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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 790: Peers Are Raising Our Children | Dr. Gordon Neufeld, Hold On to Your Kids
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to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Erich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I can hardly believe it. There is this book that I think every parent should read. It's called hold on to your kids why parents need to matter more than peers. It is eye opening, it is shocking. It will change your life. Author Dr. Gordon Neufeld is here.
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A
Welcome. Pleased to be here. Ginny. Thank you for inviting me.
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B
This is the type of book that includes things that you maybe have never heard before. And that was my experience with it is, oh my goodness, I've never heard these things before. And I think that, that sometimes you're swept up in the sea of culture and you know, you think, oh my kids have to have friends and all these types of things. And what you're doing is you're explaining how when culture changed and the orientation of our kids changed, it really has caused them to be in a spot where they're suffering. So could we kick it off with some of the history? So in this book, hold on to your kids, you talk about how kids and then you talk about this place you went province where the society is still kind of how things used to be here. You said that those people, they socialize as a family, they're more connected with the adults in their community. Could you give a little view of like what has changed? Because I think nobody really understands that things used to be different.
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A
Well, that's a good place to start. Jenny. Let me go back just, just a bit before your direct question. When you were commenting on how the book held many things that were not self evident that you would have not heard of. And the the reason that is so is is that is is that attachment relationship is invisible. It's a context in which everything works. We are creatures of togetherness and relationship is what it's all about. It's the context. And even the word context means with text. In other words, it's not the text. In other words, it's not visible and the text is our language. And when I was doing the book Tour over and over I heard people say, I, I didn't even know that such a phenomena existed. But now that you put a word to it, I see it everywhere. It becomes self evident. And that's the issue, is that we require language for consciousness. And so it's double hidden. These things are double hidden. And that's why we call, we call it about the wisdom of culture. But the wisdom of culture is a hidden wisdom, but it's in its rituals. And when a culture is intact, it honors the rituals of relationship, the greetings, the goodbyes, the preserving the contact, the meals that are times of togetherness. And that was what is in Provence, you know, in southern France. It escaped the industrial revolution, to answer your second question. Right. But they didn't know that that was invisible. They think that they have a culture of food, that's what they think, because they don't have a language either. But their culture of food means that, that it serves the purpose of family, of whatever goes. It's the way the culture is organized. So I had the pleasure of living there for a year with a family. And in a Neolithic culture that, you know, pre dated, industrial post industrial times, it went back 27 to 8, 2800 years. In fact, the place we lived in, its records went, went back to the 12th century. So we were, you know, we lived in this. But it was a culture steeped, as soon as you looked at it, steeped in rituals, in traditions of togetherness where family is the answer. And it's hierarchically arranged so that your ancestors, like kind of indigenous culture are held in great esteem. Your living members that are elderly are next on the line and then it comes all the way down, right. And so the children are expected to honor all of that kind of cascading care. They don't know what it's about, but they have the rituals to preserve it. And what the. And coming from the west coast, which is the pioneer coast of North America, right. So we are so chaotic here. You know, the good news is you're not burnt at the stake for inventing your own culture. The bad news is you've got no culture. You know, you're. And, and so it was like coming from here, it was, oh my goodness. When your eyes were opened, you saw how it was meant to work. And then was the realization that in, in North American society and in the UK and in Australia is that kids were revolving around each other and being pulled out of orbit, the adults responsible for them. And it was so normal that it was hidden by its normality because everybody in North America wants to be normal. And that normality hit it. And because kids appear to be more independent when they're revolving around their peers. It fooled us because we think we're enlightened and. And parenting is about independence. And so it fooled us. It totally camouflaged it. So here we were, kids were falling out of love with their families and replacing it with sameness as their peers. We were losing them and losing the context in which to. To take care of them and to bring them into their full potential.
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B
And because this has been happening for decades.
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Yes.
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B
Then it just gets lost because nobody knows how it used to be because it's been going on for so long
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in the academic literature. As I point out in the book, the first reference that uses this name into this phenomena was in the early 1960s, and it was considered an artifact of the end of the Second World War, when many children were fatherless. And it was assumed and it was going to go away, but it only got worse. And now we're in such a state that even the people in the grandparent generation, who should be orbiting around their grandchildren, because this is the way it's meant, this is natural, this is the indigenous way, are now congregating together in places that they think they belong with each other instead of in the context of family.
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B
Like retirement communities.
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A
Yes, yes. Which is bizarre. It's absolutely bizarre because all indigenous cultures revolve around grandparents because, you know, parents have neuroses to cover, recover from. Parents have to work. Parents carry responsibilities. They should not be weighted down with a primary responsibility. I mean, most grandparents will tell you, I wish I could have started as a grandparent. You finally grow up and you're ready to, you know, to have this. But an indigenous culture, altars, they do. That is the way it works.
