Anytime I am working with the parents of adolescents, I am always excited to share insight about the pivotal concept of “counterwill” in the context of healthy development. Understanding this concept can make a tremendous difference in understanding our teenagers, especially when we feel confused or worried about their tendency to push back. First coined at the turn of the century by Viennese psychoanalyst Dr. Otto Rank , this concept has been further developed and refined by Dr. Gordon Neufeld. Simply put, counterwill is our instinctive reaction to resist, oppose, or push back when we experience a feeling of force or coercion greater than our ability to manage it, and greater than our desire to cooperate or comply. The counterwill instinct does not surface because we seek to be difficult or decide to be contrary (although it can result in these outcomes), rather it is an innate defensive reaction with a very specific protective and developmental purpose.
Counterwill tends to be more pronounced and chronic in adolescence (and in toddlerhood!) and, without insight, it can cause strain on the parent-teen relationship. The purpose of counterwill is to serve maturation; adolescent counterwill helps to deliver an adolescent to individuation by pushing back the thoughts, agendas, demands, and wills of others to make space for the teen’s own thinking, ideas, and opinions. (2). Through counterwill, the pushing out of the influence of others, nature is trying to provide a cocoon-like space for the adolescent to develop their own mind. Counterwill exists even, and perhaps sometimes especially, in relationship with parents, teachers, and those the teenager is closest to as nature is trying to assist the adolescent to grow the self as separate from parent(s) and in a truly healthy context, separate from peers, too (3). Counterwill is serving to prime the transition to adulthood, even while it accounts for a significant amount of the turbulence involved in the process.
So what does this mean in real terms? We say “black” and the teenager will say “white.” We say “white” and the teenager will say “black.” This can be a highly confusing and frustrating time when we suddenly feel like our child now seems to think that we know nothing, that we are “out of date”, and that our suggestions and ideas are irrelevant. We can feel shut out when we try to connect, correct, teach, and parent. This can be a challenging dynamic in the relationship, but when we understand that counterwill has an important purpose, we can more gracefully weather the temporary storm.
What can make this “counterwill storm” worse is when, lacking insight, we take this pushback personally, experience our own hurt feelings defensively, and react with increased force and authority, push more, or deliver our expectations in a language of coercion and ultimatum. Guess what happens next? We provoke increased counterwill at a time when the teenager is already swimming in it, perhaps now starting to drown.
In her excellent editorial on the Neufeld Institute website titled: The Surprising Secret Behind Kids’ Resistance and Opposition, Dr. Deborah MacNamara encourages parents to “… anticipate resistance and not to take it personally.” She reminds us of the practices that can diffuse the intensity of counterwill, such as focusing on connection in the difficult moments, reducing coercion, pressing “pause” in that moment rather than charging ahead, making room for the teenager’s own ideas and thoughts, and always making amends when things have gone sideways, so that the relationship remains the priority.
Counterwill in our teens can really lead us down the garden trail and it often does…until we see it in context of healthy development and begin to work with it in a way that gives it some needed room to fulfill its developmental purpose.
Dr. Neufeld’s course, Making Sense of Counterwill, is being offered as a Scheduled Online Class led by Neufeld adjunct faculty member, Colleen Drobot. Classes start October 23, 2019. Click HERE for more information.
When a child is born, so is an endless list of parenting duties that changes from one stage to the next. And, while fulfilling our duties makes us responsible parents, if that is all we do then we’re missing the point.
As a mother of five, I know this all too well. It’s so easy to get lost in the mundane, the ins and outs of parenting: sleepless nights, sinks full of dishes, piles of laundry, school lunches, carpools, homework, chores, baths and bedtimes. All these take up a significant part of our day, resources and energy, and all of these are a vital part of our parental duties; if we didn’t do them, we’d be irresponsible, perhaps neglectful. But if this is all we do, if we parent through our duties only, is this truly parenting?
The essence of parenting isn’t what we do; it’s our state of mind. It’s the conscious choice we make each and every day to be present in our children’s lives, to pay attention to their emotional needs, to provide them with a caring presence that becomes the soil in which they grow. This state of mind affects what we see and what we do, especially when things get messy. For example, a temper tantrum isn’t just something we have to endure as part of our parental duties. Rather, it’s an opportunity to provide space for emotional expression and loving support for our child when they are going through a hard time (which for a toddler could be anything from having a cookie break in two to not being allowed to play in the snow in shorts and sandals).
