“Just make a mark,” Tammy said, as she boldly drew a messy line on her paper.
I had been the kind of girl who coloured between the lines. I wasn’t comfortable with things that were uncomfortable. Things I didn’t know how to do. Things that were messy. Yet something had been shifting and I knew there were things inside, things that didn’t fit between the lines, that wanted out.
“Just make a mark,” she said. And something in that statement melted for a moment the internal messages that had been keeping me captive. The ones that were whispering not so quietly, “Don’t you dare make any mark unless you know first that it is right!”
Let me back up a bit. I lived for the last few years on a little island known for the artists that inhabit it. One of them lived down the street and I got to know Tammy over soup and conversation. I admired her work — it was bold and raw and creative. But there was something I admired even more, and that was her ability to facilitate expressive art in others.
Permission. It’s a powerful word and an even more powerful construct. It holds the power to loosen things that have been stuffed or stagnant for years … decades even. When we experience permission, we open a portal. And if we let it do its magic, we are given a reprieve from holding in or holding back.
What about invitation? That’s a powerful word too. It offers something a little different than permission’s gentle “it’s okay.” Invitation has more of a “let’s do this!” kind of energy. “Let’s bring this to the table, or the wall, or the floor.… Let’s bring something IN you OUT into existence.”
Don’t we all long for this kind of invitation? And don’t we yearn to hear that it’s okay to be ourselves?
Well, when I met Tammy, I experienced both permission and invitation. Through her playful facilitation, she had me expressing things with paint, crayons, and other art supplies that I had been too afraid (or intimated by) to ever use. And she had me expressing it in a way that matched what was going on inside.
My friend Tammy, through her own transformative experiences, knew the secret was not about teaching the right technique or following a certain method. The magic came when she could create a safe place free of harmful messages. If she could do this, she was confident that the rest would unfold spontaneously.
But this requires a bit of space. Some freedom from scheduled activities and screens. Some freedom to try things out, to not get something “right” — the first time, or the second time, or maybe ever. Because maybe (you can probably guess what I’m going to say here), getting it “right” isn’t the goal worth aiming for. Maybe it should be more about getting it “out.”
In this space, you can trust that whatever comes out isn’t going to be held against you. And it’s not going to mess up your relationships or get you in trouble with the people you care about. In the play mode, there is both safety and freedom. I don’t know about you, but this is the kind of space I want to facilitate for those I care about. Yes, what comes out may be messy or loud. But the alternative is even more messy if it stays on the inside.
I’ve been sharing about my experience with emotional expression through art, but art is not the only way. There are so many beautiful outlets we have at our fingertips. We can even find them for free.
Music. Movement. Writing. Poetry. Drama. Story. Our culture used to hold these as sacred for us, so we didn’t even have to think about how they were serving us. But most of us have lost this cultural wisdom, and we are left to find our own way in bringing these practices back into our lives, and the lives of those we care for.
People sometimes ask me, how do I know if something is play? It may sound like a simple question, but it is not so clear cut. Those cultural outlets I listed above, those can be play; but these same things could also easily be turned into work. Cooking can be play, but if you have to get dinner on the table in five minutes to feed your family, it more likely feels like work in that moment. It is not the activity itself that defines something as play, but the way you enter into it.
If you are not sure, here are some guiding questions to help you discern:
- Does it feel like work? If you are focused more on the outcome than the process, you are likely operating out of the work mode and this won’t be a safe place for emotions to come out and play.
- Do you feel like someone is evaluating you? This could be a message (real or imaginary) coming from society, your parents, your partner, or more likely, your self. If you are feeling pressure to perform, this will not lead to the kind of playfulness that leads to expression.
- Do you feel like your guard is up? If you don’t feel safe, physically or emotionally, you are more likely in alarm mode, which again, will make it hard to find your play.
On the other hand, if there is room to try something without fearing repercussions or if you experience some freedom to say or do what you feel moved to say or do (or sing or scream), you may be in the good and trustworthy hands of Play herself. Trust her if you can. Her wisdom has been with us since the beginning of time.
And so, dear readers, I wish for you both permission and invitation. Permission to open the door, and an invitation to bring whatever is in there to come out. For yourself, for your child, and for anyone else who needs a little help finding the kind of play that will help them express what’s inside.
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Editors note: Tamara will be offering an opportunity to dive deeper in to the practice of facilitating play for others – whatever your role – starting online in February 2024.
For more information:
And to find out more about Tammy’s expressive art, you can find her at:
Sometimes in our travels we come upon something that seemed initially like just one more place to visit, only in retrospect to reveal itself as absolutely key to our understanding of the world and our place in it. I remember a few such transforming experiences in my life. My travels over the theoretical landscape of making sense of our children and ourselves as been similar in this regard. Initially it seemed to me that the subject of dependence was only one of a myriad of topics that pertained to today’s parenting and teaching. The deeper my immersion into the material however, the more convinced I became that our thinking about dependence couldn’t be more singularly pivotal, at the very core of our interactions with our children and indeed, our loved ones. Changes in parenting or teaching would not be truly effective and often not even stick unless these actions emanated from a deep invitation to our dependants to truly depend upon us.