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B
The book makes everything make sense. You know, everything that you're sort of confused about. And you're like, why isn't this parenting technique working? And why aren't my timeouts working? And why is my child rebelling? And why is my teenager acting like such and such? It just makes all of it make sense. And you say, it really shouldn't be quite so hard. So for someone who's never heard of it, this was a really. The whole concept was new to me. And I think every parent listening, if you're a teacher, if you're a grandparent, pick up the book. It's phenomenal. Hold on to your kids. Why parents and need to matter more than peers. It's counterintuitive, right? Because Everybody, like you said, wants their kids to be independent. They want them to be social. We want to make sure they have all these friends. But you go through all of these issues, they're issues that arise. The cost of peer orientation, I, I
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would say, Jenny, it's not counterintuitive, it's counter societal, it's counter educational. Yeah, but once you see it, it becomes very intuitive. You're restored to your natural intuition. You have an idea of how it works. And if you can't, if you don't have the, your teenager, how are you going to be able to influence them, help them? How are you going to be able to come alongside of them and help them with whatever they're dealing with? We think we're a post industrialized society. We think that our role gives us our power. No, our role gives us our responsibility. Attachment is the most powerful force in the world. If your spouse is not attached to you, heaven help you. Heaven help you. If they don't want to be with you, if they, if they haven't given their heart to you, if they don't share what is in with your heart, its relationship, its attachment. That is always a power. Think of the atomic bomb. Where was the power in the relationship between the proton and the electron. We're all from particle to, you know, we're all exist in relationship. And when you break that bond between proton and electron, you have the power that could create or destroy, and we used it to destroy. And gravity and magnetism are all about togetherness, about keeping near, but they're invisible. Nobody can see it. We can see the effects, but nobody can see it. And that's the same with attachment. You can feel when somebody's attached to you, but you can't see it. You know, you can feel when they, when you've got their heart, when they want to be good to you. And this is the thing is we're parenting today without harnessing the most powerful attachment in the universe. We don't engage the attachment instincts first. And in proper cultures like Provence, they always do. They wouldn't think of even interacting with you unless it got your eyes, a smile, a nod, and you're primed, your attachment instincts are primed. And now, now we can do business, but we don't do business out of it. Today's parents are saying, you know, do this, do that, put away your clothes, you know, come in, you got to eat this. No, you what your chars are chores are. But there's no power there. And the power comes from the child's Desire to be good. The desire to be good comes from the strength of their attachment to the adult in charge. And so, yes, we. It is so much harder. And that's why people are flocking to the Internet to parent, you know, via Google. And it never addresses. The root issue is the reason it's hard is because our children have fallen out of relationship with us. They are for the many of them are following their peers and being good for their peers so their peers can have their way with them. But we, who care about them, who want to convey our values, including in this podcast, the values of nature. The values of being in nature, of understanding, you know, the metaphor of nature, of life. We can't convey those values to kids who just want to be, you know, with each other via the screen and social media. And so we lose them. And that's not a matter of just putting down restraints. That's a matter of relationship. You can't say, okay, no screen time today. Well, the screens are small. You can sneak with screens. You know, anybody who wants to has a way to do this. And so, no, you need real power. And real power comes from when a child is in good relationship with you.
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B
Yeah, everyone has to read it. Because you say this can start so young. These shifts can happen. You know, maybe they're seven years old and they're no longer looking to their parents for comfort and nurturance. So you go through all sorts of issues that arise because of this. Like, you know, you. And you explain them all, like, why are there problems with drugs? Why are kids stuck in immaturity? Why is there so much aggression? Why is there bullying? And you take each one of these things and you explain why this is happening in the. Through the lens of this attachment that they've. They've attached to the peers and. And switch their primary attachment to peers from the parents. And so one of the things that I thought made things make so much sense was this concept of competing primary attachments. You say you cannot have the coexistence of competing primary attachment. The child will either orient to the peers the value of the peers, or they will orient to the values of the parents, but not. And beyond that. So you call this the bipolar nature of attachment. It's not even that. It's kind of innocuous, right? Oh, yeah. They like the values of the peers. Can you explain how they sort of enter. The phrase you use is actively and energetically turn away from their parents?