Household chores can be approached as ways to provide a pleasant and emotionally nourishing environment for our children. Sibling arguments can be seen as ways to help each child find his or her unique voice while at the same time making room for others. The preschooler’s endless questions can be appreciated for offering a window into their thoughts, an opportunity to see the world through their eyes – and there’s nothing like seeing the rain, noticing the butterflies and smelling the roses as if for the very first time. Even sleepless nights can be special moments of intimacy with our child, moments we’ll miss in the future when our children are grown.
I have found over the years that my default is parenting by duty, especially when I am tired or frustrated. Parenting by choice is a decision I need to make again and again (sometimes many times a day!) in order to regain the presence that I want to provide for my children. What is interesting is that I usually benefit from making that choice as much as my children do: I have more appreciation for opportunities of closeness and togetherness, more appreciation for the privilege of leading my growing children in this confusing world. Parenting through this state of mind brings me to a place of emotional rest and playfulness and enhances not only my childrens’ wellbeing but also my own. It is not “doing the right thing” that makes the difference, but rather being in a state of mind that allows me to appreciate the trial and error that goes hand in hand with raising children.
This may sound simple, but I have found that it is far from easy. When my children were all very young, my main challenge was the overall feeling that the current stage I was in with my child was endless. It began in the ninth month of pregnancy with my eldest, when I felt that she would never ever come out and I would be pregnant till the end of time. After that, I feared that my child would never sleep through the night, then that she would wear diapers forever, then that she would always hate taking a bath, and so on. I find that as my children grow older,the days and weeks seem to pass by faster and as my older ones grow up, I cherish the time with my kids even more…I even cherish the things that used to drive me crazy!
The years bring with them a realization that time is short and so are the intense years in which we raise our young children to adulthood. When we look back, it isn’t the checked off to-do lists that create a sense of fulfillment. Instead, it is the way in which we were present for our children that really mattered. Said another way, it isn’t what we did for our children but rather who we were for our children that, in the end, is most important.
There is so much we have no control over when raising young children, and there are many things we have to do. But we have a choice in how we step into our parenting role. We can get by with the default of parenting by duty, or we can make a conscious effort to parent by choice every single day. Through that choice we provide emotional well-being for our children, and also, remarkably, for ourselves.
When my now-fourteen-year-old son finished his first week of Kindergarten, I congratulated him on “finishing his first week!” He responded by asking me how many more weeks he had until he was done. This innocent question was one I couldn’t bear to answer: Was he wondering about weeks until he was done with Kindergarten? Until he was done with school altogether? I didn’t know which he meant, and either answer was going to be a number far higher than what he was hoping to hear…
His innocent response helped me to remember that, for many children, school is quite hard work. Simply put, they would rather be with us. I often tell this story to parents I work with when they are concerned about their children being shy, not wanting to go to school or “lacking in” friends. When we look at these phenomena through a developmental lens, we can begin to see that these “issues” should not be a source of alarm; in fact, they are usually a sign of development moving along just as it should.
Dr. Neufeld is fond of saying: “What we see is the most important determiner of what we do.” If we see shyness, school protest and few peer friendships as negative or worrisome, we might attempt to organize more playdates and praise the child for the times they are “friendly” and “outgoing.” However, if we see shyness, school protest and few peer friendships simply as signs of attachment energy going to the right places (home, parents, siblings, grandparents), we will respond much differently, probably by simply accepting the child as they are and continuing to provide warm connection.
Shyness can be so misunderstood in our culture. It is simply the natural instinct (the degree of it can be influenced by genetics) to resist contact with those to whom we are not attached. Shyness is part of Nature’s design and makes good sense when looked at through the lens of attachment; it is meant to keep us safe and connected to those within our “village of attachment.” Because shyness is not understood by many these days in our very “pro-socialization of children” culture, it can be pathologized and is often given the label of “social anxiety.” When shyness is not honoured and protected and a child is pushed not to be shy, this can lead to a feeling akin to a turtle getting his shell forcibly removed. This pushing is too much, way too vulnerable and can lead to increased alarm and frustration.