I have also become convinced that being too direct or instrumental in our interactions with our children – goal-focused or outcome-focused as it were – has been our undoing in today’s society. We seem to have no reticence whatsoever in revealing what is on our mind concerning them, or what we want from them, or even what we have in mind for them. I have come to know Nature as deeply shy regarding its work and purpose, resisting exposure lest such consciousness sabotage the very conditions that are necessary to realize the desired results. I am sure this is why Nature disguises itself as ‘play’, for example, giving the illusion that it is ‘up to nothing in particular,’ so that it has the room it needs to work its developmental magic. As Nature’s agents in the lives of our children, it should be no different for us.
We have eschewed the dependence of our children for far too long now – for generations if not centuries, especially in so-called enlightened societies – with societal results that are deeply concerning. It is high time to return to our senses – that is, to trust and to lean upon the spontaneous and benevolent life force that is yearning to bring to potential our children, and through them, a society that is not crippled by immaturity.
Editor’s note: The Wisdom of Dependence was the topic of this year’s annual conference in April of this year. Dr. Neufeld only had enough time to share a small portion of the material he had prepared on this topic. Given the timely and critical importance of this subject, we decided to walk it out this Fall in a series of four webinars which include a short presentation by Dr. Neufeld followed by a panel discussion where he is joined by a few of the Neufeld Institute faculty. We invite you to watch this short preview video and join us for the entire series.
I lost my playfulness pretty early in life. Something to do with figuring out there was a “right” way to do things, or that I was easier to manage without my big bright and often messy ideas. Either way, it became obvious to me that taking risks was too risky and I would get further in life if I could figure out what others wanted and meet those expectations.
Maybe some of you can relate.
It’s rather an exhausting way to live, with little room for mistakes, and not a lot of room for questions. If yellow was the colour of playfulness and curiosity, I had lost it somewhere along the way to adolescence and by adulthood, my world was pretty black and white. I dare not sing lest someone find me off-tune. I dare not draw or paint or act or … well, anything that might show my lack of “talent”.
Fast forward some years to where I find myself with young children of my own. Still very driven and outcome-based, I started to occasionally catch glimpses of yellow again, finding joy in reading bedtime stories out loud and playing with the characters’ voices, or singing songs to my girls (who seemed oblivious to whether my pitch was perfect or not). I found myself envious at times of their ability to enter into free play as I watched from a distance, for it seemed to come so easily to them.
Ever so slowly, the yellow began to find its way back into my life — through my children’s laughter, the magic of spinning wool into yarn, the absurdity of chickens dancing on the lawn. I’m not sure if there was ever a full arriving moment … it was more of a gradual recovery and remembering until playfulness simply became a way of life.
Until I lost it again.
There are times in our lives when something can happen that upends us: a relationship break-up, a diagnosis, the loss of some thing, some place or some one we hold dear. This can happen at any age. At any time. We can lose our playfulness in those moments (or months). Our body retreats into survival mode and peddles hard just to keep some semblance of order and normality. Anything playful feels frivolous, or ludicrous, or inappropriate.
But what if this is when we need play the most??
This is where I find myself coming back to time after time — finding play, losing play, needing to find it again.
At least find the edge of it. In the melancholy of a song, on the pages of my journal, in a piece of art, in the shade of a tree, in the gush of a waterfall. Something that takes me for a moment out of my head, out of my alarm, and into a place that travels sideways to my heart. Not a direct route, that would be too much.
Something that allows me to play at the edges a bit. Dip my toes in the water. Dabble in the sadness. Dare something to move again. For it’s in the movement that we feel most alive. It is the movement that saves us in the end.
And so, if you find yourself, like me sometimes, at a loss for play, I suggest seeking out the edges.
Make a date with the trees or the lake or the rose bush outside your window. With a song or an instrument or the faltering sound of your own voice. With a paintbrush or a crayon or a fountain pen. With a book or a movie, a story that allows you to enter in and connect with what’s inside and wants out to play.
And maybe invite someone else along for the ride. For as I learned many years ago when my children were younger, sometimes it is in the act of helping someone else find their play that we stumble into our own.
Editor’s note about the Playful Facilitation Module – February to May 2024
Tamara Strijack is delighted to be offering something new and outside-the-box next year. Building on the material of the play series, this will be a five month online experiential course module that focuses on facilitating true play in the lives of those in our care (including ourselves). Whether you are an educator, a helping professional, a parent or a mentor, this will be an opportunity to explore ways to both subtly and intentionally harness the power of play and the play mode, and (hopefully) restore our own playfulness in the process.
This course of study will be offered in partnership with the Yellow Door, a new centre founded by Tamara that brings developmental science into an experiential practice of learning and becoming. It will run biweekly on Thursdays from 9 am to 11 am Pacific Time, starting in February 2024. Registration is now open.
As I have been immersing myself into the material in preparation for my 2023 conference address on the Wisdom of Dependence, I once again find myself in awe regarding Nature’s blueprint for the unfolding of human potential. At the same time, I am acutely aware of how much we are still being governed by the tired doctrine of self-sufficiency, especially when it comes to raising children. We are still preoccupied with pushing independence upon them, succumbing to one variation after another with some of the newest obsessions including self-soothing, self-regulation, and self-care. So many adults are still living by the adage that we must not do anything for a child that they could or should do for themselves, and so strive towards their independence and self-sufficiency while dangerously sacrificing their dependency needs for togetherness in the process. We are still operating in our society as if a spontaneous life force does not exist, never mind that it is ready and eager to do its work once we show some promise of doing ours.