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Yes. Well, this is understood. If you understand attachment as gravity, as magnetism, you always know that There is. For every force, there's an equal and opposite force, right? All physical forces are polarized. So to the degree that you have an attraction, you have a repulsion to the degree that you love, to the degree that you are championing, you know, one person now at the Olympics, then you have somebody you don't want, you know, to win, right? And so it, it always is polarized. And, and this is what rips when, when, when children are superficially attached to mom and dad, and mom and dad separate and the child can't be with both at the same time, that child will automatically resist one to be with the other. Now, parents will blame each other, and that could be true too, because parents polarize as well. That is, I can't be both with my new love and my old love at the same time. Those will polarize because they're usually considered exclusive. The greatest polarized competing attachment in the world is that of the stepmother. And that's why the stepmother has always been in the literature, the wicked witch of the north, because that they weren't introduced through the. The husband it be it was who pulled away. It was the siren who seduced. Right? And so you have a competing attachment. And that's what people don't realize is this isn't. The idea of competing attachments is not new. We've had competing attachments right from the time of, of Homer and Iliad. The siren was a competing attachment that pulled you away from home base, from your family, and no longer cared about them. And so this idea of a competing attachment, but this is what we don't realize is what we have dealt with all the time is these competing attachments is now happening in that we're losing our children to peers and peer culture. We understood when we lost them to a boyfriend or girlfriend. We all understand Romeo and Juliet. That we don't have difficulty is if there. If that's a competing attachment. So most parents have the wisdom to try to incorporate the competing attachment, bring Juliet into the family, even though we'd think she's not good for our Romeo or vice versa. Right? We. We have built a culture about what to do when something is taking your kid away from you and they still need their family in which to grow up. But we have no culture against this. In fact, we have had wrong assumptions that they need to be independent from us rather than where they need an answer to their relational needs, whether they're 3 or 93. We never become independent about an invitation to exist in somebody's presence about love. These are Relational needs. And so it's been camouflaged for us. We think that adolescents are meant to be this way. And we don't realize. No, this was never the way. In fact, even more so now, what adolescents are meant to be about, ideally, is, yes, becoming separate beings. But in adolescence, it's meant to coexist with togetherness. That is, their brains are meant to do the mix, you know, to have togetherness without loss of separateness, separateness without loss of togetherness. And that prepares them for marriage, which is the same challenge. Togetherness without loss of separateness, separateness without loss of togetherness. But it is not meant to compete. We're not meant to lose our kids. We need to have them. We're going to have grandchildren. We'll become ancestors. Like, how do I serve my grandchildren beyond the grave? It's only through their attachment to me. That's how they keep me alive.
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B
Wow.
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That's how they do it. That's how I can serve them. And so this is the way it's gone on for thousands and thousands and thousands of years until, what, the last 60 years. And then we think, take the last 60 years as normal. No, it's an aberration. It's an aberration. And all of the research comes at us. No matter what the research is, you know, whether it's happiness, loneliness, and everything is. No, togetherness is the answer. And it's togetherness with the adults who care about you. For children, like, it's cascading care. We must be in cascading. And grandparents need to be attached to their grandchildren as much for themselves as they do for the grandchildren.
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B
Yeah, yeah. You talk about. And I love this in the book where you talked about Neil Postman, I love his stuff, and I wish he was still alive to talk about what's going on with all the screens. He talked about how in some of his books, like, you know, there was always this hierarchy even of where you get information, you know, that there would be the radio, but if it was inappropriate, they would turn it off if a kid came into the room.
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Yes.
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And with the advent of television, then everybody kind of is on the same playing field. Now we have this horizontal instead of vertical integration of culture. And I. I think this is incredibly important for parents to understand. You say that we confuse a child's quest of individuality and we misread the situation. And so if your kids are treating you with dangerous disdain or contempt, this explains why. And it also explains why you have a lot of situations in here, why you. You're not gonna be able to like discipline that in. In sort of the typical terms of discipline out. It's becoming. Because there's these polar opposite situations when children become peer oriented. Parents often become the objects of scorn and ridicule, insults and put downs. And you say they're looking when they're looking for the approval of their peers, it's almost unbearable to them to find favor with adults.
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Yes.
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A
Yes.
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Is explained at the root cause in this book. Hold on to your kids. Can you talk about why you think no one seems to know about this? You say, Surprising though it may seem, early childhood educators, teachers and psychologists, to say nothing of physicians and psychiatrists, are seldom taught about attachment. Teacher training completely ignores attachment. And even you gave an example of, you know, in some places where kids are allowed to go home for lunch, like I know they are, let's say In France, you know, even when kindergarten was half day, you would go home for lunch. But there are some districts where kids are allowed to go home for lunch and only maybe one mom does it and she says, oh, you know, the kid will come and they'll have all these things to tell me and I would have missed all of this, this. But then they're viewing that mom as a fussy mother hen. So it's like the whole of the people who are trained to work with children don't know this, seem to not know this information.