For some sensitive children (shyness and sensitivity often go hand in hand) the simple fact of being in school is almost too much for them–they are apart from their primary attachments, in an often noisy and chaotic environment, with high expectations for interactions with those to whom they are not attached.
There are many things parents can do to support their children in going to school. The first would be to reduce all pressure around “being social” and “making friends”; these expectations cause children to feel pressured to be different than they are. Their teacher is really the only person they need to be connected to at school. A warm and intuitive teacher can be a parent’s “surrogate” throughout the school day.
If your child is not well-connected to their teacher, you might try some “matchmaking.” This involves endearing your child to the teacher and the teacher to your child by speaking fondly about the teacher, making time to connect with the teacher before or after school and pointing out things you or your child have in common with the teacher.
Another reason children protest going to school is simply that they miss their parents. It is hard for young children to hold on to their primary attachments when they are apart from them for many hours. Bridging, the attachment practice of turning our children’s face into connection instead of separation, can be a wonderful way of helping them to hold on to us while apart. Some examples of this include talking about what you will do together that afternoon when getting ready for school in the morning, and putting little notes or drawings in your child’s lunch. These practices help them to stay connected to us throughout the school day.
Finally, some parents fear that their children’s shyness will translate into a life of loneliness and friendlessness. As one mom said: “I worry that my son is so resistant to any peer interactions that he will become further isolated and subsequently alienated in this regard.”
It is so easy (I do this all the time!) for us to project our child’s current developmental state into the future. But when we do this, we tend to forget that growing up takes a long time and that things such as making friends are “fruits” of development (meaning that they happen after a good lot of other development has happened and can’t be rushed). Our young children’s current reality has no bearing on their future ability to make friends and certainly does not mean that they will be lonely and alienated. The truth is that from a developmental perspective, friends are not very important in the life of a seven-year-old. Much more important are their attachments to parents and grandparents, and their knowledge that they have an “unconditional invitation to exist in our presence” exactly as they are (friends or no friends!).
When my son graduated from eighth grade last June (together with many of those same kids he had been in Kindergarten with!), he celebrated all he had learned, the deep bonds of friendship that had developed (all in good time) and his strong connections with his teachers.
Like some 60 million other kids in Canada and the USA, two of my youngest grandsons are about to go back to school. I find myself thinking about their emotional health and well-being. One of the grandsons doesn’t admit to his wounds very easily – physically or emotionally. He tends to withdraw into a sullen mood when hurting (very much like his grandfather). The social normality of going to school camouflages its emotional enormity.
School is stressful for most kids – even if they enjoy it and can’t wait to go. The reason for this is simple: stress is caused by facing separation of one kind or another. Like all mammals, we are dependent upon togetherness to survive, so it follows that facing separation is what threatens us to our very core. Since togetherness can be experienced in many ways – being with, being like, being on the same side, being part of, mattering to, feeling loved by, or even being known and understood – the ways of facing separation are equally varied. And for the most part they remain hidden from view, unless one knows how and to whom (or to what) a child is attached.
Going to school – no matter how much a child loves school – will involve facing separation from his or her working attachments. If one is attached to grades (as I was), school can be a never-ending source of alarm. School is even more stressful if the primary reason for going to school is to be with one’s friends. If one is attached to one’s peers (as most of my boyhood friends were), any sense of closeness is accompanied by an increased apprehension of the separation that can ensue, and ultimately does. And the more important one’s peers are to a child, the more stressful the peer interaction becomes and the deeper the wounding. So school, for all of these reasons and more, is stressful.
I find myself, like millions of other parents, hoping that the sensitivities of our children (and grandchildren) will not be too overwhelmed by what awaits them in the corridors, in the classroom, or in the school-yard. However, for many it will be overwhelming and there is little we can do about that. But I know something now that I didn’t know as a beginning parent. I now understand that what happens at school does not have to put their emotional health and well-being at risk. What happens AFTER school is key.
Let me explain.
The most amazing and paradoxical thing about stress is that the more we are subjected to it, the less we actually feel it, or feel anything for that matter. Our brains have evolved the most remarkable capacity to tune out our feelings when needing to perform in stressful or wounding situations. If school isn’t one of the most wounding or stressful scenarios in our society, one would be hard-pressed to figure out what was – except for a troubled home, of course.
