resiliency – Lion's Whiskers

Dancing Through the Pain, Part II

admin — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, in the first part of this interview with former professional ballet dancer, Jane Haugh, we discussed what can make a person willing to tolerate pain. Here, in Part II, we continue to explore pain as a voluntary experience, and as an involuntary experience. Jane now lives with her husband and three children in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Pain (as opposed to suffering, which is mental or emotional) is in the body, and thus is the risk associated with physical courage.

Haugh: In the end, Jen,

what I did in order to be a professional dancer in terms of dancing on stress fractures and soft corns with such unbelievable pain – I don’t know how healthy that was. I do question my decision to do that.

I think that it wasn’t emotionally and psychologically really healthy to get to the point where you could disengage your nerve centers from your feet so you didn’t feel your feet anymore. That’s not me. That’s not part of my body. That doesn’t hurt. To the point where I would sometimes bang my feet against something because that hurt so much that my brain shut that down and I could pretend it wasn’t there. So a little pain can be more difficult than a lot of pain. And I don’t think that’s so good! I think that’s kind of sick!

Armstrong: So you’re in this culture of never mind the pain, keep going. Were there techniques or mental processes or gimmicks that were part of that culture, were there stories, did you remind yourself of such and such dancer where she did this and –

Haugh: Sure! Stories about Melissa Hayden dancing on a broken foot, stories about Darcy Kistler when she broke her elbow and finished “Swan Lake.” We had these stories of famous people who performed through amazing things. Darcy I think seriously injured her elbow for life, and never did Swan Lake again – or only did Dying Swan – I don’t remember what the whole thing was – but it wasn’t good! But if you’re at the New York State Theater and you’re in Act I and you’ve got two more acts to do, what are you going to do? So you do it and then you go to the emergency room later I guess!

Armstrong: Okay, so I want to go in a different direction now. When your parents died and your sister was very badly injured [in a car wreck], you were 17, and so you were already a very dedicated dancer. So your sister was very badly injured for a long time, am I right?

Haugh: Yes, she was operated on a couple of times. You know, we did this weird thing. She had a plate in her arm, and she also had a brain injury, and deep into the fall they x-rayed her arm, and no healing had begun. The accident was in July and this was in September. And this bone was really brittle and they were very upset about it because the plate was not an ideal way to hold the bones together and it was kind of shocking that there had been no healing. And so they wanted us to rent this machine that was really really expensive and we didn’t have any health insurance, and my aunt [their guardian] was really upset about this, and I remember having a conversation with my sister where I said to her: “You have to concentrate on healing this bone. You have to think about it. You have to concentrate on it.” I don’t think if I wasn’t a dancer I would have thought of it that way. But I already understood that my body responded, to some extent, through the control of my mind. And I really did think that it was possible that if she concentrated on healing her arm that it would start to heal. And then we wouldn’t have to get this expensive machine and do all this stuff – and it did! They said they’d set up a four-week assessment and if no healing had begun she’d have to go up to Columbia regularly for electro-stim or something, and four weeks later there was quite a bit of new healing when they took an x-ray, or whatever they did. I don’t know whether that helped, but I definitely remember having this conversation with her. I remember – like taking a bath, and something really hurting, and just lying there and trying to relax my mind into that pain and trying to get the blood flowing there and I would start to feel – I mean I am not a big believer in that stuff. But…

Armstrong: Most Americans, probably, live pretty cut off from their bodies, right? Would you agree? So you had a much more intimate relationship with your body. So you understood a lot more about what the body can do, and what its limitations are. What I wonder is, did you ever evaluate or compare the pain that you endured willingly with the pain she had to endure unwillingly?

Haugh: No. I think one of the things that I learned from dancing is that everybody’s pain threshold is really different. And I started to understand that I actually experienced quite a bit of pain, especially for somebody who was a professional dancer, and that a lot of people around me were not experiencing quite that level of pain. So we would do the same thing, have the same number of blisters, and I felt like I could really barely walk, and I spent all night icing my feet, and the other person was out dancing. And I thought, well they are obviously not in as much pain! Or they’re managing it so differently. I mean, I see in my kids – there’s a huge difference in Z.’s and M’s pain thresholds, and then another huge leap to T.’s. Z. will hurt herself and she’ll get a bump somewhere, a black and blue mark, and a week later – not complaining, but she’ll say this thing still hurts, should I take some more arnica, or should I ice it ? And M. will have the same kind of injury and two days later she’ll have forgotten about it.

