say, “You look down. What’s going on, and can I help?” Today, innovative schools throughout the country are feathering emotional skill development into their academic curricula, and studies show that both individual kids, and the school as a whole do better. Pediatricians, too, are beginning to screen for ACEs and offer early intervention services to families and children at risk.

Childhood is not easy, even at the best of times, and middle school is an especially stressful period. Conventional wisdom used to hold that it was the changing sex hormones that made kids “crazy,” but scientists now understand that puberty kicks off changes in the brain that make youth more emotionally sensitive, more sensitive to their social world, more willing to take risks, and more vulnerable to mental illness and addictions. Combine all of that with changes in schools, new peer groups, or family troubles, and you quickly get a pile-up of stressors that can be overwhelming.

Jockeying for status in peer groups begins as early as the fifth grade, and, in my day, peer dynamics were raw and lacking any guidance. Consistent with the research, it was the male athletes and the conventionally pretty girls (especially cheerleaders) who were conferred high status, and kids who were “different” were often marginalized—through teasing, exclusion, and gossip. Girls who physically matured earlier than average, or boys who matured later than average, were at greater risk, just as they are today. Too tall, too skinny, too heavy, too awkward, too shy, too country, too slow…the “faults” can be endless.

Kids naturally form and re-form friendships, but without real social skills, the process can be excruciating. In sixth grade, I was shattered when my best friend of six years decided one day to simply stop talking to me. While it’s natural for a child to feel ready to find new friends, this particular friend had had no skills with which to explain her needs. Her silent treatment left a mark, and I used it both as a cautionary tale for my own children and an illustration in the college courses I taught on teen development. Research now shows that humans are such intensely social creatures that social ostracism lights up physical pain pathways in the brain; it can be more damaging than even physical abuse. Sometimes, I imagine how our friendship “breakup” could have gone differently, had we had the social skills kids can learn in school nowadays to navigate peer conflict. Though my well-being is no longer affected by that experience, I was curious to know my former friend’s side of the story. Yet when we greeted each other at the reunion, we didn’t get much beyond a hello. I took that to mean that it was not likely to be the place—or perhaps the person—where such a conversation could happen.

“Humans are storytelling, story-loving creatures,” says psychologist Matthew Lieberman, author of Social Brain, Social Mind. One of the most powerful ways we understand the experience of being human is by constructing a narrative of our lives. Young children begin this process as soon as they learn the word “I,” and parents begin telling them stories about when they were little. And at the other end of lifespan, elders engage in a “life review,” telling and retelling their stories to help them make sense of their lives.

Reunions—where our past selves meet our present selves—can be a special opportunity to re-weave our stories. I observed it happening all evening. One woman who had seemed defiant and tough in junior high apologized to the PE teacher, telling her that she hadn’t meant to be the teacher’s “nemesis” but in fact was a military kid who got moved around a lot.

“I never knew that,” the teacher breathed, empathically.

A man who had been a geek before geeks were cool enthusiastically shared that he was an inventor, held patents, had designed a part of the space shuttle and a medical device, and had made millions doing so.

A friend divulged her confusion about some same-sex experimentation that had gone on at a childhood sleepover. Of course there had been no framework for normalizing that, or even language to name it.

I, too, had a story to revise. When a popular biology teacher’s name came up, I shared that six years after we’d graduated, he had prevented my Lutheran church from marrying me and my husband, because my husband is from India. “He’s not a good guy,” I grumbled about the teacher.

The life stories flowed, from what it’s like for a Minnesotan to be transplanted to the Deep South, to taking care of grandchildren, to being the youngest in a senior citizen woodworking shop, to losing a child. There was a lot of loss and growth to process, as well as joy to celebrate.

One evening is not enough time together to truly span 40 years; it’s just a sliver of reality. But I happily put new numbers and email addresses into my phone. I want to keep up with some old friends, and I discovered new ones that I’d missed earlier.

And that old flame?

“I learned from you,” he told me. “Your family had high expectations, and I craved some of that.”

“You sheltered me at a stormy time,” I replied, remembering his laughter and easy-going manner.