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A
Well, yes, there's also an attitude thing as the state becomes stronger. And you really see this in Europe and in Sweden, in places in Germany and even now is happening in France as well. It believes it's better for kids than parents are, than the family. The, the officially in the European Union comes from Sweden. It's a defamatization of care and the family was declared an enemy of the state. And so early educators, instead of thinking and realizing that they're substituting for parents, high school teachers, instead of realizing their substitute for parents and helping children, you know, helping raise children. Because in today's very complex society we farm out our children to be raised, but there still must put the parents in the lead. And so now we have pejorative terms like helicopter parenting and you know, over involved parenting and so on. And we should never even have those terms because it should be the other way. Helicopter teaching helicopter. This like no, you know, you, you need to work with the family, not against the family. So that's part of the problem. The other problem is, is that in a post industrial society it's role based. And so you believe that you're, you have to be educated into that role. And so parents have no education, not in their role. And so they're looked down upon in terms of it. In some countries like UK are thinking, oh, we'll correct this by certifying parenting and giving parent education. Ah, that would be a mistake because we're going to educate them out of their instincts as well. You know, the fact is, is it's meant to be an intuitive dance. The attachment dance is the oldest dance in the world. Other animals can do it better than we can, but we've been educated out of our instincts to be able to think it. So when we think that it is about a role and that a role has a script and you've got to be trained in that script, all of a sudden preschool teachers are thinking that their education prepared them to be able to deal with a young Child. Well, that's a mistake. There's no number of PhDs that will help you make sense of the child child or dance in the attachment dance, which is where everything is for the child. In fact, if a child is attached to the preschool teacher, the preschool child will call that teacher mom every now and then by mistake. And it will shows you exactly the dance that is evolved. And everything that that comes out of it is because of the relationship, not because of the teaching. And, and we know this, we know this already because all we have to do is compare. When children are kept home in rather functioning families and they don't send they don' their children to be raised, those children do better academically, even at university level, have higher levels of maturity. And so in actual fact, again, it just proves why is that so? Because they're in the context of family. They're in the context of family. That's why it's so. And in the context of family, they get to play a lot more. They get to experience their playfulness because they don't have to work at attachment. And so all of this comes naturally, you know, when your attachment needs are taken care of, even think of the wolf cub or the bear cub immediately they are playful. And nature's way of bringing us up is through play. And play builds the brains that school uses. But the brains are build and play. When even if we go to a play based preschool, the fact is, is they're only playful in as much as their attachment needs are taken care of. Of. So you can't put this on the curriculum. You can't put it on the curriculum. Where is it going to happen in the context of, of attachments to the adults that they feel safe with. It's so self evident, Jenny, when you realize it, it's so self evident, you know, you wonder how have we lost our, our intuition here? How have we lost this?
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B
Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, I got chills when you're talking, it makes you emotional because you do feel like, oh, maybe you're not the best option. And you know, and you say just by the fact that you are the parent, this is what is going to protect and help your child. You say the attachment relationship of a child to a parent needs to last at least as long as a child needs to be parented. And that is what is becoming more difficult in today's world. All the parenting skills in the world cannot compensate for a lack of attachment relationship. But I do feel like you feel really pressured now. We home educate and so this book actually really made a lot of things make sense for me.
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A
Yes, yes.
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B
We had a situation, you know, when our kids, we did a church youth group for a little bit. Turned out to not be a good situation. But I remember when we did this for a short period of time and our daughter came home, she was in the seventh grade and she said, mom, she said, all the girls in my group talk about fighting with their moms. And she said to me, why would anybody fight with their mom? And so then I read your book and I was like, oh my goodness, this just makes so much sense. I don't even think we're that good appearance, you know, I don't think we're doing that good of a job. But they're home with us.
- [28:38]
A
Well, see this, this is the thing here is, is it takes a, it takes the load off the parent because nature is doing the job. Nature is growing the child up. But what nature needs is for the child to be attached to those who love the child now that they, they may be immature themselves. It doesn't require a mature parent to bring up a child to their potential. A person with no education, none whatsoever, but who receives the heart of their child. Their child is attached to them and keeps it safe because of the cultural roles that are around, maybe the village. That's the way they do it. And it is there has a better chance of realizing their potential as long as there's enough play that emanates. And it usually then nature can grow the child up. The fact of the matter is, is not one of us can grow ourselves up. Not one of us can grow a plant up. Only nature can do that. All we are is midwives. The most important thing is not to get in the way. Nature's got this. Nature has. If the conditions are there, if there's enough rest in the attachment, enough playfulness, the child can get his feelings back. Back. You know, there's some basic, like I've distilled it to four conditions that are required for children to realize their potential. It doesn't require parents who know what they're doing. It doesn't require parents who have their act together. It doesn't require, you know, having two parent families. It doesn't require any of those. What it requires is a strong connection with an adult who cares for you, where you can rest in that you can feel. Because feelings are what make us fully human and humane and playfulness can result. And if that is true nature, it's going to grow us up. We're going to realize our potential, not the Schooling you've had, not how much. Schooling you've had, not how much. You know, it's none of those things. Things. None of those things.