For generations now – at least in the dominant English-speaking society – we have thrown dependence under the bus, sacrificing it in our efforts to train independence. When our efforts fail as they inevitably do, we foolishly double down. We should not be surprised to have given rise to the most insecure and troubled children ever.
What is required to wrench ourselves free of this infected mindset? To realize how incongruent this approach is to developmental science? How can we get the confidence to swim against the stream of prevailing practice?
It strikes me that even though we may have had a glimpse of the true nature of Nature, we may still need to be reminded, perhaps time and time again, of how Nature works and that the instinct to depend is there for good reason – in fact for several good reasons. Perhaps we need to be refreshed on the wisdom of Nature to permit ourselves to lean into it, to depend upon it, especially when encountering dependence that seems overdue.
I have gathered enough material now to write a book about the wisdom of dependence, but knowing me, this is not going to happen, at least not any time soon. My challenge now is to distill the material to its essence in such a way that would instill the confidence required to take the leap of faith of inviting our dependants to depend upon us, trusting that, if we can get our caring through to them, Nature will do what only it can do: grow them up to be their own persons.
I am convinced that unless we can DEPEND upon Nature, we will not be inclined to invite our children to DEPEND upon us. And unless we can invite them to DEPEND upon us, Nature will not be able to raise them to their potential, including their full potential as separate beings. Relying upon Nature makes parenting so much easier than carrying the whole load ourselves. It doesn’t need to be this hard!
I am also convinced that this is the most important and pivotal issue in parenting and teaching today, bar none. I tried to speak to it ten years ago in a two-minute segment, “Kids and Independence”, for Kids in the House. I will try again, this time with more time, in the opening address for this year’s annual conference.
Editor’s note: Gordon will present of Wisdom of Dependence at Neufeld Institute Conference 2023 on Saturday, April 22, 2023. Registration includes access to all recordings for 90 days.
“Oh, the comfort – the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person – having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, A Life for a LIfe
Can you think of someone in your childhood who made you feel connected, offered closeness that soothes, made you feel that you matter and are loved? Was there someone who understood you, was genuinely interested in you, and made you feel known and accepted just as you are? Maybe you are one of the lucky ones who had or still has such a person. It is also quite probable that you have not yet met such a person, or maybe this person came in later stages of your life. Let us, just for a moment, tap into the feeling of such closeness and unconditional acceptance. This is a place where we can rest, explore and play. This is, as Gordon Neufeld says, a place where true development unfolds.
What happens when Gabor Maté (Slovenian readers already know him as the author of the book When the Body Says No) seeks counsel for raising his children with clinical and developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld? It is the beginning of a friendship with a speck of rivalry. Rivalry on who is to offer the knowledge to broader audiences: the student or the teacher. Luckily, rivalry grew into cooperation that resulted in a unique book on parenting. A book that offers a deeper dive into parenting, raising children, and development. A book that touches us at the core.
A few years ago, when I first held this book in my hands, it seemed as if a new landscape was opening before my eyes. What seemed to be an impassable or blurry landscape, became clear and full of possible paths to try. Still a bit wary, I started trying out various ideas from the book in my family and in my work with other parents and teachers. The insights gained in these endeavours were more than encouraging and made me revise my understanding of myself, my role as a mum, psychologist and prospective psychotherapist. I was given the long sought-for map.
What makes the book unique are the new perspectives in the arena of parenting usually not addressed elsewhere. The authors are making a case about how we are unknowingly losing our children long before they are mature enough to be let out of our care. They understand the challenges modern parents face and how depleted their parental power is. At the same time, they refrain from offering advice and “how to” recipes. Instead, they provide insight into our children’s needs and an invitation to prioritize our relationship with children over acquiring various techniques and methods of disciplining and raising them.
Therefore, if you expected to find a manual with precise prescriptions, you might end up being disappointed. However, if you are willing to take a few risks and look under the surface, you might walk away with more clarity about what is truly needed of you. You will come to realize that your power to parent is just as strong as is your relationship with your children. You will understand what the needs of your children are in the given situation and will find the genuine answer within yourself.
Yet, can you afford to trust in the importance of relationships over the imperative to raise a child in a desired manner? In the book, the authors state: “A child will usually know what is expected and is either unable or unwilling to deliver. The inability to deliver is usually a maturity problem; the unwillingness to deliver is usually an attachment problem.” Parents who aim to provide such a safe space for their children to truly mature at their own pace, are faced with a difficult task. They need to build a deeply connected relationship, in which they are the holders of their children’s hearts. This, in turn, will require allowing for the parents’ own vulnerability to exist. At the same time, parents cannot ignore and have to, to some degree, abide by the requirements of current social reality and culture that are not favourable for development and do not best serve our children.