Unfortunately our children are showing the increasing impact of this stress, along with the corresponding loss of feeling. All the indicators of stress are up – aggression, boredom, attention problems, bullying, anxiety, agitation, adrenalin-seeking, depression, suicide, and suicidal thoughts.
The irony is that this epidemic loss of feeling is largely going unnoticed and unrecognized. When children lose their feelings, they perform better in stressful and wounding situations. When children lose their feelings, they seem less troubled, less upset, less concerned, less impacted. When children lose their feelings, they can seem to most adults, experts included, that they are actually doing better.
The terrible truth of the matter is that this loss of feeling is at the very root of the troubles our children are having (and in turn, the troubles we are having with them). Developmental science has come to understand that feelings are essential to emotional health and well-being, to emotional maturation, to fulfilling togetherness, to becoming fully human and humane. Feelings are the heart of the matter, so to speak. We can only afford to lose our feelings for a relatively short period of time: when performance becomes more important than growth, when ‘doing’ becomes more important than ‘being’, when the conditions for the realization of potential need to be sacrificed for the work of the moment.
So what is the answer to this dilemma in which the children of today are spending a good portion of their day with their brains actively defending against feeling? The answer, in short, is not so much what happens IN school but what happens AFTER school! The very feelings that have been tuned out when under duress are meant to bounce back when the threat is over and the child feels safe. But this has to happen in a timely way, or the brain loses the ability to properly interpret the feelings and link them to the triggering events.
In other words, school children desperately need an end-of-the-school-day-experience where their feelings can bounce back. They need a safe place where emotions can thaw out, where emotional armour can be doffed, where their feelings can catch up with them, where the impact of stress can be reversed. This bounce-back experience is pivotal … and the sooner it happens after being shoehorned into a wounding environment, the better.
Safety is key. There are two natural oases of safety for children. A child feels safe when feeling close to someone to whom they are deeply attached. A child also feels safe when fully engaged in an emotional playground; this can be a piece of music, a favourite story, a solitary space, some pretend play, or even creating a piece of art. Screen play doesn’t serve as an emotional playground as it is too stimulating and outcome based to serve the emotions. My favourite emotional playground as a child was a swing my father built me. I recently realized that I have never grown out of this emotional playground nor my need for it; rarely does a summer day end that doesn’t have me on a swing in wait for my feelings to catch up with me. Unfortunately the end-of-the-day rituals and customs that enabled emotional recovery are fast disappearing in our society.
If, upon collecting our child after school, they should burst into tears and seemingly vomit their feelings all over us, we should take some comfort in the fact that all is right with their emotional recovery process. It is a good thing that their feelings are inhibited during school so that they can perform in a wounding environment and not become dysfunctional because of hurt feelings. It is a wonderful thing that our child experiences us as a safe space for their feelings to catch up with them. And it is pivotal to their emotional health that feelings are recovered so that they can do their work of cultivating resilience and growing our child up. This is all as it should be, emotionally speaking; we don’t need to know the details – about what happened in school or with their school-mates – for emotional recovery to happen.
So as our children go back to school, let us resolve to provide for them an après school experience where their feelings can catch up with them. There could be no better investment in their emotional health and well-being.
Last night I went to my youngest daughter’s final school music concert. It was a phenomenal evening of instrument and song, shared with a packed room of family and community members. Packed, because this school has earned a reputation and tonight would not disappoint. Can you remember the last time you witnessed a standing ovation for a high school band performance??
What came out of these young people, as they played their instruments and sang their songs together, was nothing short of inspirational. You could feel the music.
“Music is what cannot be said, but cannot be kept quiet.”
These words, written on the doors of the high school music room, speak to me of magic and of necessity. They speak to the mysterious power of music and its ability to move something deep inside – for both the one who plays and the one who listens. They also speak of the need to express what is inside in ways that words cannot always reach.
Reflecting on the evening, I found myself trying to unfold the layers and make sense of the magic that I witnessed.
My mind goes first to the music teachers: the ones who held the space and made room for the music to come out. Not just made room, but actually drew out of the students what was already there. The students didn’t know it yet; but the teacher knew.