I think her body experiences less pain. Her body recovers from pain more quickly. She recovers from emotional upset more quickly. She recovers from loud noises more quickly. Her physiological self recovers faster from things. But I think T. [her son] – I don’t know how much pain he experiences but he rebounds very quickly partly because he doesn’t want to stop in order to feel that pain. So he can have a huge knot on his head and I think it’s got to hurt, but if I go to touch it he’ll shy away and it does hurt him, but he doesn’t want to stop. So that’s a different way to overcome pain, is to be so focused on what you want to do that the pain is secondary. So with my sister, I learned early on not to project any kind of pain I was feeling onto anyone else’s situation because it so often just doesn’t work. I’d be all sympathetic [to a fellow dancer] and they’d be like “What?” I’d say, “Your feet are a mess!” but it wasn’t bothering them.

Armstrong: Okay, so here’s something about pain, and that’s that pain has a lot to do with what we think about. What is the story we’re telling ourselves about the pain – am I doing myself an injury, what’s going to happen? The story we’re telling ourselves about what’s happening to our body… I mean, pain only happens when you notice it right?

Haugh: Right, so when you go on stage you don’t feel the pain in your feet because you have all this adrenaline, so you’re not noticing it.

Armstrong: It’s like taking the kids to the doctor to get a shot. There’s all this suffering, this storytelling. So, and this is my projection, I would think that if I’m a dancer, my world, everything I do, involves my body, right? So if I break my ankle then I won’t be able to work. So I’m curious about the role of storytelling in this. Stories that you tell yourself to keep going, or stories that limit you.

Haugh: Part of the story of dancing is being tough, of saying this hurts but I’m strong enough and I can overcome this, or this hurts and I might hurt myself but the director is there and I really want this part so I’m going to do this anyway, because I see myself as that person who will overcome this pain. And then he’ll see me as that person and then I’ll get the part. Or I’ll get to go on tour. So there’s some part of talking yourself into doing things because of the way you see yourself: as a strong person who can overcome things that normal people would stop at. You say, well, maybe someone else would stop, but that’s not me. I’m not that person and I’m going to keep going.

But I also think there’s storytelling with our kids, when our kids hurt themselves. There are two different things. There’s where people say, “you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay,” but the kid isn’t okay, and the kid is upset and doesn’t feel okay. And then there are people who say, “Oh no, you’re hurt! You’re bleeding, you’re not okay!” But there’s something in the middle where you can say, “Let me see what happened. I need to see what happened.” I think all three of my kids think of me as a very competent person to deal with whatever hurts them. They bring me their hurts. I say we need to calm down so we can see what happened so that we can deal with whatever that is. I think it’s really important for them to realize that you can get sick or you can get hurt and then your body does this amazing thing, it heals you, it heals your cut, you get a scab and then there’s nothing there anymore. What an amazing thing! So this is an opportunity to say, “You’ve hurt yourself, but you’re going to get better, because your body is this amazing thing that knows how to heal itself. How awesome is that! And then there’s this feeling of resiliency, this feeling of ow – I really hurt myself ! – but I know I’m going to be okay.

Please feel free to share your thoughts about physical courage and the risk of pain, either from your own experience or from watching your children.

This Is Your Brain on Stories

admin — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve offered a lot of traditional stories on Lion’s Whiskers over the last several months. How many of you are telling them to your kids? Maybe not a lot of you, and that’s okay! But I hope you have gathered something from these stories. What I hope you have picked up on is this: around the world, in every culture, people have been telling stories not simply for entertainment, but for creating metaphors for understanding their world. I also hope I can persuade you that some form of storytelling – whether with traditional narratives or your own “When I was a kid” yarns – can be a powerful parenting tool, and may help your kids to develop the six types of courage.

I’ve shared a lot of my own anecdotal observations about the power of storytelling, and posted lots of inspiring quotations about the role of stories in our lives. What’s fascinating and exciting is that cutting-edge brain science is beginning to back up the wisdom of the ages. Researchers from many disciplines are using fMRI brain scanning to investigate what actually happens in our brains when we listen to stories. The fields of advertising and journalism have always known how to harness the power of stories; but that power is now part of medical education and law schools, in tax compliance and political discourse, as part of proposed Alzheimer’s treatments, and part of the on-going discussion concerning whether an understanding of narrative can help explain wartime behaviors. Even the defense department is studying whether narrative approaches can help create military leaders with more moral courage.

I want to very briefly (as a layperson, children’s author, and researcher on the importance of story-telling in our culture) summarize some of the findings.

Humans are hardwired for narrative. Evidence is mounting that we are natural storytellers, not by training or by culture, but by biology. The creation of metaphors for understanding our experience is automatic, which helps explain why being presented with facts is often insufficient for decision-making. When we create metaphors for information and experience, they fit more readily into a narrative frame and allow us to imagine how the story might end. Researchers such as Paul Bloom at Yale University’s Mind and Development Lab study babies to figure out how the imagination makes information processing possible, and use puppet plays (stories) to study babies’ moral judgement. “Story,” writes brain scientist Mark Turner, “is a basic principle of mind. Most of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized as stories.”