- [30:52]
B
Wow. Wow. I mean, when you go through the book and you. Because I, I felt about it, you know, we've so we homeschool, but there's a lot of pushback against that. And we didn't do preschool. And I'm not trying to say that preschool is bad. And you talk about kids that go to preschool and become attached to their teachers and it's a good thing. Or in the past, the teachers would come and visit the home before the school year started. Yes, but there's a lot of pushback against home education. Or, or, you know, I think we were the only people we know that didn't do preschool. And yes, I look back and I'm. I'm glad about these decisions.
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A
And your book, that's a post industrialized society, you see, it's based on how could you do that when you're not a trained teacher?
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B
Yeah.
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A
And how are children ever to become normal if they're not interacting with their peers? Because they think peer interaction is the way of being socialized, that socialization leads to. So to. Or socializing leads to socialization. But in fact, it pulls away. The more they socialize, the worse it gets. You know, like there's three things that are really important. The first and primary are the relationships with those responsible for us.
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B
Yeah.
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A
The second is that we develop a strong enough self that we could hold on to ourselves when with others. Then the last part of it is to interact with others because then we can do so without losing our primary caretakers and without losing ourself. But if a 13 year old comes home with somebody else's laugh, somebody else's taste in clothes, somebody else's, and becomes preoccupied with being with them, oh my goodness. It's replacing both themselves and us. It's not only that they're substituting for us, is that they're losing themselves. And Jean Jacques Rousseau. And that was in, in, what is it, 1763, in his letters to Emile, because he is, he is one of the first who really had a sense that nature has a plan. And so he was a naturalist. He was a developmentalist. Right. He's the inspiration, the muse of all developmentalists. And he says in his thinking, a child wasn't really ready for peer interaction until after puberty. You go like, oh my goodness, most parents are so preoccupied. Have they had enough play dates for their preschooler? And you know this. And the interaction. And if they don't, they'll never be normal. Well, look, where that's getting us is that we have the greatest problem. Again, none of us can help growing older. But we're not growing up. Up. And why are we not growing up?
- [33:40]
B
Yeah, stuck in immaturity. I think that's why you have to pick the book up because you talk about the cost of peer orientation. First of all, these kids are more vulnerable. Who wants their kid to be vulnerable? But these kids are so vulnerable they have to wear a mask of invulnerability. This may lead to detachment. So in this book you're talking about, okay, if they're peer oriented, there's gonna, you know, there's a possibility for that. This explains why there's so much drug use.
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A
Use.
- [34:04]
B
You say we are creating an insatiable appetite for drugs because they're like emotional painkillers. The other sentence, people, it was a quote. People don't bother to grow up. We are all fish swimming in a tank of half adults. Immaturity and peer orientation go hand in hand. These peer oriented kids, they fail to grow up. They can't rest in love. I mean, it's just thing after it stunts their growth. Then there's the aggression, there's the bullying. And you're like, this is why zero tolerance doesn't work. It's a deeper issue that the pure orientation creates the bullies and also prepares the victim. It's inherent in the system. So for something that you may not even know exists and you may be pushed culturally to put your kid in this and make sure they're with peers, we're going the complete wrong direction and causing a multitude of problems. If you could just touch on maybe one of those examples, I would love if you would talk about this part of the vulnerability. You know that now they're in a situation where they have to work for love. And they're, they're dependent on peers who are fickle and can be mean and who have their own issues because they're kids.
- [35:13]
A
Well, peers weren't meant to take care of each other. You could make the argument that siblings have a certain responsibility to take care of each other, but they'll only take care of each other if they're attached to each other properly. And then in siblings other than twins, you know, there's quite clear a sense of who's responsible for whom. In twins, there is this unbearable situation that nature doesn't know what to do with. And so twins and, and again, parents are intuitive about this. They know that if the twins start revolving around each other, they're cut out. They'll learn their own separate language, they'll have their own separate code, their own separate values. The parents are useless. They're rendered impotent when twins start revolving around each other. So we already know all of this. Any we already know. What we don't realize is the equivalent of twins in today's society is those that are of the same age. And our schools put them purposefully in same age groups, thinking that this makes it more efficient. And we can speak to this when in actual fact, it's the biggest mistake we've ever made. Because what we've done is created children to revolve around each other without telling the teacher to go in there and collect those students. Because if you don't, if they're not orbiting around you, you've created a vacuum and they'll be orbiting around each other. Think of the planets started orbiting around each other. Think of two stars that start orbiting around each other. When that happens, there's certain death if planets would start orbiting around each other. You see, the answer to harmony between the planets is the same answer as a harmony between siblings is both revolve around and, you know, around the same sun, around the primary, around the one that matters most. And the word matter is wonderful here. I use it purposely in the subtitle because what matters most is the sun. It has the most matter. And whenever it displaces something like the moon is responsible for taking care of it. And that's the law of the universe. And so, and that is the part where parents must matter more than their peers. And I, oh, I went right off track, Jenny. There was the question you asked, and I ran myself right up track. After all of these years, I still get, you know, excited about this because it's in actual fact, I thought when I first of all wrote this and the book was written about three years before it was published. And so when I first wrote this, I thought, oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. I, you know, it's like, you see, you see, you know, a meteor coming for the earth or something like that. Like, oh, my goodness, I've got a. I've got a war and this phenomena that nobody sees, right? And then I thought that if I didn't write it out, there'd be a thousand other books having written it. You know, the way it works, when somebody realizes it, it's the opposite.
