Why are many children—especially teenagers—defiant and disrespectful?
While there are individual differences contributing to some of the domestic turmoil, looking to our most basic parental instincts may help us understand how modern parenting has gone awry.
A Brief History of Attachment
In the early 20th century, psychologists—propelled mostly by Freudian theory—conceptualized the infant-caregiver relationship as Cupboard Love. It was assumed that infants preferred their mothers because they had their physiological needs for food met by them.
In the 1950s, John Bowlby, while observing distressed infants, realized there was more to the infant-caregiver relationship than the nourishment provided. Bowlby determined the attachment relationship is an evolutionary mechanism. He proposed that the parent-infant relationship has been the most essential process for human survival.
Bowlby went on to define attachment as a neurobiological mechanism that results in the infant bonding to the primary caretaker. This exemplar of relationships remains critical throughout the lifespan—affecting both physical and mental health.
Spanning several decades, researchers have found attachment to be an important construct related to many life outcomes. Intrigued by Bowlby's ideas, primate psychologists Harry and Margaret Harlow shocked the world of psychology when they found that young macaque monkeys, separated from their mothers at birth, preferred spending time with and gaining comfort from simulated soft and cuddly monkey mothers without food as compared to simulated metal monkey mothers with food.
The results of the Harlow studies were supportive of Bowlby's ideas about the primary importance of the early attachment relationship beyond the physiological need for food. In fact, their findings were so compelling that they became the catalyst for significant efforts to alter the approach to infant care—especially within orphanages and hospitals.
But how does attachment relate to the problems many parents have with older children and teenagers?
Hold on to Your Kids
According to Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate, the importance of the parent-child relationship does not diminish at the end of infancy. The relationship transforms, but it remains a critical component of healthy development. In Hold on to Your Kids: Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, Neufeld and Mate illuminate how attachment problems manifest within our older children and teenagers.
Sometime after World War II, a slow-moving cultural change commenced. Until that point, cultural values were most often passed vertically—from adults to children. From the 1950's onward, however, a new trend began to emerge, and cultural value transmission shifted to a horizontal orientation—from peer to peer.
In their compelling book, Dr. Neufeld and Dr. Mate describe how peer models have replaced parent models in many modern families—with children looking to each other for a sense of right and wrong, values, and identity. They suggest this change is a major cause of many of the difficulties parents are facing.
All children are searching for an orientation point—something to guide their internal compass. If children do not orient toward their parents, they will seek another focus. Revolving around their peer group, rather than their parents, will likely contribute to significant distress within the parent-child relationship as peer-orientation is in opposition to the natural process of parenting according to the text authors.
“Absolutely clear is that children were meant to revolve around their parents and the other adults responsible for them, just as the planets revolve around the sun. And yet more and more children are now orbiting around each other.”
If you don't have an emotional connection with your children, it will be challenging to parent them. Without the attachment relationship firmly in place, children are likely to be noncompliant and disrespectful turning to their peers as models for how to behave.
But how can we reconnect with our kids?
Wonder-full Attachment
Many parents question how they can reignite connection with their children and teenagers. They seek a way to restore the attachment relationship. Parenting with awe may be a way to spark that connection. (See my previous post for a more in-depth look at awe.)
Yang Bai, a researcher who studies awe at the University of California, Berkeley describes how this enigmatic emotion connects us:
“While we’re feeling small in an awe moment, we are feeling connected to more people or feeling closer to others. That’s awe’s purpose or at least one of its purposes.”
Experiencing nature, art, and music together could be the spark that regenerates connection. For parents, it is not the things that you buy, but the time that you spend exploring the wonders of our world that will bring you closer together and facilitate the necessary attachment for you to successfully—and more easily—parent your children.
Final Thoughts
As John Bowlby noted, "Life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base." We can interpret his statement both literally and symbolically.
As parents, create opportunities to connect with your children through daring adventures. Experience awe together by being watchful for the occurrence of wonder. Use the powerful effects of awe to restore the connection.
Parents also need to symbolically reclaim their function as the primary support base in their children's lives. Peer-orientation may be at the heart of the challenges many parents are facing. Disconnected children are far less likely to value parental input and direction.
"Children must never work for our love, they must rest in it." This deeply moving notion, by Neufeld, tugs at our basic parental instincts and is deeply inspirational. The effect of re-establishing a strong attachment relationship with our older children and teenagers may also be profoundly transformational.
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