. Oxytocin is released by stories. Oxytocin, the hormone associated with love and attachment, can be triggered by listening to stories. Oxytocin receptors are located in the pleasure centers of the brain; those stimuli that trigger the release of oxytocin (snuggling, for example) are the ones we seek rather than avoid. This tells us that listening to stories is an adaptation for survival. Oxytocin has also been linked to trust, empathy and moral behavior, and may thus be relevant for creating stable societies.

To an avid reader or storyteller, it’s stating the obvious to say that when we are immersed in a story, we feel excitement when the character feels excitement, grief when the character feels grief. We have all experienced the emotions of the characters we love, especially those with whom we empathize. But not only that, the areas of the brain that register motion are also stimulated when characters in story experience motion. When we say we are moved by a story, this is true in more ways than one. The brain lights up as if the listener (or reader) is actually in the story, fighting dragons and falling in love.

So how is this related to courage development in our children? Dr. Lisa has discussed oxytocin’s role in promoting attachment which contributes significantly to courage development and resiliency in children. If storytelling, too, triggers oxytocin release, then we can speculate that storytelling also has a role in both deepening the connection in secure attachment relationships and inspiring courage and moral development in our children. On top of that, we have the connection between fear and uncertainty: because storytelling is a human adaptation for interpreting and making sense of experience, it may help reduce uncertainty, and by extension, reduce fear. Stories offer us the opportunity for mental, imaginative, neurobiological rehearsal of experiences we may encounter in the future. Just as champion athletes use visualization techniques to ready themselves for the contest to come (a form of storytelling), we can use stories to prepare ourselves and our children for the challenges of the future.

Whether you retell the traditional stories I’ve offered on this blog, pick a book from my bookshelf to read your child, or you like sharing family stories and taking turns narrating your day’s events at dinnertime, stories are powerful, free and abundant. They are what make us human and inspire us all to have courage in life. As the Native American saying goes, “Take courage from the story.”

Losing it All and Gaining Everything That’s Truly Important: Robert and Emma’s Story

admin — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Robert and Emma* liken their declaration of bankruptcy in 2007, the resulting loss of their house and all their possessions as a result of Robert’s failed business venture, to having the skin removed from their bodies. That painful, yet also, incredulously, freeing. They and their three teenage children managed to come through the financial crisis stronger, clearer about their purpose in life, more loving and accepting of one another, and with a renewed commitment to family time and family fun. They both said, many times during our interview, “It’s all just stuff. The only thing that matters is the love in your family. We had a wake up call to make our family our top priority—not our careers.”

To learn more about how to be a resilient family and harness the kind of courage to climb your way out of difficulty, read on!

*I’ve changed Robert and Emma’s names to protect their privacy.

Robert and Emma credit their ability to thrive despite losing everything they owned, to the fact that they told the truth about their experience to anyone and everyone—including the IRS. They were continually surprised at how many families shared the same sometimes shameful secret of family debt and/or bankruptcy. By sharing their experience openly and honestly with friends and family, they not only gained support, offers for affordable housing, tuition assistance, but new job opportunities to start over also. They felt no shame about their financial situation, which seems to have freed them to be able to quickly transition to new opportunities. In contrast to those families who avoid facing the painful truth about their financial situation, hoping it will all just go away or magically resolve itself, Robert and Emma chose to accept their situation, face it head-on with a daily list of what had to be done to dig themselves out, and modeled for their kids the hard work involved with creating a good life.

The short time that they blamed each other for their financial mess was a disaster for their relationship. As soon as they both decided to work together to clean up their financial mess, the marriage grew stronger and supported them both through the tough times that followed as they auctioned off all their belongings, got recertified in their professions and searched for new jobs—all whilst handling their kids’ own adolescent struggles.

They did not shield their children from the financial crisis their family faced. Instead, they chose to tell them the whole truth of their situation, whilst at the same time educating them about financial responsibility. They developed a family savings plan that would get them back on-track, and everyone in the family contributed as they were able. The kids were free to ask questions, to seek reassurance, and to participate in most family decisions—as appropriate. They all had to make sacrifices, adjust to smaller rental homes and very few extras. At the same time, they made a commitment to sharing at least one meal together each day, to spend time in nature to restore their spirits, and have fun together at least once a week. They relied on friends, a structured daily rhythm, and modeled the hard work and courage necessary to build anew.

