Attachment - The relationship is everything

My daughter, son-in-law, and grandson James lived with us for a year or so. When James and I were in love with each other, there's nothing he wouldn't do with or for me. And when he wasn't in love with me, he wouldn't give me the time of day.

If you've attended APSGO (The Association of Parent Support Groups in Ontario, Inc.), you've likely heard this expression:

The solution is never in the problem.

The solution is always in the relationship.

William Glasser, author of Choice Theory, says that in order to be happy, we need at least one happy person in our lives.

While both of these are correct, I don't think either goes far enough. Not only do we need at least one happy person in our lives, but we need a deep and meaningful relationship with at least one happy person.
 
According to Gordon Neufeld, author of Hold on to Your Kids - Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, kids and teens won't cooperate with us unless they feel firmly attached to us. And this may extend to the rest of our relationships as well.

This isn't sheer obstinacy. We're actually hard-wired to resist direction from people we're not attached to because it keeps us safe. This is why  a 3-year-old will say, "You can't tell me what to do. You're not my mother!" or "You're not the boss of me!" What this means is, "I'm not attached to you. You're not part of my tribe." (Of course, this can be overridden with enough force, but that's another post.)

In a TVO Parents lecture, Neufeld says (and I'm paraphrasing):

A child (or teen) won't cooperate with you until they've given you their heart.

So how do we attach (or re-attach) to our teens? Neufeld outlines 6 levels of attachment:

• Proximity
• Sameness
• Belonging/Loyalty
• Significance
• Feeling
• Being known

And it's this attachment that gives our teens both roots and wings.

Glasser discusses this in terms of quality world. We each have a quality world which contains pictures of all the people, things, and belief systems that we value and want most. Why do we want them? Because they satisfy our basic needs for survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and discovery. We believe, if we have them, we'll be happy.

So in Choice Theory terms:

A child (or teen) won't cooperate with you unless you're in their quality world.

I'll work through some of these ideas with you in the next few posts. And maybe we can end up with teens who not only cooperate with us, but who want to cooperate with us!

Customize your relationships!

Not all relationships are created equal, and not all relationships are the same. And even the most stable relationships are going to change over time.

Why is this important?

An eye-opener for me over the past few months was realizing that I haven't entirely changed gears as a parent. I have six children, and my youngest son was born when my eldest daughter was 16. So I never felt I had the luxury of enough time to evaluate whether the way I parented as they grew was still effective - or necessary.

My youngest is now 17 and, at least to some degree, I'm still in "protect and provide" mode with some of my kids, when the mode I need to be in (for their sake and mine) is "prepare." And I suspect I should have started long before now!

Sometimes I don't know something until I say it. Like last night. Emily, my 23-year-old, said, "But I'm your kid!" And I said, "Not any more you're not." And she said, "Of course I am. I'll always be your kid!" And I said, "You'll always be my daughter - but you're not my kid any more." She got it, and we just grinned at each other.

I had a falling out with a good friend quite some time ago, and now we find ourselves back together in a rather strained professional relationship. Others have asked whether this can work if we don't sort things out and become friends again, and I'd wondered the same. But after some reflection, I realized that our relationship doesn't have to be what it was before in order for us to work well together. From my perspective, all that's required is that I be professional and respectful, contribute what I can, and keep an open mind.

So when you're thinking about "good" relationships, it might be worthwhile to define what a "good" relationship with that person would look like. A good relationship with a colleague will likely look very different from your relationship with your boss or your clients, your spouse or your parents, your children or your best friend, your next-door neighbour or your mailman. And it's worth the time it takes to consider and decide what "good" means in those different contexts.

Proximity is no guarantee of a good relationship any more than distance is a death knell. I have a better relationship with my eldest daughter now than I ever had when we lived together, because we make time now for one-on-one visits, exchange books and recipes, share stories, brainstorm ideas, and support and encourage each other.

My sister lives in Connecticut, an 8-hour drive away. But we talk on the phone almost every day, and my trips (alone!) to visit her are precious to both of us. She's my sister, my confidante, my best friend.

It's also not necessary to be best friends with everyone, and it's not necessary - or healthy - to bring everyone in your life into your inner circle. In some cases, it may not be healthy to be friends at all!

A final note: If someone insists, "You're my best friend!" you do NOT have to reciprocate. You get to choose your friends based on what works for both of you, not just what works for them. Is this selfish? Absolutely! But you'll never be a good friend to anyone if you're not first a good friend to yourself. 

The most neglected relationship

In the past few months, four books came together in an unexpected way to offer me pieces of a puzzle that had eluded me about my own most neglected relationship: my relationship with myself.

• Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril by Margaret Heffernan
• The Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch
• The Power of a Positive No by William Ury
• The Dance of Anger by Dr. Harriet Lerner

Here's what I learned:

Willful Blindness: Once we've met our need for survival, we want purpose or meaning in our lives, and this purpose is best achieved with others (belonging). The downside is that, in pursuing our purpose and meeting out need for belonging, we may become compliant within the group or organization and lose our sense of self and our moral compass. We may turn a blind eye to what's happening.

The Passionate Marriage: David Schnarch discusses what happens "when the importance of your partner exceeds the strength of your relationship with yourself" - and what it looks like when that comes back into balance.

The Power of a Positive No: "Saying No means, first of all, saying Yes! to yourself and protecting what is important to you." A No becomes positive when it's grounded in a powerful Yes.

The Dance of Anger: All of us are eager from time to time to change who we are and what we're doing - as long as the important people in our lives are okay with it. The likelihood of them being okay with it: about 0%!

So what does all of this have to do with parenting? Everything! In the parent group, we always caution new parents that things may get worse before they get better. Why? Our kids like the status quo. They like predictability, and they like knowing what they can expect - even when they don't like the actual result. So they may not like that we yell, but they do like that we're predictable.

When our children are young, we may focus on looking after them to the exclusion of looking after ourselves. And soon we lose sight of who we are and what we want, of how we define ourselves outside of the parent/child relationship.

A friend told me about reading an obituary in the newspaper. The entire content was about what a terrific mother this woman had been, and my friend said, "That was a real eye-opener for me. I do not want to be remembered that way! There's so much more to me than my role as a mother!"

So let me ask you:

Is there anything going on in your life that you're turning a blind eye to? Are you maybe focusing so much on your teen's life that you're neglecting your own?

Has your relationship with your teen (or your self-image as a parent) become more important to you than your relationship with yourself?

What do you want in your own life that you could say Yes! to that could ground you in an equally strong No?

And what could you say Yes! to that could sustain you through the sometimes intense backlash of others?

Send comments! I'd love to hear how you're doing with this! And in a later post, I'll share part of my own recent journey with these concepts.