After a particularly moving piece by one of the groups, we all laughed as the band teacher popped back to the microphone to declare his delight: “A 9/10 band isn’t supposed to have this much expression,” as he shook his head in disbelief.
However, I wasn’t as surprised because I saw something else. Yes, I witnessed the same things as the band teacher: I heard the expression in the brass, in the winds; I saw the emotion in their faces as they played; I felt it conveyed through their instruments.
But I also saw, behind the scenes, their intuitive leader – someone who believed in them, who inspired them, who created the kind of atmosphere that watered the seeds of potential in these young musicians.
Music like that doesn’t just happen.
This particular teacher has been at the school for over 25 years, quietly (and not so quietly, when the trumpets get involved!) working his magic. The fruit can be seen in the amazing world-class musicians that come out of those doors. An outside observer might say we were “lucky” to have this much talent in one little town.
But I don’t see this as luck. I’m looking from the inside and I believe I know the secret. Behind the scenes is someone who understands the key to unlocking the passion, the emotion and the music inside even the most “unmusical” of children. This secret is a master teacher, someone whose intuition and playfulness draw out music and emotion.
Experience may play a part, but I see this same spark in my daughter’s young twenty-something choir director. This same intuitive talent of drawing the music out, helping find the voice within, and creating a safe place to sing it out together, and to have FUN in the process.
In all my years coming to see these “performances”, I have never seen it be about performance. That is, the concerts have never been about getting things perfect or just right; it hasn’t been about the outcome at all. From what I can see, the concert is an opportunity to share the process – an inside peek at the joy and melancholy of making music together. And I feel privileged to have had a window seat.
A lump came to my throat as my daughter sang the last notes as part of this group. To see her face as she sang her heart out. And as she sang out with the others, I could see and hear things move in her. I could feel it. The music was alive in her, and would stay with her even as she graduated and moved on.
And I was grateful for this gift she had been given, for the opportunity to find her own voice, and to join her voice with others. I was thankful for the chance she was given to express what was inside and to let it come out.
Isn’t this what we all want for our children? Somewhere they feel safe to express what’s inside – whether it be …
- through the bass, the violin, the ukelele or the electric guitar;
- through song or art, in all its forms;
- through drama or dance;
- through nature or humor;
- through story or the written word.
These are the playgrounds our children need – whether they are 5, 15 or 50. We all need emotional playgrounds in our lives for what is inside to come out to play. So that our hearts stay soft enough and our souls stay free enough to experience life in its fullness. These playgrounds set the stage for learning and for living, and without these places to release and express ourselves, we can run into trouble.
So I wish for you, the reader, opportunities for emotional playgrounds – both for your children and for yourself. Whether you play tentatively at the edges or dive in head first, when you make some room and carve some space … magic can happen!
And as we come to the close of another school year (and the last one for my daughter), I want to extend my gratitude to all those who are behind the scenes, those who are creating these emotional playgrounds for their students – in their own way, in their own corner of the world. I hope you get a little glimpse of the difference you are making. A heartfelt thank you!
Stress seems to lie around every corner. It is there when change happens to us or when we are up against the things we cannot change. From the losses that are part of life to our unmet needs, how were we meant to find a way through?
Gordon Neufeld defines resilience as the “capacity to return to optimal functioning after stress or to thrive under duress.” (1) While we can’t avoid the ups and downs in life, we can harness the body’s natural way of healing and bounce back. The question is how do we do this and how do we set our children up to do the same?
The key to resilience is to realize that it cannot be found by “pitting our head against our heart,” as Neufeld states. It has always been our hearts that hold the secrets to healing. The problem is we have gotten lost in thinking that the mind holds all the answers when we are faced with problems. We lose sight that adversity will take us on an emotional journey and our feelings need to take the wheel in helping us find a way through.
There is a difference between “true resilience” and “false resilience.” False resilience arises when our emotions are suppressed and no longer become conscious or deeply felt. With false resilience there is an absence of feelings and the ‘calm’ exterior lulls us into thinking that perhaps we are okay and indeed resilient. It allows a child to function at school despite stress or an adult to show up at work and do a job. The problem is a hardened heart is like scar tissue, it isn’t very flexible nor does it feel very much.