- [38:15]
B
There's nothing. I've never read anything like it.
- [38:18]
A
There is nothing. It's the opposite and so all of these years later, it's even more relevant than it was then. And we added a few chapters. Yeah, but it's even more relevant than, you know, we had to, you know, add. I had to write something because of the, the existence of social media and screens and so on and so on and, and the mental health problems that we had after the pandemic. And so had to, had to add things like that because again, peer orientation was the best explanation for the, of what we see in front of us. But I think where I was going back is the mistake we made is put children with each other in the same age and, and without a strong intuitive teachers who could collect these students and have them revolve around the teacher. And once you start losing them to their peers, we set the stage for social media. Then this became the thing that they inherited, a way of being with each other, you know, 24, seven. Yeah.
- [39:21]
B
Through the night.
- [39:21]
A
And, and the, the problem is this, when we think of the, you know, Homer's Elliot, you know, the sirens. Right, and what were the sirens? Well, their, their ability to actually speak the very recesses of the brain. You know, like the thing about that is, is, is that music is a thing in the playful mode that can actually attract more than attachment can, because attachment sets us up for separation. So the. But the ability to do this. But what happened is it pulled you off of home base. What's home base? Attachment wise, where you feel cared for and where you care for others, that's home base. That's cascading care. Right. Well, the sirens of our time today are screens, because what they do is screens will separate you from the ones that care about you, reintroduce you to those that you're more alike, and replace those that you're with with those that you're more alike. But those that you were with was where care is delivered. And attachment is a delivery system of care. So if you become alike, it's like the electrons revolving around the electrons rather than the proton, the planets revolving around the planets rather than the sun. The moon's finding other moons to revolve around like this doesn't make no sense. And so as, as soon as you, you do this, you've got chaos in the family. You've got siblings against each other. You got parents that are finding it incredibly difficult to parent because they don't have ATT working against for them. And if it's not for them, it's against them. But it started with this experiment of school in our society, which is about the worst invention, the way it, in, in civilization we could, we, we could have done. Now there's all kinds of ways of doing school. We don't have to do school the way we do school. We could make it an issue where make student teacher relationships the most important factor. Factor. And if we made that, we could do the antidote. So this is not about school itself, it's the way we do school. Also, if we brought in the classic model of school which came from the ancient Greeks, that is a school that equipped you to be able to play and be playful so that all your emotional expression could be through that rather than harming your relationships and, you know, destructive. So there are ways of doing school that we should do school. But that's, that's a problem. And the issue, and the issue is, is, is now we have so many peer oriented adults is they think they belong with those they're like. And as soon as you think you belong with those of your own kind rather than your kin, as soon as you add a D to it of your own kind, you know what happens is it polarizes. And that's what we have today. Whether it's racism, we're repolarizing in every which way. And this is what is happening. The dark energy of the universe is rising and it's rising fast. The dark energy of attachment. And most people don't even know that. Racism, bigotry, all of these things are all, are all attachment phenomena.
- [42:48]
B
Like you said, there's no other book out like it. It's so countercultural and so counter everything that you, you feel pushed to do, which is like put your kid in every activity and make sure that, you know, they never have time with the family at all because they're going from thing to thing. You wrote we have to stop setting up our children's peers to replace us unwittingly. We encourage peer orientation to sabotage our children's attachment to us. And then they can't be individualistic. It crushes their individual visuality. They can't let go. I mean it is just thing after thing. And it makes so much sense. Sense. You're like when they feel cared for, when they can rest. When you have unconditional positive regard toward your children, toward your grandchildren, they can be themselves, they can rest in it, they can play, they can grow. You wrote the brain says, thank you very much, that's what we needed. And now we can get on with the real task of development, with becoming a separate being. Can you talk about this is a cyclical problem? Because the other thing that you talked about is that when this attachment with the parent breaks and it's replaced with peer orientation and you talk to about orientation as being like, you have to be oriented. That's one of the things. You compared it with hiking. You were like, if you get lost on a hike, you do not care about what you're cooking for dinner. You don't care about what plant you just passed. You're just trying to find your bearings.