Class reunion? For me, at least, it wasn’t so scary. What we went through together mattered, and bearing witness to one another’s stories—from our shared past and the years that had followed— felt like a good way to honor that.

What Does a Developmental Psychologist See in Burning Man?

September 15, 2015

When I sent my 86-year old father my photos from Burning Man, he replied that he didn't understand: Wasn't it for "hippie kids"? What was I doing there, and what did the experience do for me?

The Burn is famously different for each participant. Some Burners go to strut and party, some to share their art, a few to network and get ahead. Approaching our 60s, my husband and I get the most pleasure from camping there with our 20-something kids who extended an open invitation for the second time. But I also go to stay fresh, keep up on emerging ideas, and to prevent the fixed mindset I fear might creep in with age.

Like everyone, I bring my own kaleidoscopic lens to the playa. In my everyday life as a developmental psychologist, I experience much of my social world through a chronological telescope: When I look at children, I see the adults they may become; when I meet adults, I see the children they likely were. I’m keenly aware that we are all developing, all the time.

And I recognize that we are not nailed uniformly to a single rung on some developmental ladder. While some parts of us are reasonably established in adulthood, some parts of us remain deep in childhood. Psychologists call this normal developmental unevenness décalage, a French word that translates to “lag” or “gap.” Many people are not stuck but move flexibly and adaptively—like various spiritual teachers I’ve encountered, whose equanimity is spacious and evolved, yet who can erupt with the laughter and delight of young children.

At home, preparing for Burning Man, I gave myself permission to go the craft table and the dress-up corner to immerse myself in the elixir of creativity and make-believe. I emerged wearing a homemade caftan, wooden necklaces, and a medieval horned headpiece, along with a second headpiece of papier-mâché branches sprouting from a drywall skullcap anchored inside a turban. By the time I hopped on my bike at the edge of the playa, I could see my 10-year-old self in the mirror.

In my adult life, I advocate for improving childhood through my research, speaking, and writing. And there's much to do. In the first twenty years of life, we find out how the world works and we wrangle a place in it. For some, the process is kind, and for others it is bumpy yet manageable. For a surprising number, though, it is a tortured and traumatic path and they are deposited at the door of adulthood with handicaps and scar tissue. In a famous study of over 17,000 adults, about a third said their childhoods were free of “adverse childhood experiences” (one of ten serious conditions that can derail a child’s life), but about a quarter reported three or more types of traumas— a number that science now links to emotional and physical problems that persist well into adulthood.

And in a Hansel-and-Gretel world, the places meant to shelter, nurture, and protect children are the ones that do the most damage. Many children are traumatized in their homes, and show up at school unable to concentrate or manage their strong feelings. They are frequently misdiagnosed, drugged, punished or expelled. When adults have emotional problems, they are treated as mental health concerns, but when children have emotional struggles, they are often "behavior problems" to be controlled. Schools, too, can be unsafe: Punishment is a popular but harmful approach to managing children, while cultivating kind, emotionally supportive school cultures is effective but slow to catch on. About a quarter of kids are bullied or harassed at school--an experience that can undermine the rest of their lives. Children do not enjoy the same relationship rights that adults are privileged with; they're made to return, day after day, to the places and people who abuse them.

Burners are a well-educated, modestly financially secure group, but emotional difficulties are equal opportunity. The playa is sometimes described as a kind of playground, but through my eyes it is unlike the one of our childhoods. This one acknowledges some real developmental concerns. Through installations, workshops, and talks, Burning Man offers a chance for some re-dos. Some rewiring.

And it can start with letting go of some of the grief collected on the journey so far. The Temple of Promise, a stunning Gothic cornucopia rising 97 feet above the playa—is a paean to both the normal and the outsized suffering of being human.