True resilience is noisy. It is full of feelings that can be big and upsetting. You can hear it in the healthy teenager as they go through their final passage into adulthood and speak of the emptiness, fear, loneliness, or the insecurity they feel. You can hear it in the new parent who is wondering why they have so many emotions flooding them like alarm, frustration, and sadness as they take care of little people they love dearly.
False resilience stems from the absence of emotion whereas true resilience is about being hardy or of much heart. Resilience requires more feeling, not less.
If we are to play a role in our children unfolding as resilient beings we will need to play caretaker to their heart. We don’t need to chase them away or have them run away from their big feelings. We don’t need to toughen them up or suggest “not to let themselves get down” or that they “need to pick themself up.” It is the emotional mending of what has been broken that paves the way to being able to thrive and bounce back.
The problem is that when stress overwhelms or floods us, there are too many things to focus on or to feel. Our emotions are stirred up and they get busy trying to fix the challenges we face. A child can cling to a parent when it’s time to leave for school or a teen can refuse to talk about something because it hurts more when they do.
The brain jumps into action when we are full of emotion, and feelings are a luxury. Feelings are the emotions we can catch hold of and cry tears to, and make room for. But when we are overloaded, we have “more emotion and less feeling,” as Neufeld states.
We struggle to embrace the emotional journeys that come with stress and we have lost sight of how important they are to take our children on. The problem is we seem so scared of emotions that come big and strong in times of stress. We worry they will take us down the dark holes that are part of life and we will never get back up. We think we have to kick and scream and crawl our way out of the tunnels in life rather than to see that there has always been something to carry us through them. Resilience is an emotional journey and our emotions were meant to carry us forward when we no longer know the way. It isn’t the absence of vulnerable feelings that make us strong, but our capacity to embrace the ones that we have.
We have lost the keys to opening the heart at the time when we need it the most. We have become lost in our heads and believe thinking things out holds the ultimate answer. Reason doesn’t hold the answer when our heart is hurt. Resiliency isn’t a set of skills to learn nor is it a list of statements we tell our kids to write out and repeat. Resilience doesn’t come from a script, a worksheet or talking yourself into happy feelings either. The idea that we have to force healing down a particular path doesn’t understand the inherent capacity in humans to heal.
We need to embrace our feelings and allow what nature has given us to be able to journey through the stress and adversity that is part of our life.
We need to help our children express the sadness that will be there when things don’t go their way. We need to open channels for expression through play and free the muses to draw out their feelings through music, paint, dance, song, or clay. We can encourage them to tell us their stories and to “replay” all that has happened, says Neufeld.
What we all need most of all on emotional journeys are people who can come alongside our feelings. It is the people we hold onto at times of unrest, that carry us through our strong emotions. Our relationships provide an illusion of safety in the midst of all the things that don’t feel right. When we are in doubt about our chances of a safe return to well being, it is our relationships that can guide us and say hold onto me.
Our relationships are also what give us hope and help us believe that we are indeed strong enough to carry the heavy load we feel. It is a parent’s belief in a child that helps them feel there is a way out of it all.
When I think of the big things in my life that have had to be faced, it is people I am most attached to that have anchored me the most. They have become embedded in those emotional journeys. They are the people that helped keep my heart soft and helped me endure despite feelings of despair. And like all journeys, once you have travelled somewhere, you are never the same again. You become forever transformed by the things you see on the way, the experiences you have, and the emotions that are felt.
As Kierkegaard said, “Life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards.” While you are in the midst of the emotional journey it is not important to make sense of it all, to have the pieces all fit together, but rather, to embrace the process of the emotional let down, and to use nature’s system to help release the emotions that need to come out and to rest from trying to make things different.
If we can do this for our kids, they will realize that healing wasn’t something we had to invent, wasn’t something we had to learn, something we had to work hard at or force, but rather, to release ourselves too. We already have inside of us the ingredients to allow healing to occur, we just need someone to go on the emotional journey with us. As parents we can set the stage for the feelings and the play to help our children too.
Emotions are not a nuisance, they are nature’s ways of taking care of us. It is our feelings that carry us when faced with the challenges that life presents. The more we make room for them, feel them, play with them, the more they can do their healing on us. The challenges in life must be embraced but we all need someone to lean on. There could be no greater gift to our kids nor no better message to leave them with.