The authors propose that our parents and grandparents might have not possessed the knowledge, understanding or material conditions to parent, but they were still embedded in culture that served as a vehicle for raising children. Today, we have more information at our fingertips, but the fast pace of living and demands for ever bigger productivity have depleted our social support systems. Therefore, it is important for us to start understanding and naming these previously unconscious phenomena that were embedded in culture to support development and maturation. We need to understand the costs of these phenomena being amiss. We need to consciously address attachment, the need as basic as our need for food; and counterwill, which is often sabotaging our attempts to influence the youth; and peer orientation, which is undermining our power to parent. Being aware of these phenomena can help us act proactively and seek alternatives, such building a village of attachment through building a community where children and their peers will all be connected to a wider web of caring adults.
This book differs from other books on parenting in one more way. This is not a book that will teach you how to help your child gain more friends. On the contrary, the authors propose that we took a wrong turn in prioritizing peer relationships from an early age on. Instead, they suggest that quality peer relationships are an outcome of maturation, therefore calling on us to orchestrate our children’s peer interactions until mature enough to connect with peers in a way that is true to their nature. When we unsuspectingly and unknowingly push our children into the arms of their peers, they will form connections out of the attachment voids that resulted from their lack of connection with us. They will seek closeness, belonging and acceptance from their peers. But, due to their own immaturity, peers cannot provide this unconditionally. Only by complying with unwritten rules can one fit in a peer group. This constant calibration of self to assure acceptance keeps children constantly working for attachment, and away from rest in the adult relationships that would provide room for development and maturation. Mary Ainsworth, a close colleague of John Bowlby, often referred to as the father of attachment theory, sensed this dynamic of peer orientation, but was not yet able to name it. The authors of Hold On To Your Kids not only name it, but also show how devastating it can be.
After decades of prioritizing peer relations, the authors challenge us to rethink our adult roles in the lives of youth and to occupy the position that we are entitled to. Recent research shows unequivocally that having at least one committed and close relationship with important adults is the number one predictor of resilience in children and adolescents. It is not hard to understand that such a relationship provides feelings of safety, support, responsiveness, and protection, and as such, serves as a shield for the child. These relationships serve as a buffer from the effects of stress or trauma. Neufeld and Maté are giving us a map on how to cultivate such a relationship with a child at any point of life, be it from birth or later on, when our child seems to be drifting away from us.
Let me now share a few words about the Slovenian translation. The translation is coming to us seventeen years after the first publication of the book. Seemingly, this is the case in many other countries. It seems we are only now starting to acknowledge the scope of peer orientation. Can it be that the increasing numbers of mental and physical health issues in youth are forcing us to reconsider our ways of raising children? There are some new concepts that this book is introducing into our environment that we did not have words for before. We are in luck that the translator, Petra Česen, is also a student at the Neufeld Institute and was able to use her thorough knowledge of this topic to support her work. Following the example of the making of the original book, a discussion group made up of the translator, a psychologist named Dr. Maja Šorli and myself, formed to address the challenges of translation. We called it “The Late Evening Group”, dedicated to deciphering the questions of language and the group members’ personal journeys prompted by the book.
As a result, you are now holding in your hands the translation of a book that is full of love, respect and care for youngsters and the adults in their lives. However, it might not be an easy read. It seems impossible to read about attachment and growing up without being touched from the inside. Memories from your own growing up might pop out, or you might start feeling you were not providing what was needed for your children in the past. You might, at times, feel that you don’t have what is needed, especially if it was not provided for you during your childhood. I hope you will endure the discomfort, to realize by the end of the book that you do have a power to parent and that there is always something that can be done.
So let me leave you where I started. In the book Neufeld and Maté say: “Everyone has the potential to be the parent their child needs.” Every one of us can become a person who can offer connection, closeness that soothes, and makes someone feel significant and loved. Everyone can become someone who understands, is interested in, and makes the other person feel known and accepted just as they are. This might not be all that is called for from us adults, but it gives our children a good foundation for healthy development and it will surely bring more joy, playfulness and mutual trust in our relationships with them. When we offer this to our children in abundance, we will start seeing it in their relationships with others and, even more importantly, in their relationships to themselves. My wish for you and for your children is to accept the challenge.
Writtten by Dr. Urška Žugelj
The Neufeld Institute would like to thank the author of this introduction to the Slovenian translation of Hold On To Your Kids, Dr. Urška Žugelj, and the translator, Petra Česen, for their roles in bringing the book to the Slovenian readers.
Click HERE for more details about Hold On To Your Kids, including a full of list of other translations.
This Winter, as the light dwindles in the Northern hemisphere and winter holidays approach, we here at the Neufeld Institute – faculty members and facilitators -would once again like to offer the gift of stories to you. This batch of holiday stories, our third annual collection, features stories about the incredible power of intentional togetherness. Deliberate and preserved family time has the power to transcend changing circumstances (Tamara), the power to connect in spite of the daily ups and downs (Bree) and, finally, in Karen’s story, we can witness the power of loving ritual to transcend even the greatest separation we ever face.
In this first story, Tamara Strijack describes how a newly created family activity, when done with care and intention, can evoke the same feelings of joy and togetherness as old ones did:
December always felt like a bit of a challenge for me. The question loomed large: how do I preserve meaning and connection in this season that seemed to become more about commerce with each passing year? But when my husband and I separated, this became an even greater challenge. Our family traditions were no longer something we could all count on. Where was the glue? It felt like things could easily fall apart. In the chaos of those first few years, I realized that as some of our old traditions were lost in the break-up, my girls and I needed something new to orient around. And so, Christmas tacos were born. A bit odd and unlikely perhaps, as traditions go, but those tacos gave us something to hold on to.