Temple of Promise (photos by Diana and Arjun Divecha)

Visitors walk through its increasingly narrowing form, leaving baggage, burdens, pains, fears, and mementos to be burned away at the end of the week. Messages fill and are hung from every available surface, and this year someone left three small suitcases. One woman vented an angry diatribe of suffering at the hands of an abusive stepfather and a complicit mother. Another message was written to parents who had died in a plane accident: “I have not been in a small plane since yours was taken down,” it said. “A friend has offered to fly me over this temple, and I am going to try to overcome my fear. My love is eternal.” On our fourth walk through the temple, my husband quietly released some of the sorrow of losing his mother three months ago.

Reflect (photo by Diana Divecha) — *Reflect* *(photo by Diana Divecha)*

A giant 20-by-40-foot colored tear drop, called Reflect, was captured at the point where it hits water, to represent all the tears shed by those left behind when someone takes his or her own life.

In childhood, adult power hierarchies—based on social status, gender, ethnicity, even height and attractiveness—are replicated inside the school walls, and kids learn early who’s on top and who’s pushed to the exit ramps. Kids often punish each other for being different, and power structures like schools and other institutions use whatever behavioral control possible to keep kids “in line.”

A 50-foot chapel called the Totem of Confessions contained dioramas of surreal and dreamlike black-and-white photos, oddities that might pop up from the subconscious into dreams or fantasies or fears, and that would likely be considered shameful by others. And as a reminder of ever-present judgment, there was a confessional in the interior of the chapel.

Totem of Confessions (photos by Diana Divecha)

Time Out Corner (photo by Diana Divecha) — *Time Out Corner* *(photo by Diana Divecha)*

A Time Out Corner appeared out of nowhere on the playa, recalling the frequent punishment—deserved or not—of our childhood transgressions. Timeouts for children are now understood to be ineffective, even harmful. Brain imaging studies show they light up the same neural pathways as physical pain.

Some days, after writing about bullying and trauma, I marvel that most of us make it to adulthood as well as we do. The striving to connect, to still try, to be able to still wonder, was manifest in the sculpture Love. There, two massive wire adult forms were seated back-to-back, heads down in withdrawal, while the glowing child inside each of them reached out for the other, touching hands.

Love (photo by Diana Divecha) — *Love* *(photo by Diana Divecha)*

Identity Awareness (photo by Diana Divecha) — *Identity Awareness* *(photo by Diana Divecha)*

At Burning Man, there is an invitation to sort out what is personal encumbrance and artifice, from what authentically belongs to us. A giant question mark, barely propped up by a human figure reminded us to question the source of our choices, the source of our identity.

One of the Ten Guiding Principles of Burning Man—radical self-expression—is a direct antidote to the censoring—and censuring—of growing up, making space to question the conventions we take for granted. We took part with our crazy clothes, our go-with-the-flow schedules (some of us got up before dawn when others were just going to bed), and our explorations of new topics (from beekeeping to twerking). We passed the “Dick Parade” where 150 men bicycled through camp, bottomless, while gentle hecklers (a thing) encouraged the liberal use of sunscreen. In its counterpart, women paraded topless in "Critical Tits." Overhead, a man flew a glider, naked. “You’re guaranteed to not be the weirdest kid in the classroom,” the online guide soothes. It would be easy to dismiss the naked experimentation as exhibitionism, but I'm sure some riders may have been struggling with their body image or health concerns; for some it may have been a healing process from being bullied, targeted, or abused; and perhaps others simply wanted to walk through the wall of a conventional boundary. There are as many possible reasons as there were riders.

(Photos by Arjun and Zai Divecha)

But by radical, they mean deep, not crazy: Consent is the cornerstone of a civil community, the Burning Man literature reads. It doesn’t refer to just sexual and physical touch, but anything that “will radically alter the experience of another person.” Prompts to good behavior were everywhere.

Another principle, "radical inclusion," is the antidote to the emotional abuse and social exclusions suffered in childhood. The consistent expectation of kindness is refreshing and softening, and people are just more present. I felt my own guardedness melt just a bit, with hugs, gifts, conversations, and gentle heckles.

Developmental psychologists find that play is the cauldron of intellectual, creative, and social development in childhood, and according to the Burner census, many people come to the playa just for that. The playful mood is their "top priority."