Notes
(1) Gordon Neufeld, The Keys to Resilience, Keynote Address 9th Annual Neufeld Institute Conference, April 28, 2017, Richmond, BC
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the author of the best selling book, Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one). She is also on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute and the Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a counselling and family resource centre. For more information please see www.macnamara.ca.
Each year around this time, I get the great honor of helping curate the list of books for the Neufeld Institute’s list of children’s literature recommendations, match-making parents and professionals with outstanding kids’ books.
Our list includes more than 200 titles — a mix of picture books, books for the very young, early readers and chapter books, middle-grade books, young-adult books, and books to enjoy as a family — sorted by categories such as connections to parents; books about grandparents, extended family, villages of attachment; books that help with the language of feelings; books that inspire or portray play; books about relationships to special teachers; books about or for transplanted children; along with books for special challenges such as death, divorce, allergies, cancer, learning disabilities, moving, and sensitivity/giftedness.
Let me just say how much I love this list, each and every one of the books we recommend, and the process that goes into pulling the list together. With three or four of my savvy and soft-hearted colleagues, we spend the day at Vancouver’s Kidsbooks poring over hundreds of books — books we’ve been keeping on our radars for the last year, books the Kidsbooks staff recommends, as well as the gems we discover in the store. We laugh. We cry. Sometimes we rant or pout. We discuss our attachment-based, developmental theory as it’s showing up (or not) in themes, dialogue, illustrations, plot, and emotions. And we do it all in the memory of Gail Carney, our mentor, artist, and friend who left this special legacy for the Neufeld Institute.
Each spring the list — which has grown to become a booklet — is updated and published in time for the Annual Vancouver Neufeld Conference. We have this year’s booklet locked in, ready for its debut at the upcoming conference taking place March 1st and 2nd and I am eager to share it with the world! Hopefully without stealing any thunder from the full list, over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing my personal reviews of some of the books that we’ve added to this year’s list that I’m especially excited about.
The first picture book is Captain Starfish, written by Davina Bell and illustrated by Allison Colpoys (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2015). I adore this book so much, and the story of Alfie, who wakes feeling worried about the Underwater Dress-Up Parade he is supposed to lead the next day dressed up in his starfish costume.
In spite of positive self-talk about his bravery and his very supportive parents, Alfie is still plagued with heavily weighted nightmares. “He dreamed that he was carrying the ocean, all on his own.”
He wakes up and shares with his mom that he’s not ready, fearing she will be angry. She’s not, she reassures him. Then she takes him somewhere special — the aquarium, where Alfie quietly works through his emotions.
On the way home, Alfie delightedly recounts his experience with a clown fish that seemed to connect with him. “‘He came out, but only for the tiniest second!’ said Alfie. ‘I think he smiled at me.’”
Mom’s soft response gently showers her son with both insight and acceptance:
“‘Sometimes clown fish need to hide away,’ said Mom. ‘It’s just what they do.’
‘People too,’ said Alfie, thinking of the dress-up parade, which didn’t seem quite so scary now.’”
What I most cherish about this book is its unexpected ending. Where I thought we were going all along was: Thanks to the fish encounter, Alfie would now have the courage to rush over to the Underwater Dress-Up Parade and do his part, after all. I would have been okay with an ending like this. So many books convey the mixed feelings that Dr. Gordon Neufeld calls “dragon and the treasure,” and usually end up conquering the fear to get to the treasure in a very satisfying way, after all.
But Captain Starfish rises even further above because it takes a different approach. Conquering our fears doesn’t always happen so quickly. Sometimes the process takes more time, especially for our really sensitive kids.
Contrary to my expectation, Alfie missed the parade this year. In fact, when Alfie and Mom return home, “It was so late that … Dad had already run the bath.” It’s then that we realize how Mom had protected Alfie from shame and overwhelm by taking him to the aquarium, and how she accepted him exactly where he was without pushing him to meet society’s expectations.
Alfie is at peace with his decision not to be Captain Starfish that day. Underwater Dress-Up Parade or not, Alfie he has grown. He knows he’ll have the confidence to participate next year.