Robert has retrained, relicensed, and returned to his work as a physician. Emma became a school teacher, and now works as a cook. They still have several years ahead of serious saving to help the kids with college. During our interview, their kids weave happily in and out of the living room, checking in with mom and dad—their teenage friends in tow. The love between them all is evident, as it is clear that this is a house where their children and all their friends are welcome. Truth and lack of physical pretense provide the supports for this home. Simply decorated, this is their third rental house in as many years. None of the kids is suffering from a lack of material possessions, most are second-hand, but all lovingly cared for. In fact, they all have part-time jobs to supplement any material desires they may want. Everyone in the house is more financially responsible as a result of the bankruptcy. As their children have grown in maturity, they do not take for granted simple family outings or vacations—if only to a park for a picnic together. They certainly do not take for granted the opportunity to take an extracurricular course or buy new clothes. It is evident that they have all had to learn to live with less. Yet, they all agree they have more fun, more family time, connect more, and love each other more as a result of bankruptcy and their commitment to rebuild a good home, a good family, and a good life.

Robert and Emma, towards the end of our interview, shared this advice for families faced with any sort of financial or other crisis:

Trust in your children’s resiliency, and your own.
Dwell in the present moment, don’t scare yourself about the future.
Be flexible, but make a step-by-step plan to rebuild.
Learn from your children, they are wiser than you may think.

They have learned to live more in the present moment. The more they could accept the reality of their losses and forgive the past, the freer and more able they became to start building anew. Though not aligned with any particular spiritual faith, they both developed a deep reverence for finding joy, truth, and beauty in life through losing all their “stuff”. As they both stated, “In the end, we lose it all anyway, and it’s just stuff. We are only left with love, the love we share with others and that we feel for ourselves”. Though humbled by the past few years of relative poverty, this family states that they’ve learned to focus on what they do have: each other, the love in their friends and family, and their health. These gifts, in their estimation, are at the heart of the truth of what truly matters in life.

An update since my interview with Robert and Emma: they have relocated closer to family across the country, bought their first house since declaring bankruptcy four years ago, and are all thriving in work, family life, and in their new community.

Never Quit: Susan’s Story

admin — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“No Matter What, Have Courage” ~ Elli Gloeckner

My husband introduced Susan and I four years ago when we had just moved to Upstate New York. He randomly picked the hair salon she worked at on his drive home from work one day. When he came home after Susan cut his hair, he said to me “I think I’ve found someone you’re going to become friends with here.” We instantly connected, as per my husband’s prediction. Little did I know at the time how inspirational Susan would become in my life as a beacon of hope, resiliency, strength and sheer willfulness to live life to the fullest no matter what the circumstances. My friend Susan, a mother of four, has a terminal illness and is the most determined person I know. I’d like to share with you some of our interview about what she believes courage is and how she learned to become such a courageous person.

Image above: Susan, Summer 2011

This past summer, despite having survived cancer three times, Susan’s doctors gave her a series of devastating diagnoses and little hope of treatment. She refused to be defined by her diagnosis, opting instead to say to those reacting in fear, shock, and/or withdrawal around her “I’m not dead yet!” Instead, she plunged into doing her own research, found a doctor who listened to her and recognized her strength, built a chapel in her back garden in which to seek solace, and she continued to wake up every morning she could to help her kids get to school. As she says, “I’m just doing common things in an uncommon situation.”

Susan’s Sanctuary

When I ask Susan how she has become such a courageous survivor, she credits her parents for teaching her to never quit. She says her mom was a fearless, big spirit in a tiny French woman’s body. Her dad was a farmer turned successful businessman. Both her parents had a strong work ethic which they instilled in Susan from a young age. She also says that as a child she was well-loved. She also credits the unconditional love of her husband as a great source of inspiration and support. Susan defines courage as “being scared out of your mind, but doing it anyway. Stepping into the black void, without anything under your feet, but trusting and having the faith to keep going. You can’t have fear and faith at the same time. Faith is what holds you up, holds your hand, otherwise it wouldn’t take courage at all to crawl out of that fox hole.”

Susan admits that some days “crap hits me and it sticks,” but she also acknowledges that she can change her thinking through focusing on her spiritual faith or on her children. She believes that her children came to her in this Universe and that they are her primary responsibility. She acknowledges that parenting “is the hardest job in the world, and none of us is very good at it after 8 p.m., but we can never slide on the responsibility.” She apologizes to her kids when she makes mistakes and tells her kids “I’m sorry, God is still working on me. I’m far from perfect.” Then, she chooses not to dwell on the mistake, but to move on to the present moment.

