Connection with a child is fostered by the presence of the adult

The need for personal power is never more pronounced than when one becomes a parent. Personal power comes from occupying the center of one’s awareness, and it is created by developing a practice that builds resilience for remaining calm and steady, coupled with an inner recognition of the balance. Such strength is in great evidence when one is able to remain composed and focused in the presence of another’s strong feelings. Adults who cannot recognize and hold their center during the emotional upset of another are unprepared for the challenges of raising a child. The parent/child relationship does not simply occur when the parent chooses to connect, in any one moment. Engaging authentically with a child cannot be learned ‘on the job’. Connection is made possible by the adult’s own internal integration, an integration that must be deliberately brought about through introspective practice. A parent’s ability to remain open and inquiring with their child comes from having worked to create a life from the center. Executing the duties of parenting can expand an existing base of personal power, but caring for a child without a strong practice does not present the adult with satisfying challenges.

A strong centering practice shifts the adult’s personal awareness. When this occurs, moments of self-reflection bring clearer understanding, and one begins to recognize their habit of holding family and friends at a distance. Then, as practice becomes steady, the adult becomes more emotionally available, leading to the creation of more authentic and supportive relationships. It is those supportive relationships, whether coming from a spouse, an elder, or a close friend, that solidify the process, and give one both the feedback and encouragement needed to ‘own their presence’. Developing a reserve of personal power allows one to make clearer choices. Those choices often present themselves from within satisfying challenges, not the least of which are the incredibly rich opportunities for the adult’s personal growth as they engage and guide their children from the center.

 An adult’s personal power promotes a secure attachment

Children depend on their parent’s affection, encouragement and guidance to support them. That special combination of attributes can only be maintained through the adult’s emotional stability. When a child is raised in a stable environment, their natural inclination is to explore and learn. A child who can focus on the world around them, and inquire into their surroundings, does so because they are secure with their parent. The child feels safe with their parent, which means they are secure within themselves. They live within the secure attachment they share with their parent. Often misinterpreted as the child’s attachment, secure attachment describes the relationship between parent and child. The bond they cohabit includes an unwavering mutual affection that guides their interaction, softens all conflict, and expands the course of their play together. The requirements that create secure attachment, that is, nurturing, inquiring and encouraging, are core abilities of the centered parent. These attributes cannot, however, be arrived at intellectually. They must come from personal growth. The bond of secure attachment naturally emerges from the person the parent with personal power has become.

The centered parent remains steady when conflict arises

All parents, of course, have their hands full raising children. The centered parent, however, has a great ability to hold still emotionally when their child becomes upset. Such a parent, not caught up in reaction during the child’s conflict, is able to remain open and available at the very time their child needs them the most. That means that they can take issue with their child’s actions from within an unwavering affectionate acceptance of the child. Remaining calm, they can accept both the child’s upset and the behavior that led up to it yet treat them separately. First calming and soothing the upset, they are present and inquiring about what has transpired. The parent, of course, has most likely seen, or can easily guess the details of the situation. They know, however, why it is necessary to remain inquiring. By asking instead of telling, they allow room for the child to express their feelings, feelings that need to be openly stated, in order to be fully felt. They are stepping their child through the child’s own awareness of the situation, a dawning promoted in the child about consequences, while the parent/child exchange remains free of any blame or demand. The spirit of this inquiry renders it to be more like sharing than teaching. The centered parent can, therefore, foster the child’s own realization of the wider consequences of their behavior, leading the child to then choose a path to resolution, based on their own insight. This is the essence of empowerment, and children can only gain access to such a process through the guidance of a parent with the personal power to remain steady during the child’s conflict.