I remember that first transitional year when my girls and I had our first Christmas in our new family configuration. Inspired by a special taco night with extended family over the summer, we decided that this was going to be our thing. And so we prepared the seasoned jackfruit, the shrimp, the roasted yam, the cheese, the guacamole and of course, the much beloved baja sauce (my brother’s special recipe!). We laughed together in the kitchen and took our time – because it was just as much (probably more) about the togetherness in preparing as it was the eating of the tacos (which were incredible and worth waiting for!!). And as it turns out, you only have to experience something special once to create the intention for it to become a regular thing. It was the beginning of a new rhythm.
The important thing? We are doing this together, my girls and I, and are forging new memories, while still remembering and honouring what has come before. Not an easy balance to hold. But an essential one. Now to find the perfect avocado …
In our second story, Bree Jordan, describes how her family’s cozy reading time provides a bridge of connection over all the inevitable ups and downs that come with each day:
Our “family reading” tradition began four years ago when our children were four and seven. It is something that we do year-round but, in the cold of our Canadian winters, the appeal of the warm blanket, a snuggle and an engaging tale is all the more enticing. We were homeschooling at the outset of our family reading adventures and I felt compelled to read them the classics. I worried about asking the children grade level questions that I had researched on teacher’s blogs online. However, I could tell it was becoming a chore and the joy was being leached from the story, so we ditched one of my personal favorites, “The Secret Garden” and started a fantasy series. The children did not want me to put it down! There is such a connection in this shared experience. The inside jokes, the interruptions to dispute the feasibility of a character’s plan, “They should have done this”, “Imagine if they did that!” were spirited and playful. It was such a powerful connecting activity that their dad started to feel left out and set about reading the same series to the kids over again. We found that we could impart our values and talk about life, love, disappointment and even death in a way that maintained connection and was not too hard to look at. We read myths from around the world and developed family travel fantasies and a deeper understanding of different cultures. When attempting to recover from events of sibling rivalry or in times of high stress, our family reading ritual lightens the load and provides an easy way to fall into connection again.
Finally, Karen Bollman, describes the way she and her brothers continue to connect with their mom each Christmas, illustrating the power of love and ritual to keep us connected always:
My mom’s favourite time of year was Christmas. She loved going to Christmas stores that had dozens of decorated trees, each bough bursting with a specific theme or colour coordinated ornaments. The list of special people she wanted to choose the perfect ornament for grew every year. Once her shopping was complete, she would present the ornament with a hand knit dishrag as an extra special touch.
Everyone knew her love for Christmas, so it made perfect sense that she was put in charge of decorating the hotel she worked at for over 20 years (some of you may be familiar with The Bayside Inn in Parksville). My mom created her own themed trees – blue and silver, white or red, and her favourite tree was packed full of shimmering golds.
When my mom passed away, my brothers and I split up her Christmas decor. I took her tree. It seemed fitting because when I was a teenager, I often decorated our tree for her. She worked long hours and despite some of our mother/daughter conflict, there was nothing like seeing her face light up when she walked in the door. Each year, I look forward to decorating her tree in my own home. My kids and I stuff each branch full of ornaments past and the new ones we picked from one of those Christmas stores she loved.
As a final gift to her memory, we had a beautiful blue spruce planted in her honour. Every year, my family meets at her tree to remember her, to honour her love of Christmas, and to fill each branch with handpicked ornaments that represent how special she is to us. It has been the most beautiful way to hold onto her while apart, and to connect her grandchildren to her heart.
This is one of my favourite ornaments pictured on my mom’s tree. She also loved the snow.
Whether this time of year finds you enjoying familiar beloved rituals, feeling the need to create new ones or, possibly, feeling the loss of familiar rituals or of loved ones, we hope you can find a small intentional way to connect with yourself and with those you love.
Oh my … how a heart can stretch when it gets to love something. When it really, excruciatingly loves, in a nonsensical, absolutely unreasonable kind of way. There are other ways to find it of course, but our children are especially magical at evoking this particular breed of love. It’s the kind that is needed to survive the previously unimaginable, unendurable combination of a screaming babe and endless sleepless nights, and the wild contrary toddler stage, and the first time that you look at your little kid (now not quite so small) and realize that you can’t solve all of his problems anymore.
And when he starts nearing adolescence, and you’ve made it through all of the skinned knees and the heartbreaks of losing a pet, or a friend, and he starts to talk with you about his ideas, or the way he saw this situation or that flower, and you take a deep breath and sigh and think, we have arrived. And you think, foolishly, because he’s your first child, that this explosion of consciousness will make life so much simpler. Because his dependence is blossoming into independence before your eyes, and that must make things easier, right? It must.
Foolish indeed.
As he gets older, you get older too, and with any luck, by the time he’s getting into his teenage years, you realize the truth: there is no arriving. And if you weren’t already getting to this idea on your own, he’ll help you. There is only, as they say in these videogames that he likes to play, levelling up. So far, you’ve risen to every occasion that he’s thrown you with varying degrees of elegance; but you’re in the big leagues now.