She says, “I’m an ‘overcomer.’ The first thing you have to do is cultivate acceptance. Dwell on nothing. Focus on living in the solution.” She says there is really no “100% acceptance in having a terminal diagnosis and knowing that I will be leaving my kids behind is devastating. But I choose not to quit. I’m not dying, I’m living! I’m living because I do what I feel deep in my heart needs to be done. Life is not easy. Many things will come your way, so we all need to have courage. I don’t get depressed because I look at what the feelings are and deal with them, whether it’s frustration, sadness or fear, instead of depressing the feelings. It takes time to learn how to find serenity in calamity. Since I have already died twice and have been resuscitated I’m not afraid of what is to come. I’ve watched both my parents die, and I leaned into the discomfort not away from it.”

Every day, Susan is refinishing furniture, playing with her kids, or reaching out to friends who are healthy and not projecting their fear of her or their own death. She isn’t able to work now, and things are very tight financially given all her medical expenses. She is tired and sometimes incapacitated these days, but chooses to be alive, to lighten up when she can, have fun, and makes sure to create something every day whether that be a song, a YouTube video, or a painting. She has even recently launched her own hand-made purse business to try and make ends meet: PURSEnallyours.blog.com She reminds me, “No one is getting out of here alive. Once you can overcome the fear of death, you can overcome anything. And I have. I have looked death in the eye and said ‘I’m not afraid of you.’ I trust that I’ll be ready, that I’ll be at peace. I know now that I need to make the best of everyday. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know it’s all temporary. We are all energy just waiting to change into something else.”

Susan doesn’t see herself as extraordinary, but as “average.” She states, “It’s simply a choice: Do I want to have a bad day or to be in joy? Joy is like an electrical current that no one can take away from you. And I tell my kids, anyone can start the day over and make a different choice even if it’s 5 p.m. I remind them to go help someone else, another human being who may be suffering more than you instead of staying in self-pity or self-seeking.”

I’m grateful my husband chose to try a new hair salon four years ago. Thank you Susan for inspiring me to be a better person and a braver mom!

What’s a Good Enough Parent?

admin — Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

When my first child was born, a nurse handed me a form to complete which had two empty spaces, one for “Mother’s Name” and the other for “Father’s Name.” I completed the form with my own mother and father’s names filled into the blanks. The nurse reviewed the form and promptly asked me “Who are these folks? Sweetheart, YOU are the mother. This form needs YOUR name.” Everything went a little woozy as I was overcome by the seismic internal shift from daughter to mother. All I knew was that I wanted to be good enough to warrant this immense responsibility and privilege to now be the guide, not the follower, on this next adventure in life. I hoped I would have the kind of internal strength and courage to weather all the changes to come. As I’ve written about previously, my first tasks would involve ensuring secure attachment and cultivating attunement between myself and my children.

Psychology research is clear: secure attachment and healthy parent-child attunement protects our mental and physical health. Primary attachment relationships, regardless of maternal anxiety and/or infant temperament variables, play an important role in the later development of childhood and/or adolescent anxiety disorders (Warren, Huston, Egeland, & Sroufe, 1997). Those mother-infant pairings that show anxious/resistant attachment, for example, tend to manifest later in childhood or adolescent anxiety. New genetic research is beginning to show that nurture can trump nature in terms of secure attachment (Roisman & Frailey, 2008). Most parents intuitively know this, but it’s important to know when things go wrong—like when a child is born with a disability that could seemingly make attachment difficult—that holding your child is essential to their survival (see my post Beth’s Story). Secure attachment provides psychological protection.

As parents, we need to become confident in our responsiveness and attunement to our own and our child’s needs. And when we aren’t, our child’s separation distress acts as a kind of corrective mechanism to restore healthy attachment behaviors quickly and bring comfort. In those cases, we need to recover quickly! Then, ensure that the majority of the time we are the kind of loving, available, reliable, approachable, and sensitive parents necessary to create the secure base and safe haven associated with healthy attachment between ourselves and our children. We need to keep creating the neurological in-roads to lay the foundation necessary to ensure secure attachment through: loving touch, eye-to-eye contact, responding to our children’s cries as responsively and sensitively as possible, being attuned to their needs, being a calm and reassuring presence. At least the majority of the time!

Think of it like this: remember those heartwrenching—and what would now be considered highly unethical—studies psychologist Harry Harlow (1958) conducted with rhesus monkeys in the 1950s? Of the two choices that those baby monkeys had, a terrycloth surrogate monkey mother or a wire monkey mother, babies chose the cloth surrogate mother for comfort in times of stress, despite the fact that in some trials both provided food. What’s shocking is that rhesus monkey babies without the choice of a live monkey mother to snuggle with and rely on, chose comfort over food during times of stress and exploration. Indicative of our human resiliency, we can survive periods of deprivation as long as they are short and not chronic. But, we all crave the comfort of a loving figure necessary for healthy human development.