The centered parent maintains their secure attachment with the child by naturally fostering the child’s return to resolution after an upset. This is not an intellectual process. Living in a functional household, where issues are routinely stewarded to real resolution, the child instinctively gravitates toward settled feelings. They have a feeling for the way things were humming along before the conflict. Because they are given room to routinely express their emotions, they are keenly aware of their aliveness, therefore, sensitive to everyone’s tension when conflict arises. In such a setting, both the parent and the child intuitively gravitate toward reparations that will lead back to settling down. The parent/child bond is then strengthened as the child continues to associate completion, and return to calm, with the parent’s influence. No child rearing strategy or teaching practice can substitute for a centered parent. When coming from the center, that is, with gentleness, sincerity, and affection, the parent’s daily conflicts remain challenging, but conflict does not interfere with their ability to interact sensitively with their child. The centered parent builds a relationship with their child where both expect to be listened to, where both know that behavior can be called into question, but never feelings. The child comes to depend upon receiving affection, especially under difficult circumstances. They have come to know the parent will not withdraw their affection, even as limits are firmly declared. This deep understanding defines secure attachment.

The resiliency of secure attachment

The centered parent is, of course, not immune to crisis. The centered presence of an adult is not, after all, a material possession, but rather an underlying strength that ebbs and flows from us all. A stressful day, followed by a startling event, can trigger a reaction in someone who is normally quite steady. For example, coming home after a hard day, the parent hopes to recuperate. They find, however, that their child is in crisis. This challenge may be too much right now, so they respond with unrestrained feelings toward the child. The compounding of events has depleted their strength, and thus their ability to hold their center. They have forgotten themselves. If such an occurrence is infrequent, it does not, however, have to be a defining moment in the parent/child relationship.

A secure attachment between parent and child has a resiliency that allows for unfortunate lapses to occur, though sometimes, the parent may need to wait until the following day to revisit those hurtful moments. At other times, however, their practice can recreate steadiness for them, with only a few calming breaths. In either case, when the center is regained, the parent can now choose an appropriate moment to reengage. Being mindful that attempting to reconnect will require a length of uninterrupted time, they check to see that the child is relatively calm and not distracted. What course their exchange actually takes will depend on the age of the child, but in general, the goal is the child’s emotional reassurance. The parent is looking to connect, rather than to criticize behavior or recite rules. Actually, the events in question may never be mentioned. The centered parent reaches out to the child guided by their intuition, looking for the child’s expression to become open and alive. The way forward may be to simply play with them, to give their attention to the type of interactivity the child chooses.

Since the centered parent has gone about purposely creating an emotionally safe climate in their home, the child has developed a ‘sense memory’ of resolution. They live in resolution, and accept it as the normal state of affairs. Consequently, it becomes easy to find their way back to completion and safety when conflict concludes. Not only does secure attachment promote emotional resiliency in the parent/child relationship, but it manifests a baseline of steadiness the child intuitively searches for and instinctively recognizes as acute events subside.

Maintaining resolution, that is, a centered presence, is the first priority of parenthood. For the child to explore and thrive, they must not only depend on their parent to be present when needed, but they need an adult who will settle conflicts and minimize difficulties with a positive, inclusive attitude. Secure attachment means the child lives within the protection of the parent. The child is not just secure with the parent; they are secure in the whole of their world, because the parent creates this security. Parents do this, in part, by protecting their child from the unexpected results of youthful exuberance. The parent must keep the child safe from the child’s own actions. They need to narrow the child’s exploration for reasons of safety, above all. So the parent is faced with what appears to be a conflict of duties. How do you provide a peaceful home life, while setting limits on the child’s behavior? How does a parent stimulate and encourage, while also restricting their actions?