Some days, it seems that all he wants to do is complain about things that he finds annoying (almost everything). All he wants to talk about are cars and videogames (or insert a couple of things that you know, and care, almost nothing about), or more challenging still, things that you find provocative or taboo. He says things that make you question whether you were successful at passing on any of what you value most dearly. And just to further provoke, you can’t look away from how all these things come along with the rest of what it must mean: how can you allow him out in a world where the prevailing belief system is so off-kilter? How can you allow him to participate in popular culture where all that you have is the relationship that you’ve built with him, but no genuine control? You consider yourself progressive, forward-thinking – but you find your traditional upbringing rearing its hard head as he pushes on you and so much of you just wants to push back, or pack up and run for the hills to find a place without cell service or wifi.
How do you ask your heart to expand to encompass all of this? How do you hold on to him in the face of it all, with every button pushed, every reaction coiled and ready to spring?
Perhaps you’re not surprised that this is a personal story for me. I have found myself wrestling with these things over and over again in the past year as my son stepped into his adolescence. And I spent a lot of time thinking about the idea of coming alongside; because how could I possibly come alongside this? When the this that my son was bringing to the table was provocative, personal, unapologetically digging right into the heart of some of my dearest values. Surely, when Dr. Neufeld spoke about coming alongside, he didn’t mean this.
But he did. And I needed to allow this human who I love beyond reason to stretch my heart past the point of comfort, allow it to be changed, reshaped by the magic that coming alongside holds for both people. My beautiful son was floundering after going to sleep in his childhood bed and waking up abruptly in the ocean of adult consciousness. Of course he was grabbing onto anything that seemed like it might be a lifeline so that he wouldn’t drown in all the new ways that he himself was expanding. I needed to get truly solid, to become – and remain as much as possible – the unwavering, rooted tree to which was tied the one lifeline that would remain when the others proved false, or couldn’t bear the weight. I needed to not let the details distract me and hold resolutely to my trust that there is a way through even when I feel blind or furious or, worst of all, helpless; that he is finding, and will find, his way. I needed to expect the mess and the mud and the mayhem; expect it all, and start dancing.
For me, this was a radical idea. My Mennonite roots taught me much more about repressing or punishing the hard things than about coming alongside them (never mind that dancing itself was, for a long time, scandalous and forbidden). But I could feel the intuition in it despite my upbringing, and I could feel something taking shape.
So enter, radical coming alongside: the day we climbed a mountain and I devoted myself to not shying away from any subject, promised to meet him exactly, exactly, where he was at. I would stake my heart wide open and let myself breathe in the scent of fir trees and the beautiful, prickly, irreverent soul of my beloved adolescent.
And what did he want to talk about for most of that hike? Naturally, as though he knew the task I’d set myself, he wanted to talk about a first person shooter videogame that he had started playing.
What a test of my devotion, driving a nail straight into my pacifist roots. But I held on tight to my connection to him, this person who I love most; I pushed into the discomfort and gradually, miraculously felt the content of our conversation depersonalize as my belief in the solidity of our relationship revealed itself. Instead of feeling triggered by the subject, I felt a boundless compassion for him. This conversation, the one that I didn’t want to have, turned into such a gift; I listened deeply enough to ask real questions, felt into the nuances, and he gradually opened up, responding to my genuine curiousity and softness with his own. As we descended the other side of the mountain, almost at our destination, he talked around his mixed feelings about the game; the things he found appealing, the things he found uncomfortable, the places he felt pushed, his desire to fit in, his yearning to be different.
I was humbled by what he shared with me. I hadn’t realized how much I wasn’t allowing by not being willing to engage with these subjects that pushed on me; I hadn’t realized that the pushing was actually an opportunity for my heart to grow. I could have missed out on this whole exquisite exchange, and all the ones that would follow.
That day, I could feel the hunger in him for this very conversation, and for the others that I hadn’t been willing to have; my discomfort with the subject matter had caused a kind of insatiability in him, and though I struggled with the regret of that, I knew with certainty that it was not the dreaded “too late.” All I had to do was keep being willing to jump into the mud with him. No matter what, our kids will meet us in the mud every time – their generousity here is endless. And it may be the finest place for a tea party.
And what happened when we got to our destination, on the other side of that mountain, to the place we love next to the ocean where we can watch the ferry go by? We lay on our stomachs for hours, my almost-fourteen-year-old and I, and watched the tiny worlds that exist in tide pools. We played games with found treasures. We laughed. Not another word about videogames was uttered.
He was at rest – we were both at rest – on the other side of a small big thing. Maybe a big small thing. I could see from the quiet joy in his eyes that he felt that lifeline that was connecting us, that it felt sure and tangible, shining and true.
This is not the end of the story. We will never arrive. There will always be more mud. Some days, the best that I can do as a mother is to come alongside the fact that I don’t want to come alongside right now. That happens. It evolves as it does. And there’s grieving to do; all the things that I can’t make ideal for him, can’t fix; that I can’t directly protect him from mainstream society, from the influence of the culture of people without a culture. Like the mud, I no longer expect this grief to end. My job is to make sure that the lifeline between him, out splashing around in the water, and me, increasingly rooted, is stronger than the other lines reaching out to him. Holding onto the thread of our relationship: that is the through-line. That commitment to hold onto him even – especially – when he lets go of me, that will see us through all of the storms and mud puddles.