What does this all mean? Well, essentially we don’t have to be perfect as parents. We can still be anxious, fearful, sad, tired, unsure, and even unresponsive at times. As long as we provide the necessary emotional and physical comfort, whilst continually trying to be good enough the majority of the time, we can rely on our secure attachment to reassure our children of their safety, security, and comfort during unpredictable, chaotic, or otherwise difficult times. The goal, of course, is not to be “perfect”—as is often misinterpreted from child pediatrician, psychologist, sociologist, and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott’s The Theory of the Parent-Child Relationship (1960). But to be “good enough” to ensure secure attachment. To be a good enough parent is to provide the kind of “holding environment” which Winnicott (1960) proposed. The kind of loving, secure, safe environment where a child can feel secure and safe enough to venture out into the world with confidence and conquer life’s challenges with courage.

Keep in mind that many of these early twentieth century psychologists and theorists, like Bowlby (on attachment), Harlow (of the monkeys) and Winnicott (on good enough parenting), were pushing up against a thoroughly Western and prevailing belief that holding, attuning, and securely attaching to a child led to spoiling, harming, and/or resulting in adult psychological illness! Needless to say, it turns out that the opposite is true. Our children need our attention, attunement, holding, and our secure attachment.

Our temperament may not be the easiest, or our baby the calmest. We may experience periods of post-partum depression and struggle to bond initially, or our baby cries for months with colic testing our true mettle and patience. Our children may push buttons in us—buttons that may have been wired during our own childhood experience which can trigger urges to withdraw, be anxious and hover, become angry, and/or grieve our own childhood in moments. We need not continue to blame our parents for what we may or may not have received in terms of how we were parented (afterall we are the parents now). We can, however, choose to parent our amazing children with the kind of compassion, love, patience, generosity, and courage which we ourselves may or may not have received, as a way to not only ensure their psychological health but also our own!

Winnicott (1993) urged us as parents to be authentically ourselves. It is our authenticity, most of all, that children are looking for and that provides the kind of consistency they crave. Parenting isn’t a profession we can perfect, as much as it is a practice in accepting our imperfections and having the courage to consistently move forward in the direction of love. As my aunt said to me one day, after I called her in tears worried about a spectacularly imperfect parenting moment after my son bit his newborn sister’s hand, “If your biggest fear is that your kids are going to grow up and want you to come to therapy with them to discuss how imperfect you were, be grateful ’cause it means they still want to talk to you!”

Here’s a good link for more information on attachment from a group of mental health therapists committed to community education and wellness: http://healingresources.info/children_attachment.htm

Sources:

Bowlby, J. [1969], (1999). Attachment (2^nd ed.), Attachment and loss (Vol. 1). NY: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J. (1988) A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. London: Routledge.

Harlow, H. (1958). The nature of love. American Psychologist, 13, 673-685.

Winnicott, D.W. (1960). The theory of the parent-infant relationship. The international journal of psychoanalysis, 41, 585-595.

Winnicott, D.W. (1993). Talking to parents. NY: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Bonding with Baby

admin — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.”– Toni Morrison

Not long after my husband and I brought our newborn son home from the hospital, I was breastfeeding on the couch watching an “Oprah Winfrey Show” segment on the Nobel Prize-winning poetic genius Toni Morrison. She mentioned the importance of loving connections between parents and children by uttering this quote and parenting challenge.

Jonathan Fitch, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It was easy for me to gaze upon my newborn boy with loving, lit up eyes in those early days and months. I was, at the time, blissfully unaware of the complicated hormonal soup we were all swimming in together. Instinctively responsive as I was to my son’s face shape, button nose, and round captivating eyes, I was unaware of how our intense mutual gazes were actually causing endorphin levels to rise in us both. Endorphin release produces feelings of joy, love, and euphoria associated with ensuring healthy development. My son’s eyes rewarded me biochemically and my visual and nurturing motor responses quickly conditioned to his proximity seeking cues (particularly at around eight weeks when visual acuity improves and a critical period of visual cortex development occurs). By three months, my son’s gazes and smiles showed me his interest in play, his cries and disengagement of attention his disinterest.

Bonding with my baby seemed intuitive, if not an overwhelming responsibility to do the whole thing “right.” I was not only led by the zeitgeist at the time “attachment parenting,” but sometimes succumbed to the guilt-inducing messages of some of its followers. I stressed about the family bed, how long to breastfeed, and the impact of my frustration with the fact that my son didn’t sleep through the night until he was three! Still, I’m grateful I trusted my gut, imitated what I knew to be true about a healthy mother-infant bond, and followed the attachment parenting advice that fit. It wasn’t easy, but nothing as worthwhile and important as bonding ever is.