The false dichotomy of reason versus discipline

The centered parent is able to express both affection and firm resolve because of who they have become during their practice. They know how to `relax in action’ as they bring their child into a greater awareness of consequences. They don’t need a plan, because their presence during the child’s resistance remains steady, allowing them room to respond appropriately. The uncentered parent, on the other hand, has no such resources. The uncentered adult reacts emotionally when their child is in conflict, even though they are mostly unaware of their own upset. Consequently, they can’t help but make saying “no” into a confrontation. They reflexively brace themselves for the child’s resistance, and by doing so, the child feels the parent’s resistance, therefore validating and intensifying a test of wills between them. Because the parent becomes stirred up by strong feelings, they reflexively withdraw their connection from the child. So they operate ‘at a distance’, substituting a set of rules for their inability to use personal inquiry and guidance that would find it’s firmness with affection. They operate from a script, and develop an authoritarian role from which they make pronouncements. They lay down the law, state how things need to be. They teach a view of the world that is rigid and threatening, with a tone of urgency. They do this because it is urgent for them. They are earnest about the portentous tone of their decisions, because uncentered, they are living the urgency.

So what are the options available to the uncentered parent? How do they teach limits to their children? Some parents reason through the conflict, explaining why the child must obey, while others are simply strict and insistent. These choices have, over the years, created two schools of child rearing, two methods of ‘parenting with a plan’ as a substitute for the secure attachment of the centered parent. Here we call them, ‘the school of discipline’, and ‘the school of reason’. At its most basic, a parent can either explain restrictions to the child, reasoning through the need for limits, or they can declare the limits and then discipline the child for exceeding them. Parents do not, however, simply choose between these two schools. The course the parent takes will not seem, to them, like a choice at all. To the adherents of either school, their choice is, without question, the only way to raise children. This viewpoint often comes from the parent‘s own childhood, and it is reinforced by specific intentions, specific expectations for their family. A parent of either school is, at the same time, fully aware of the other school. They know parents who use the other approach. Consequently, each mindset holds the other school in sharp contrast, harboring dire predictions for children who are exposed to the other approach. Since parenting with a plan is so commonplace today, each of these schools needs to be examined in detail. Looking over the prevalent features of each, we can develop some idea of the emotional consequences each school has on both the parent and the child.

Parenting from the discipline school

Home life in the discipline school is where a parent meets their child’s demands with demands of their own. Not shy about setting limits, parents demand obedience and respect. When the child resists, the parent commands them to stop their protests. The majority of these parents live well organized lives and have successful coping skills. Many are capable of measured restraint with their children. Often they remain consistent and evenhanded while disapproving of their child’s behavior. In other words, if we exclude a minority of extremists, these parents are not tyrants. They are simply using the plan they have learned, to systematically set limits for their children.

In most cases, discipline parents were raised in discipline households. They have seen certain other parents be ‘soft’ with their children, and they have concluded that it amounts to neglect. They have come to believe that being insistent with your child means that you care. When conflict arises, listening to their child is limited to hearing what happened. Having heard their account of the event, they instruct the child to be still while they decide what to do. They announce their judgment and then expect it to be carried out. Most attempts by the child to express their feelings about events or the parent’s decision are dismissed as excuses or talking back. The disciplining parent is ‘action oriented’. When facing an emotional upset, they have no intention of taking in the feelings present in the child. They are busy deciding what to do about the situation. Their affection takes the form of ingraining external habits in their child; habits that they hope will turn into coping skills when the child becomes an adult.

Often in the course of their parenting, these adults will adopt a detached attitude that, to them, demonstrates the impersonal forces in the world. When this occurs, the parent becomes uncomfortable with the child openly expressing frustration or sorrow. They have concluded that expressing such emotions is an indulgence that saps one’s strength and gives their child permission to feel like a victim. They believe they are simply being strong and decisive, so that their child will emulate these ways and develop their own such strength. The parent, in no way, suspects that their intolerance of strong emotions from their child is caused by their own inability to hold their center during the child’s upset.

The emotional consequences of discipline

The disciplined child is alone and anxious, fretful of what trouble they may be in next. Hyper-alert to their parent‘s mood, they have grown wary of the adult’s strong reaction to events. Feeling unsafe, the child’s exploration of the world has become short-circuited. They perform their assigned duties, having not really chosen them. They do not own their actions. Rather than being focused on actual outcome, they work to control appearances, and centrally, to control the outcome of their parent‘s approval, or at least to evade punishment. On guard to avoid confrontation, the disciplined child is cornered into an overriding preoccupation with the parent’s actions. They resort to exaggerating and defending, as they attempt to bolster the appearance of their actions. This holds true even when they are openly defiant, temporarily losing the ability to hide their resentment.