May our hearts be like our noses – may they never stop growing. May they boldly wear the pits and scars of the tough times, and be stretched beyond recognition of the unobtrusive, polite things that they used to be.
Editor’s note: These reflections from Gordon on the mystery of coupling are in the context of the upcoming course, Making Sense of Marriage, being offered in January 2023.
We’ve been coupling forever it would seem. Some of us started rather early in life – much earlier than our parents would have liked or even without our parents’ knowledge. Despite how common the phenomenon and how universal the drive, there still seems to be a vast cloud of confusion surrounding it. Coupling can be a source of unbearable suffering or significant fulfillment or both. Coupling can cripple or transform, suffocate or emancipate, isolate or liberate. Coupling can bring out the best in us or the worst in us. The exclusiveness in coupling can be a source of security or set the stage for deep insecurities and wounding. Coupling affects us profoundly in one way or another, whether in or out, whether young or old, whether fulfilled or unfulfilled, whether invited or resisted, whether intact or coming apart, whether facing life or facing death. Couples can generate an abundance of caring that can nurture many others, or actually drain the care of those around them.
No wonder that we are preoccupied with coupling. The vagaries of coupling have long been the primary inspiration for art – whether in the form of stories or song, drama or dancing. When it comes to science however, it still stutters when it tries to study love.
So how can we make sense of coupling? Most approaches to treating couples make the mistake of proceeding without first understanding what coupling is about in general, or what a specific couple is about in particular. As surprising as it may seem, the keys to making sense of coupling have only recently come into consciousness, so it is no wonder that we have been walking in the clouds on this subject.
The first key to unlocking the mystery of coupling is as simple as it is profound – that is, that coupling, including marriage, is all about attachment first and foremost, with some special kind of exclusiveness about the togetherness. It is when we look at marriage through this lens that the dynamics begin to make sense, including our hopes, our hurts, our desires, our reactions, our sexuality, our insecurities, our satisfactions, our drivenness, our nesting, and the underlying purpose of it all.
In fact, the essential turning point for me in making sense of marriage is when it dawned on me that the natural evolutionary purpose of coupling in adulthood was to move the partners to take turns taking care of each other. Everything seems to flow from this fundamental understanding. I not only saw marriage in a new light, but my own marriages in a new light (which I will keep to myself), my children’s marriages in a new light (although they do not want to hear about it), and even the interface of marriage and parenting in a new light (which I’d be glad to share). There were some insights and paradoxes that revealed themselves. One of the foremost of these is why chasing romance and even fulfillment backfires, and how feeling sad about what is missing can paradoxically preserve the ability to feel fulfilled by the togetherness that does exist.
What I want to do in this course is to bring understanding to one of the primary mysteries of life; the course is best taken in that vein. Some would prefer that it remains a mystery. I understand that and even think it wise in certain cases.
I want to use marriage to teach about the attachment-based developmental paradigm and vice versa. I want to help partners recognize and rest in the care taking that is there for them. I also want to provide some support for couples who yearn to take care of each other, but trip over each other instead; the alpha-dependent dance in marriage can be tricky at the best of times. I also want to help bring some understanding to those individuals where coupling has been a source of suffering. For the most part, I think that suffering is easier to bear when we can make sense of it.
I am sure that some will come to the course to learn how to be a better partner; I am quite sure the course will deliver for them. I suspect however that even more will come to the course to figure out how to get their partner to take care of them; I doubt that this course will be able to accomplish this.
The bottom line is that this course is not only for those who are married, but for anyone who wishes to make sense of the dynamics that lead us to couple up and then set the stage for what can be the most significant roller-coaster ride of a life-time – for better or for worse.
I have tried to tell the story of frustration in a one-day seminar, a two-day course, and even a three-day course, but I remain unsatisfied that the story has truly been heard. If one is to believe Chris Anderson, the curator for TED Talks, my problem has been too many words. According to him, the magic limit is 18 minutes (about 2500 – 3500 words) which he claims is “short enough to hold people’s attention, including on the Internet, and precise enough to be taken seriously. But it’s also long enough to say something that matters.” More words are counterproductive as far as he is concerned.
Even my daughter Tamara Strijack – the producer of my courses for the Neufeld Institute – has gently chided me from time to time about using too many words. I must admit that I have felt a bit defensive about this. I usually feel that I need more words, not less, to explain what I see. The more important the topic, the more words I assumed would be required.
Perhaps I have been wrong.
I have accepted the challenge to share the untold story of frustration in just 18 minutes. I figure if historian David Christian could explain the history of the world in 18 minutes, I should be able to tell the story of frustration within that time frame as well.
And the story of frustration is something that matters very much, as there is no way of making sense of our children, ourselves, or the history of civilization for that matter, without making sense of this primal, powerful and most perplexing emotion.
We get frustrated when something doesn’t work for us. For many of us, that is not an insignificant part of life. Handling frustration is undoubtedly the critical challenge in becoming truly civilized.