I learned by trial-and-error that though there are seven identified ways to bond successfully with a baby, love’s resilience forges pathways in the brain and between human beings that we are only just beginning to fully understand. Most of all, I highly underestimated how powerful those loving, awe-inspiring gazes between us all actually promote and sustain our connection as a family for years to come.

In my practice as a child/family therapist and parenting coach I continue to learn more about the importance and benefits associated with healthy bonding between parent and child. I also have the benefit of witnessing the exceptional variety of bonding experiences possible between a primary attachment figure and a child, and the resiliency associated with those bonds promoted through eye contact, touch, smile, movement, feeding, heart connection, and offering comfort during distress. As a parenting coach I pay close attention to the way parents speak about their first days and months with their newborn. Not to mention the first experiences as an adoptive parent meeting his/her child, the first family visits as a new step-parent, or the first days as a foster parent. Most importantly, we focus on the quality of the relationship today and how to promote positive communication, trust, mutual respect, and care for one another.

I witness the benefits everyday with my children—as our love for them provides the “secure base” (Bowlby, 1988) from which they confidently and courageously venture out to discover the world…excitedly returning with reports of their discoveries! Parental love also provides the “safe haven” of comfort and support to weather less successful voyages of discovery, and a place to celebrate curiosity with joy and acceptance (Johnson, 2002).

These days, bonding in our family looks more like watching our kids do their various extracurricular activities, watching movies together, or spotting them as we climb an indoor rock wall together. I still frequently hear “Watch me, Mom!” as I now sit on the sidelines of their lives. I also do my best to stop what I’m doing when they storm through the door at the end of their day, lift my gaze to meet theirs, and listen as they eagerly share the news of their day.

We all bond in unique ways…the important thing is that we bond! In upcoming posts you will have the opportunity to read about other parent-child bonding stories. Please continue to post your comments about how you bond, promote courage, and continue to connect with your child/ren!

I’ll leave it to Dr. William Sears and his wife, Martha, authors of The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two (1992, 2003), to summarize the seven basics (or B’s) of attachment parenting which I subscribed to as a new parent (though I’m glad to see they’ve added “Balance” to the list!):

THE BABY B’S

1. Birth bonding

The way baby and parents get started with one another helps the early attachment unfold. The days and weeks after birth are a sensitive period in which mothers and babies are uniquely primed to want to be close to one another. A close attachment after birth and beyond allows the natural, biological attachment-promoting behaviors of the infant and the intuitive, biological, caregiving qualities of the mother to come together. Both members of this biological pair get off to the right start at a time when the infant is most needy and the mother is most ready to nurture.

“What if something happens to prevent our immediate bonding?”

Sometimes medical complications keep you and your baby apart for a while, but then catch-up bonding is what happens, starting as soon as possible. When the concept of bonding was first delivered onto the parenting scene twenty years ago, some people got it out of balance. The concept of human bonding being an absolute “critical period” or a “now-or-never” relationship was never intended. Birth bonding is not like instant glue that cements the mother-child relationship together forever. Bonding is a series of steps in your lifelong growing together with your child. Immediate bonding simply gives the parent- infant relationship a headstart.

http://www.emotion.caltech.edu/courses/ss140/May8-1.pdf

Johnson, S. (2003). Introduction to attachment: A therapist’s guide to primary relationships and their renewal.

In Johnson, S. & Whiffen, V. (Eds.)., Attachment Processes in Couple and Family Therapy. NY:

The Guilford Press. (pp. 5-17).

        Schore, A. (2001). Effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation,
                 and infant mental health. Infant Mental Health Journal, 22, (1-2),
                 7-66. http://www.allanschore.com/pdf/SchoreIMHJAttachment.pdf

Let’s Start at the Beginning…Childbirth

admin — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

What does our child’s birth have to do with courage? Birth triggers similar neurological mechanisms and the release of many of the same neurochemicals associated with courage. If you don’t think it takes courage to give birth, to adopt a child, or unconditionally love another human being then stop reading right now!

Let’s start at the beginning. I didn’t have the “perfect birth” with either of my kids. READ: quick, soothing music, no emergency interventions and/or numbing chemical infusions, surrounded by family/friends/a birthing coach/midwife/massage therapist all focused on giving me exactly what I needed when I needed it, maybe even at home! The kind of birth I’d read about in some of the baby and childbirth books I’d found. The kind of birth other expectant moms and I proudly and excitedly whispered to each other about having in our childbirth education class or whilst we stretched our swollen limbs together in prenatal yoga class. Or the “natural births” other moms bragged to me about at baby showers or in grocery store lineups where I was, yet again, buying the weirdest combinations of food to stave off my pregnancy cravings and nausea whilst ensuring a hefty weight gain. Well, maybe they weren’t bragging, but as a slightly competitive person myself (note the understatement) I definitely heard the brag. Honestly, I even skipped over the Cesearean sections in all the baby books. I figured: not going to happen to me, don’t need to read it! Boy, was I humbled and deeply grateful that an OB/GYN I trusted happened to be on-call.