Everything that can be climbed on, is:

(Photos by Arjun Divecha)

You can be a flamethrower, safely:

Serpent Mother (photo by Jordana Joseph); Fire safety rules (photo by Arjun Divecha)

Puns are everywhere:

Burning Man: What Where When (photo by Arjun Divecha); Camp Nevada (photo by Diana Divecha)

And a Disney singalong and Thriller flashmob are open to all comers—not something we normally have an opportunity to attend.

The Bunny March Against Humanity herds humans into a bus and they exit dressed as bunnies. Humans haven’t done such a good job of being in charge, the organizers say. So let’s give the bunnies a chance.

“The only cure for reality,” says the author Gary Lindberg, “is imagination.”

And finally, our sense of wonder was on full throttle much of the time. The location itself is dramatic, and the playa was saturated with one stunning installation after another.

(Photos by Diana, Arjun, and Zai Divecha, and Julie Light)

The burning of The Man at the end of the week might not just represent an anger toward the political and economic establishment but perhaps a rebellion against the colonization of the heart and spirit as well.

This is a struggle we are all wired for. As we watched a group of young yogis strain, falter, and ultimately succeed in positioning themselves atop giant letters, an observer called out encouragement, shouting “This is what it is to LIVE!”

DREAM LIVE BE OK (photo by Arjun Divecha) — *DREAM LIVE BE OK* *(photo by Arjun Divecha)*

What Happens to Children When Parents Fight

April 30, 2014

When I was a child, my parents’ fights could suck the oxygen out of a room. My mother verbally lashed my father, broke jam jars, and made outlandish threats. Her outbursts froze me in my tracks. When my father fled to work, the garage, or the woods, I felt unprotected. Years later, when my husband and I decided to have children, I resolved never to fight in front of them.

“Children are like emotional Geiger counters,” says E. Mark Cummings, psychologist at Notre Dame University, who, along with colleagues, has published hundreds of papers over twenty years on the subject. Kids pay close attention to their parents’ emotions for information about how safe they are in the family, Cummings says. When parents are destructive, the collateral damage to kids can last a lifetime.

As a developmental psychologist I knew that marital quarreling was inevitable but I also knew that there had to be a better way to handle it. Cummings confirms: “Conflict is a normal part of everyday experience, so it’s not whether parents fight that is important. It’s how the conflict is expressed and resolved, and especially how it makes children feel that has important consequences for children.” Watching some kinds of conflicts can even be good for kids—when children see their parents resolve difficult problems, Cummings says, they can grow up better off.

Time to Step Up for Disabled Children

June 3, 2013

The European Union and 127 countries think protecting disabled children's rights is a good thing to do, but the US Senate? Not. See the NY Times Editorial that takes the Senate to task.

"The new United Nations report finds that children with disabilities are the least likely to receive health care or go to school and are among the most vulnerable to violence, abuse and neglect, especially if they are hidden away in institutions because of social stigma or parental inability to raise them."

"The disabled children and their communities would benefit if the children were accommodated in schools, workplaces, vocational training, transportation and local rehabilitation programs."

What Do Children Worry About and How Can Grown Ups Help?

January 30, 2013

When I was young, I worried so much that my parents called me Worrywart and bought me a stuffed toy with the same name. It wasn’t the best strategy—I was left feeling bewildered and wondering how to not worry—but what did parents know then? Research from the field of developmental emotion science finds that children who understand and manage their feelings are happier, have better relationships, and do better in school. But as a developmental psychologist I’ve often wished for resources to help parents deal with worrying in their children. So I was pretty excited when I found a lovely picture book recently at a professional conference: Is a Worry Worrying You? by Ferida Wolff and Harriet May Savitz. This light-hearted problem solving “manual,” based on good emotion science, introduces young children to the idea that worry may be more optional and flexible than they believe—and that they may be able to do something about the suffering it causes them.

As a parent, I’m moved by the realistic examples in the book; as a developmental psychologist, I’m impressed by the sophistication of the advice contained it its slim 16 pages.

The cover illustrates the idea that we are more than our worries, and that worry is something that comes to us like an unwelcome visitor: “It doesn’t ask if it can enter. It just barges in. And it will stay as long as you let it.”