- [44:06]
A
Yes, we have a center of gravity. We have a homing device. You might say the identity is part of it, but you locate yourself self in, in the context and we locate ourselves mainly relationally. I am somebody's friend, partner, husband, wife, parent, child. This is the way we locate ourselves and it, we orient ourselves accordingly to it. Now in post industrialized society, people will actually say, well, I'm a plumber or I'm a teacher. Oh my goodness. That's not a relational role. That's, that's a societ role. You shouldn't be taking your identity from that. You're going to be in trouble if you do that and you're going to be disoriented as soon as you retire, you know, or as soon as you have difficulty. And how many people are totally disoriented when they retire? Why did you lose your family? No, no, it shows that they replaced it. Now when, when a little kid, and I use the example, I think of the book, When a little kid loses his, his ability to get his bearing. Bearings right, is when mommy is out of sight. Okay? For, for a baby, when mommy is out of sight, I can't get my bearings right. So it's extremely distressful. Our word for insanity is not being able to get your bearings. Schizophrenia is about not being able to get your bearings. So our biggest problems in society are when we get lost, we can't get our bearings. And that is a phenomena of attachment. If that was realized, we would see it far differently. Now the thing is, is that since it's a function of attachment, you get your bearings is you don't feel lost. When those you're attached to are around you. Now you, they may be lost, but you don't feel lost. Right. Do you follow me?
- [46:02]
B
Yeah.
- [46:03]
A
Like I, I give this experiment or this experience in, in Provence, when we lived there, I got lost all the time. They have this mischievous way of putting signs after the vil, no longer here. But you don't know where no longer here is. And, and so then we also had a semi sabbatical in Bali and they didn't even have road signs. So, you know, outside of Ubud, outside the main areas, they don't even have road signs there. And, and so it was this idea that I was in this particular safe, particular case, saying to my six year old, you know, I'm so sorry, Daddy's getting lost again. And he says to me, don't you worry, daddy, we're never lost when we're with you. Oh. Which is true.
- [46:50]
B
And that's it.
- [46:50]
A
Which is true. And so when you think of this, what are we most afraid of is getting lost. What were we most afraid of? Now, even in dying, it's like not having our attachments, it's being lost. Yeah. And what does attachment answer? And who is to answer it? And that's why I called it orientation. Now it's a little bit confusing if people don't understand how important it is and that it's a function of attachment. But I didn't know what to call it because I didn't want to call it pure attachments. Because we can have lots of attachments. We can have lots of friends to our pets, to, to our stuffies, we can have lots of attachments just like your husband can or wife can. But should any of those attachments compete with you, that creates out of it an affair there. And so it's not about the number of attachments. It is only when you're replaced that there's a problem. And it's, that's the dynamic on a continuum. So I didn't know what to call it. And I ended up calling it pure orientation because it had been called that way in the academic literature. And I thought I would honor the academic literature, but it was really hard to know. How do you label a phenomena that has no name? And so it's that thing, oh my goodness, this thing without a name. And that's where Bolby came in, because Bolby was realizing there's this huge phenomena. John Bolby, if you're not aware of him, was, was an individual who was credited with actually being the father of attachment. But he isn't. He just created a name. Aristotle, if anyone was. The first observation is that, you know, humans are social beings, we revolve around each other. And, and Einstein was much more an attachment theorist, you know, than anyone else. And so was Newton, but it's the word. We didn't have a word. And as soon as you had a word for this drive for togetherness, for our preeminent and primordial drive that replaced survival in evolution and so we have no drive for evolution. We, we, because we will put ourselves in harm's way to save those to whom we love. And when there's atrocity, we call mummy. We daddy, we go to our loved ones rather than seek for safety. It's because nature believed if you can personify nature this way, that our survival light and togetherness. So what's the drive? It's togetherness. What's the result? Survival. It's not a drive. Most people don't even understand that. They don't understand that we don't have a drive for survival. There's been no drive isolated in mammals, animals. We all have this drive for togetherness because that is where most likely survival lies. That's the intelligence of our brain. You see, there's pre programmed intelligence there that says. Okay, I've got a shortcut here. The shortcut is togetherness. Yeah, that's why we're all about it. But what kind of togetherness? It's a delivery system of care. What was survival about? Being taken care of. Of what is attachment replacing being taken care of. And part of that is to get your bearings. It's so that you don't feel lost.
- [50:08]
B
Yeah.
- [50:09]
A
And, and so, and so it, it again brings all of science together. It, it's, it's the, it's the basic principle. The first principle of all of science, you know, is every particle in the universe, Universe only has its meaning in relationship to another particle. There's not a particle in the universe that can be an isolation. It is who we are. We're creatures of togetherness. And so we have to start there and what it is for a delivery system of care. So that is where it, it has to go. And why then our peer. When a child is re. You've been replaced, placed with peers, with social media, with other things because you won't be able to get your care through.