The child raised in the discipline school learns how to use physical aggression at an early age. They use the active form to bully other children, and the passive form to beg their parents to get their way. Whether their resistance is hidden or pronounced, discipline amounts to a war of wills which then defines the parent/child relationship. Such a limited relationship thwarts progress and hobbles the child into successive wounding, and paradoxically, a greater dependency. This emotional wounding is caused, in part, by the child developing the habit of concealing their motives and actions. Thus cut off from opportunities to authentically express themselves, such hiding results in developing a general aggression toward others. The most destructive result of discipline, however, is the loss of secure attachment. The child, undermined by the detached authority of their parent, has no support to explore the world directly, on their own terms and in their own time. The affectionate and inquiring environment needed for the child to express themselves, and then to act authentically, is missing, because the parent is incapable of such authenticity themselves.

Parenting from the reason school

Parents who choose this school tend to view discipline as a failure. The reasoning parent is ‘concept oriented’. They assume that only people who are incapable of being reasonable would stoop to ordering their children around. They assume that discipline parents are bullies, and they are determined to do better by their children. They will set rules, but these rules will be explained so the child understands why they are being imposed. This intellectual exercise is, of course, no substitute for authentic connection. Parents who attempt to reason with their children have a hazy idea that they can get their child to discipline themselves. They think that all the child needs is the information. The detached logic of this imbalanced adult, tells them that teaching is really all that is required. Soon, they think, when the child ‘gets it’, they will then be on ‘clarified self-regulation’, on an autopilot that, once in place, will need only occasional new input. Some reason-school parents are simply uncomfortable with setting limits for the child. They resist setting them, and they see the reminding and enforcing of limits as unpleasant confrontation.

The predictably disappointing outcome of this approach is an awkward and distant parent/child relationship. When their child ignores a limit, the reasoning parent is drawn into a protracted explanation. Often the child responds by pummeling the parent with, “But why?” The parent may then soldier on with a reasoned response, but the process becomes a tense one and emotions remain unexpressed. Often the parent will develop an edge to their lecture, an implied threat, unaware of the similarity to the authority of discipline. As the child grows in the reason school, so does the unstated, unresolved tension in the parent/child relationship. The parent becomes less and less capable of delivering an expression of limits that does not sound like trouble to the child.

The reason-school parent has no idea why this process should be so difficult. Since they are depending exclusively on their intellect to guide them, the confidence they had in their initial approach in no way matches the results. It is not uncommon for parents who use this approach to become disillusioned and cynical about the thankless work of parenting. They are unaware of their own unbalanced, tentative presence and how it contributes to the relationship, a presence that is not capable of promoting safety for the child.

The emotional consequences of the school of reason

The child, raised in the reason school, is also alone and anxious, the same result as that produced by the discipline school. Not unlike the wary child of the discipline school, this child has developed an immature confidence in their use of alibies and excuses. They, too, have resorted to exaggerating and defending their actions in order to stay out of trouble, but this expression comes through the relational aggression they have learned from their explaining parents. They are, however, no more focused on their exploration of the world than children from the other school. They, too, are preoccupied with staying out of trouble, but their protective strategies take more of an abstracted form, using guilt and blame in place of the physical threat of open aggression. Their relationship with their parents mainly concerns an ‘innocent framing of the appearance’ of their actions. Because they are not engaged in the present moment with their parents, they live in an unstable emotional climate, which precludes a secure attachment with their parent. This is so predictable, because the explaining parent doesn’t get out of the way of their child’s process of internalized learning any better than a demanding parent does. They assume an underlying authority that is no different than parents who discipline.