That all said, when my kids ask about the day they were born, I fluff up my fur (a.k.a. my crazy curly hair) with pride, wrap them inside my protective lion mama arms, and whisper how I fell in love with them on the day they were born. I tell them how brave they were (in their own specific ways) and how their cries could be heard far and wide awakening the world to their arrival. How their dad and I wept with joy when we first saw them and heard their cry. But most of all, how grateful we are to know them, to witness them grow every day, and to be their parents. Turns out it’s the most “natural thing” in the world to love your child!

Just like the quest for the perfect wedding, it’s nice if everything goes according to plan and it doesn’t rain…but it’s the marriage that really matters. So, I worried about not having had the “perfect birth” for about as long as it took me to bond with my babies—not long. As soon as I was able to hold them, we quickly discovered we fit perfectly together. I was just happy that they, and I, had survived the whole experience! In large part due to my husband and aunt’s loving support. That’s the whole deal with bonding: it helps us survive. If we aren’t bonded as a species, why would we care enough to have the courage to save each other and our planet?

Friends of mine who’d been brave enough to walk the path of parenthood ahead of me taught me a valuable lesson: accept your experience—and your child for that matter—as the perfect learning for you. Other friends and clients of mine, who’d suffered the losses and, sadly, the self-recrimination sometimes associated with miscarriage, infertility, or even a C-section—as if these physical realities were personal failures instead examples of the arbitrariness of life—showed me the way to walk with courage over the hot coals of our own and others’ expectations, judgments, and often limited perspective about the learning deep in birth narrative.

The other thing you need to know about when I had babies: I had my basic needs (food, water, shelter, quality healthcare) provided for—and could therefore ensure my baby’s basic needs were met—and I had a loving partner (even if sometimes asleep) beside me. Many mamas on this planet don’t. Yet another reason to develop courage in ourselves and our children to share our plentiful resources with the rest of the planet, therefore ensuring the survival of our species.

When my babies were born, I wasn’t chronically or significantly stressed. Chronicity and intensity of stressors being correlated with a decrease in human resiliency. Like any new parent, I was stressed to the extent I could pay close attention to my own and my baby’s needs. My limbic-hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (LHPA-axis) was releasing enough cortisol to boost my now-understood female “tend-or-befriend” responses (Taylor, et al., 2000). I had enough cortisol to boost not only my ability to form a secure attachment with my baby, but to boost his/her neurological development also. But I wasn’t stressed enough to prevent oxytocin’s ability to mediate the effects of the stress-hormone cortisol from stunting the parent-child bonding process. That’s why advice like “Nap when your baby naps,” or “Accept all the help you can get,” and anything else that helps take the stress level of becoming a parent down a notch, is good advice to heed.

When we are neurochemically in-balance (as much as is possible for any new parent), we are able to promote the bonding process. We are able to provide the necessary cues for emotional regulation that begins the process of ensuring we can be a secure base for our infant. Clients and friends of mine who have had to navigate the dark corridors of post-partum depression are often best-served by short-term psychotropic medication (i.e. an antidepressant) intervention at this stage, often combined with some psychotherapy to help ensure the effectiveness of the intervention. The good news: as long as those periods of emotional disregulation are brief and not chronic, the human being (whether in infancy or adulthood) is resilient to withstand such stress.

http://www.emotion.caltech.edu/courses/ss140/May8-1.pdf

Knudsen, E. (2004). Sensitive periods in the development of the brain and behavior.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, (8), 1412-1425. doi: 10.1162/0898929042304796

Palmer, L. (2002). Bonding matters: The chemistry of attachment. Attachment Parenting International News, 5,(2), 1-4. http://www.newbornbreath.com/downloads/Handouts/Chemistry%20of%20Attachment.pdf

Pilyoung Kim, P., Swain, J. (2007). Sad dads: Paternal postpartum depression. Psychiatry 4, (2), 35-47.

Porter, L. (2003). The science of attachment: The biological roots of love. Mothering, 119, 1-10.

http://mothering.com/parenting/the-science-of-attachment

Taylor, S.E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B.P., Gruenewald, T.L., Gurung, R.A., & Updegraff, J.A. (2000). Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight or flight. Psychological “Review”, 1073, 411-429. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.107.3.411