Attachment is Not the Elimination of Difficult Emotions
“Do not doubt your own basic goodness. In spite of all confusion and fear, you are born with a heart that knows what is just, loving, and beautiful.” Jack Kornfield Here in the San Francisco bay area we have fantastic parents, many of whom are all about “attachment parenting.” This is really good news for their children and our culture at large. But some parents hold a view that attachment parenting means that their children should never cry, experience difficult emotions, or ever suffer a mis-attunement. Here are a few of the factors that may contribute to this...
Read MoreThe 5 Essential Elements of Relational Nourishment
“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” Thich Nhat Hanh Last week I summarized Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s understanding of how children mature in this way: The key to raising children is to be in right relationship with them, help them preserve their soft hearts, and then nature will do the beautiful work of maturing them into their full potential. Many people in North America have become quite cynical and do not believe that right relationship and the preservation of soft hearts will be...
Read MoreThe Power of Soft Hearts
Parenthood is above all a relationship, not a skill to be acquired. Attachment is not a behavior to be learned but a connection to be sought. Gordon Neufeld, Hold On to Your Kids Right now I am in Vancouver, BC, right smack in the middle of a two-week training with Dr. Gordon Neufeld. It has been a phenomenal week of integration for me, bringing together many threads of how maturation works with much greater clarity. And at the same time, it has provoked just as many questions as it has answers. This is how I know I am in the right place. I will use this post to summarize the core of...
Read MoreDiscipline
“For only as we ourselves, as adults, actually move and have our being in the state of love, can we be appropriate models and guides for our children. What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.” Joseph Chilton Pearce Last week we saw how important the middle Pre-Frontal Cortex is to health and well-being. This region is responsible for integrating many areas of the brain into a coherent and functional whole and plays a key role in supporting maturation. It is the area of the brain that makes us most human with...
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Chris White, M.D. is a board-certified pediatrician whose parenting work aims to optimize the developmental potential of children and their parents. He regularly writes on 