The child raised in the reason school learns relational aggression from an early age. They use the active form to be condescending to other children, while they defend against their parents by attempting to remain aloof. They are subject to a parent’s demands that are couched as explanations, but feel accusatory. So, when they are forced to engage the parent, they make excuses, formulate counter-explanations and hone their skills at justifying their actions. It should be noted that a parent using the reasoned approach, does not, however, foster actual reasoning in their children. Rather, ‘serial explaining’ promotes a less obvious form of defensiveness that is, nevertheless, a similar reaction to children of the discipline school. The school of reason is a detached, sterile approach to parenting that produces its own form of defensiveness in the child. As they grow older, the child has trouble even paying attention to the explanation anymore, because they have learned that the presentation is not authentically for them, but rather an implied warning that is leveled at them. Reason does not engage the child. It does not give them the support and affection they need to remain securely attached, an attachment that would mature into the authentic independence of adulthood.

The character of limits set by the centered parent

Children must live within boundaries set by parents, not only to keep them safe, but in order to function within the family and to guide them into avenues of exploration that match their present abilities. A securely attached child has a healthy curiosity that fuels a robust, even fierce exploration of their world. Though it needs to be stimulated and encouraged, unsupervised exploration, however, will inevitably lead to the child becoming startled, upset and discouraged. For this neophyte’s healthy fierceness to be preserved, limits must be set, and supervision maintained. Equally important also, those limits must be conveyed to the child without an urgency that transmits anxiousness. That is the challenge. From the viewpoint of the unsettled adult, it would seem that these goals are contradictory, therefore impossible.

The centered parent brings their own personal power into the relationship with their child. Their very presence is nurturing, reassuring, comforting, and therefore, most welcome to the child. When the parent and child spend time together, the child has a deep acceptance for these moments; they feel recognized, and validated to the degree that parent and child share a settled affection. Within this bond, the parent’s simple statements have an effect that can be replicated nowhere else. It would not be far afield to call it magic, because there are no words that can express the reaffirming vitality of such an exchange.

In practice, the centered parent meets their child’s distress with an overriding good disposition. Their assurances have a weight that helps the child to reinterpret their momentary frustration, to accept it, and as a result of their authentically expressing it, they can then release it. Imbued with good humor and lightness, the adult keeps their inquiry open, as they point out unforeseen consequences. This is the essence of nurturing. Here, a child can live within limits, because they feel the limits. Through their connection to the parent, they move beyond accepting limits, to possessing limits. Since these rules come from a parent they are secure with, the rules themselves are transformed by the child into actions that are meant to conserve endearment to the parent. By in large, the relationship itself will bring instruction to the child. Within this relationship, there is simply no conflict between encouraging and cautioning, because both are conveyed through an emotional climate of unquestioned acceptance. Often they are passed along together, so that sometimes the correction may be welcomed, with no resistance at all. In general, though, children must test limits as part of their exploration. Their naturally growing independence must necessarily question a parent’s decision. After all, as children walk the road that leads them to eventual adulthood, they understandably yearn for these boundaries to fall.

Although the child regularly and predictably challenges a parent’s limits, the centered parent, however, feels no compunction to overcome the willfulness of a youngster. This is because they do not share the child’s self-imposed anxiety that comes from being fixated on getting their way. Detached from the child’s upset, and yet affectionately attached to their being, they are not in a contest of wills. Their bond is rarely unseated by the child’s upset; rather, their connection is often bolstered by the successful resolution of conflict. From the security of their mutual attachment, the centered parent can move inside of ongoing willfulness to engage directly with their child. It is this engaging that transforms potential conflict between parent and child into a demonstration of consequences that reside in the world. As the child accepts the sincerity of these demonstrations, they begin to see that the cautions emphasized by the parent describe blameless facets of life in general. Routinely fostering the transfer of imposed limits, to understood and accepted limits, the parent comes to appreciate the satisfying nature of the challenges they face by parenting from the center.