- [50:57]
B
Right.
- [50:57]
A
And that child will need care.
- [51:00]
B
Yes. As we're wrapping it up. It is a critical book. If you have not read it, if you are listening and you have not read it, you need to grab, grab a copy. It's called hold on to your kids. There's so much more in here. I mean we just, we scratch the surface. I have so much notes in here. You're going to learn about counter will. This is something like, you know, this resistance that kids may have or we may even have to eat each other. You talk about instincts. When attachments are out of order, our instincts will be too. But I just as we're wrapping it up as we're kind of ending our time together. I thought this was such an interesting part because it's cyclical where you talk about. Okay, well, we've talked about. Here are some issues that can happen when a child is pure oriented. It's going to stunt their growth in all of these significant ways. You know, all these different things are going to happen, but things are also going to happen to the parent as well. And this is something that I didn't consider consider. This is when you start to feel used and abused and taken for granted.
- [51:52]
A
Yes.
- [51:52]
B
And you start to feel this wear and tear and it's really not supposed to be that way.
- [51:56]
A
Yes. Instead of feeling the fulfillment of being another's answer. Yeah. I mean, that's true everywhere. That's true in marriage. As soon as you lose your confidence that you're the answer to your partner, does that deflate the marriage? All, all the sauce goes out of it. Where's the sauce? And parents parenting, you know, where's the juice in parenting? Oh, my goodness. You know, when, when you have a baby and the baby looks to you as if you're the answer to the universe, which adult doesn't go? This is, you know, this is what you do. I mean, even those right now in the Olympics who are saying, yeah, yeah, I got a gold medal, but you know, when I get go home to lift my toddler, all of that disappears because it doesn't mean anything. And that's true, true. Where are we meant to find our ultimate fulfillment? It only makes sense in the line of cascading care that it goes on. We feel fulfilled by being the answer to another. And it brings out the best in us. Absolutely the best. The best. It gives us a nobility. It gives us a deep, deep purpose in our life. It is the answer both ways. Ways. So it's, it's both ways. So it's full circle. You might say it's full circle when you give the invitation to exist to someone in your presence and you say, I will hold on to you. I won't let anything divide or come between us. It is as fulfilling for you and stretching for you. It will grow you up as it is for the person who receives your invitation. And that should be the story of parenting. It should be the best dance ever. Ever. And it should never end. It should never end. It is the best dance ever.
- [53:43]
B
It is a beautifully life changing book. You wrote what looks like independence. That's what we're like pushed toward, right? Independent. Make sure your kid is independent, you say is just dependence Transferred parents will complain of their child's oppositional and off putting behaviors, but rarely do they know that their children have stopped looking to them for nurturing, comfort and assistance. We are unaware and you need to be aware. The book is phenomenal. You talk about collecting, you mentioned it earlier. People need to read the book so they understand about collecting, ritual and how you greet your kids. And you wrote, the child must know that she is wanted, special, significant, valued, appreciated, missed and enjoyed. We just scratched the surface. I cannot recommend it more highly. I actually wish I would have read it when our kids were younger and well, we still have some young kids at home too but. Well, all our kids are still at home and some of them are still young. But even, even just for having the adolescence, I just, it's like a life changing read and it makes so much of the world make sense. Hold on to your kids. And if you feel like you're at odds with your kids, you know, you talk about how if there's, if you're having to use pressure tactics, something is amiss, your power to parent is slipping away. This will change your life. Gordon, thank you for saying yes. What an honor. I was so, so thrilled to get a chance to have a conversation with you. We always end our show with the same question. Question, what's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?
- [55:05]
A
Wow. Play, incessant play all the time constructing things, playing with things, playing with other little creatures, taking care of them. Play, play, play. It was, I was fortunate enough to have a back 2 acres that became my playground. So I, I, it, it was definitely I, I spent a whole lot of my time outside and was fortunate to live in a climate where I could do that and in Vancouver. And so that, that's that definitely I believe I credit that with, with whatever potential I've realized, you know, realize today. And thank you for inviting me here here and thank you for done such a diligent read to the book. I've always delighted when I get somebody, you know, who reads it but not only reads it but gets it. So thank you. It's been a, it's been an honor, a joy to have this conversation with you.
- [56:10]
B
This is the most life changing information that's out there and I'm so thankful, so, so thankful that you said yes. And it does go then into digital communications and why digital intimacy is empty. So this is in the newer if you get the updated edition. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here.
- [56:26]
A
My pleasure. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to 15 doll required Intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms at mintmobile. Com.