The feeling and qualities of worry are named and described. One of the first steps in managing a feeling is to recognize it—name it to tame it, we say: "A worry is a thought that stops you from having fun, from feeling good, from being happy." "Anyone can have a worry. Parents. Teachers. Brothers. Sisters. Friends." "You can feel tired from a worry. Or sad. Or sick. A worry can feel like a heavy sack is on your back. Only it isn’t there."

Most importantly, the authors offer many strategies for problem-solving. Research shows that young children ages 3-6 tend to ruminate, or spin their wheels, so they, especially, can benefit from help in problem-solving. And older children who worry a lot believe they can’t solve the problem, though their problem-solving skills in other areas are equal to those of children who worry very little.

Mindfulness Practice in Schools? Slow down.

December 13, 2012

Meditation, my teacher used to say, is a vacation that you can give to yourself every time you tune in. For me, it’s a relief from stress and worry, a chance to hear the whispers of my own intuition, and space for my feelings that have not yet formed into words. More and more people are using contemplative practices, including educators who want to prepare their students with “21stcentury skills.” But a review in the June issue of the prestigious journal Child Development Perspectives warns that we should wait before adopting contemplative practices in schools: there just isn’t enough evidence on the benefits of contemplative practices for children to justify its widespread adoption.

There are many forms of contemplative or mindfulness practices—like meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, and the newer Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction—and they vary widely, but all have in common an important way of concentrating attention. Practitioners are guided to focus on the emotions, thoughts or feelings that flow through their awareness, without judging or getting caught up in them. For adults, these practices have been shown to reduce stress and anxiety, alleviate pain and illness, and change areas of the brain that are related to regulating emotions, attention and mental flexibility. Meditation practice is even associated with the lengthening of the DNA telomeres, suggesting that it may slow aging at the cellular level.

The research on contemplative practices with schoolchildren, however, is a different story. According to Penn State researchers Mark Greenburg and Alexis Harris, there hasn’t been enough research on the subject, and what studies have been done lack scientific rigor. The majority of studies suffer from design flaws: small numbers of children, a wide range of practices, different kinds of control groups, and varying periods of practice, which makes it difficult or impossible to compare or draw conclusions. Many measures rely on self-report—where the children themselves describe the effects they experience—which yields questionable data since children often want to please adult questioners. Sometimes reports come from teachers or parents who, themselves, know about—or even participate in—the programs, another potentially biased source of feedback. And no studies look at the long-term effects of mindfulness practice in kids.

This is not to say there isn’t reason to hope that contemplative practices can benefit children.

“The family is the most effective and economical structure for nurturing and sustaining the capacity of human beings to function effectively in all domains of human activity—intellectual, social, emotional, and physiological.”

— Urie Bronfenbrenner

Check out “Real Talk,” an online or in-person group for teen girls to learn how to have honest conversations, meaningful connections, and good fun.

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“Adolescents appear to do best when they grow up in a family atmosphere that permits the development of individuality against a backdrop of close family ties.”

— Laurence Steinberg

I got the chance to interview legendary Bay Area child and family therapist, Sheri Glucoft Wong for a three-hour conversation about what matters most in the small, everyday moments of life with children.

No one understands kids like Sheri, and she

This past weekend we saw images of American teenagers fleeing ordinary high school football games because of gun violence and images of Iranian teenagers protesting their lethal oppression by the state. Here in the U.S., we are experiencing continual

What helps to support teens’ emotional wellbeing? Permission to explore their identity, witnesses in their lives who clearly “see” and support them, and participation in “competing joys” that offset stress, are just a fe

Burning Man is a different experience for everyone. To me, a developmental psychologist, it feels like a mirror on childhood, full of magic and playfulness and spontaneity. But it is better than many childhoods, with its intentional culture of care,

“If we can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.”

— Mr. Rogers

Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence uses the power of emotions to create a more effective and compassionate society. The Center conducts research and teaches people of all ages how to develop their emotional intelligence. Learn more here.