Frustration also matters to the brain itself. Even though our brains have the propensity as well as amazing capacity to solve problems, it depends very much upon the existence of frustration to indicate that a problem exists and to get things moving. Reading frustration correctly is absolutely foundational to solving life’s problems, from the most minuscule to the most monumental.
Unfortunately, frustration can turn ugly on a dime. A small somewhat incidental frustration can turn into a chaotic emotional tsunami that can wreak havoc. For example, the original frustration can be triggered when something relatively insignificant is not working for us (eg, getting our way, making a connection, trying to be understood, or even making the scissors work). More frustration is added if attempts to fix that problem do not work and that futility is not felt. Then there is the compounding frustration that happens if the release of this accumulating frustration breaks the sense of connection in a working attachment. Given that togetherness is the brain’s priority, this now becomes a new and far more desperate problem to solve, leading to an escalating cycle that can go on and on and on. In my experience, making sense of frustration holds the most promise to breaking this cycle, or even preventing it in the first place.
So if frustration matters so much, why hasn’t the story been told? One reason is that frustration’s offspring – anger, guilt, shame, suicidal impulses, aggression and violence to name a few – tend to get all the attention. Another reason is that the various pieces or parts of the story are known separately, but not as a whole. Where the real story of frustration lies is in how these pieces fit together – pieces that come from an understanding of attachment, emotion, development, feelings, adaptation, and even the brain itself.
The story of frustration is every person’s story, at least a significant part of their story. My hope is that, with insight, we can make this a good story.
My challenge will be to tell this story in 18 minutes.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Neufeld will present his 18-minute untold story of frustration in a special webinar, Traffic Circle Model of Frustration, on September 22, 2022, to be followed by a panel discussion with Tamara Strijack and Deborah MacNamara. Click HERE to register.
Camping in March. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
We got pulled in by the sight of the sun, the lure of the beach, and the promise of warmer days ahead. But those days were not yet, and the rain was unrelenting. We live in a rainforest on the West Coast of British Columbia, so it was hardly surprising that it was likely to be a very soggy time. We decided to go anyway; after all, we are rugged Canadians. Rain jackets and rain boots in tow, we embarked on the first camping trip of the season.
On the plus side, rain meant that the banana slugs made an appearance and the youngest member of our camping party was over the moon. Soon we had another companion in our ranks, a slug called Finley. Young June watched Big Finley as he traversed the edges and navigated the camping chair. She tended to her new friend for hours, bringing him special things to eat. That is, when she wasn’t busy climbing trees or exploring the bugs on a stump. All in the pouring rain. But it didn’t matter; she was in her element and time stood still.
After two relatively sleepless nights with the rain still coming down, the adults decided it was time to call the trip short and head home to our warm, dry beds. The news was not received well by June … not well at all.
There was a mud puddle that had started to pool in the middle of the campsite. (For a slug like Finley, it would have seemed more like a lake.) And it was here, in the mud puddle, that our young camper chose to stage her protest. She threw herself into it, lying on her back like a snow angel with arms and legs flailing widely, mud flying everywhere. I will never forget the sight. With her whole body she declared, she was not leaving. Not leaving the trees, not leaving the stump, not leaving Finley the Slug. “Not fair!!!” screamed a very wet, very muddy, seven-year-old.
I could see that it really didn’t feel fair. The rationale of the adults didn’t hold water for her. She was oblivious to the elements because she was in her element and all that mattered was the world around her that was waiting to be explored. Connections had been made with the Arbutus tree by the water, with the bugs on the stump, and with Finley. No other agenda. No scheduled activities. No homework. Just being.
And so she wailed. And flailed. And insisted that she was staying put, while the puddle got a little smaller and June became more-puddle-than-girl. And while her mother slowly, methodically, took down the tent. It may have been partially out of pure exhaustion, but mom didn’t raise her voice or tell her to stop. She simply said: “I know, you want to stay. But we have to go home now.” And once the tent was away and the car packed up, she gathered her ‘more-mud-than-girl’ daughter in her arms (whose wail had now become more of a whimper), and loaded her in. Finley looked on from a safe distance.
I hazard to guess that most of us have had moments like this, where we wanted to throw ourselves in a puddle and protest, “I don’t want to go!” And of course, we see this in our children. So many of them find themselves out of their element in so many ways. Too much pressure. Too many expectations. A world filled with artificial learning environments and a focus on performance over discovery.
We seem to have lost our way when it comes to what a child truly needs in order to learn and grow. Places and spaces where there is room to explore questions rather than getting the answer right. Where there is room to express what is stirring inside rather than be told what not to do, how not to act. At least a few places … at least some of the time. For this is the only way to get to a place where we are more in tune with the world around us, as well as to the world within us – because this is what makes us more human, more fully alive and more fully ourselves. And I believe it is possible … one slug at a time.
A short note from Gordon: Nature is the main act in the developmental approach, whether it refers to the personification of the developmental process, to our essence as human beings, or to the forests and mountains and seas and creatures that make up our natural environment. Tamara has a beautiful poetic way of bringing them all together, which she will also do in her keynote – Back to Nature Where We Belong – on Day 2 of the upcoming Neufeld Institute Conference 2022 from May 12-14, 2022. You are most welcome to join us for this 3-day online conference, on discovering Nature’s way to bouncing back, or more widely, on all things natural when it comes to parenting, teaching and treatment.