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Every time we try to get our adult attachment needs met through our children we are placing them in our darkness and stealing from them the light they need to build their own strong self so they can live their own good life.  Doing so is the surest way to destroy our children’s lives — which is certainly not what we hope for.

It is critically important that we foster our children’s attachment to us as parents, not the other way around – and not mutually.  Yes, parents need to be bonded with their children, but that is not the same thing as parents having to have their attachment needs met by their children.  Parents are their children’s care givers.  We can only activate our care giving system when our attachment-need system is deactivated, or turned off.  Otherwise the whole natural process of raising healthy-minded, safely and securely attached children is contaminated, and unresolved trauma is passed down the generations.

Adults, particularly those who were not raised themselves by securely attached adults who knew how to meet their own attachment needs appropriately outside their parenting relationship – and thus have a resulting insecure attachment disorder coupled with an empathy disorder themselves — need to become crystal clear about what their own attachment needs are and how to get these needs met appropriately without involving their children.

If we ourselves have an insecure attachment disorder, we will be forever at risk for passing this insecure attachment pattern down to our offspring no matter how hard we try not to.  We need information, we need it NOW and we need it desperately!

I am most strongly recommending the writings of Dr. Daniel J. Siegel.

— WEBSITE:   Mindsight Institute

Parenting From the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell (Paperback – April 22, 2004)

Better Parents, Better Spouses, Better People (Wired to Connect: Dialogues on Social Intelligence, 2) by Daniel J. Siegel and Daniel Goleman (Audio CD – 2007) – Audiobook

The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are by Daniel J. Siegel (Paperback – Oct 22, 2001)

The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being by Daniel J. Siegel (Hardcover – April 1, 2007)

The Neurobiology of “We”: How Relationships, the Mind, and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (Sounds True Audio Learning Course) by Daniel J. Siegel (Audio CD – May 1, 2008) – Audiobook

Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J. Siegel (Hardcover – Jan 12, 2010)

Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body, and Brain by Daniel J. Siegel, Marion F. Solomon, and Marion Solomon (Hardcover – Jan 2003)

The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development & Clinical Practice (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) by Diana Fosha, Daniel J. Siegel, and Marion F. Solomon (Hardcover – Nov 16, 2009)

Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy by Kekuni Minton, Pat Ogden, Clare Pain, and Daniel J. Siegel (Hardcover – Oct 13, 2006)

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Adequate parenting means we can respond adequately to the needs of our children.

Please also see on this blog:

*COLLINS ON RESPONDING TO NEED – Part One

*COLLINS ON RESPONDING TO NEED – Part Two

*COLLINS ON RESPONDING TO NEED – Part Three

*COLLINS ON RESPONDING TO NEED – Part Four

*COLLINS ON RESPONDING TO NEED – Part Five

*COLLINS ON RESPONDING TO NEED – Part Six

**Attachment Styles and Caregiving from Collins Article

**Attachment Styles from Collin’s Article

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