And he does … as a clown fish.
The 2019 Neufeld Institute Children’s Book List will be available to purchase on-site at the Eleventh Annual Vancouver Neufeld Conference and also on our website after the conference.
For more book reviews by Sara Easterly, visit Book Bonding.
Since this is our first newsletter of the season and thus my first greeting to our newsletter readers, I think a New Year’s greeting is still appropriate. At least indulge me in this, because I want to use this traditional greeting as a launching place for some reflection and as a segue to our upcoming Vancouver conference theme: Press Pause and Play: is this the answer for us all?
When we wish each other a Happy New Year, where do we think their happiness will come from – less sorrow and suffering? better success in their work? more fulfillment in their relationships? less negativity in their thinking? increased emotional health and well-being? greater accomplishments? more meaning in their life? all of the above?
Let me turn this question around to ourselves. What do we think the answer would be to greater sense of satisfaction and enjoyment this year? Most of us have a vague sense that something is missing in our lives and if this ‘missing’ could be lessened or eliminated, somehow things would be better. These core assumptions often exist in the IF ONLYs that rattle around in our minds. IF ONLY I had more money, more time, more leisure, more success, more family, more opportunity, more education, more recognition, more talent, more skill. IF ONLY I had less misfortune, less frustration, less distraction, fewer obligations, less alarm, less debt, or even less family.
These core assumptions heavily influence our decisions and infuse our interactions and our parenting. Of course, industry attempts to exploit these IF ONLYs, presenting their products as the answers to what is missing.
Could it be that there is something more elementary, more essential, perhaps even more elusive, to the sense of well-being that we seek? I believe there is. At this point I wish I could refer you to the book I wish I would have written on the subject. But alas, I will have to skip that part for now and offer you instead a few paragraphs, followed up by a conference keynote.
In short, I am becoming convinced that the elusive and naturally elegant answer is actually TRUE PLAY or a sense of PLAYFULNESS.
We have known for some time that REST is absolutely essential for healthy functioning and the realization of potential. In fact, the sense of well-being we are seeking would be impossible without sufficient REST. What wasn’t known – before neuroscience gave us a peek into the brain – is that PLAY is the main form of activated rest. The brain in the play mode is a delight to behold and in many ways the opposite of what it is in the work mode.
What also wasn’t known until recent times is that achieving togetherness is the main WORK of the brain and so we are not truly AT REST until that WORK is done or someone is taking care of that for us, at least in a given moment.
So could it be that PLAY is an essential answer to a sense of well-being? Could it be that TRUE PLAY is what is missing in our lives today? Could it be that the state of PLAYFULNESS is what will deliver the desired fruit, not only for us but for our children?
This was the conclusion of the very first philosophers in ancient Greece. In the last decade or so, science has rediscovered this surprising truth, spawning a whole new discipline dedicated to the subject. The emerging conclusion is that PLAY is NATURE INCOGNITO, the mysterious and invisible force behind the spontaneous unfolding of our potential. Could the answer really be that simple?
There was this thought in ancient philosophy that the answer to what is missing would lie in the most unlikely of places, disguised as ordinary, and probably even discarded as having no apparent use or value. I can’t think of a construct that has been more abused, distorted and truncated than play. We have thought of it as having no purpose, as frivolous, as what children do before they are capable of working, as something one does with a toy or an instrument. We have abused the term in thousands of ways and wrongly assume that play is what happens at recess, in sports, in video games, on playgrounds, and between children. We have been demonizing play for centuries as threatening our precious, and for some even sacred, work ethic. On the other hand, we have idealized expressive arts as play, when playfulness is just as difficult to realize in this arena as anywhere else.
Like a growing number of other scientists, philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, theologians, evolutionary biologists, and historians, I am becoming convinced that playfulness is a significant part of the answer to what is missing and to the sense of well-being that we seek. The evidence is there; the dots are being joined; the conclusion seems inevitable. I’m in.
So what I would like to wish every one of you is more playfulness in this coming year. And I hope that because of you, your children and loved ones will also become more playful.
Have a Playful New Year!
Editors note: If you would like to hear more on this subject, or if more playfulness is what you seek for you or your loved ones, be sure to join us at this year’s Vancouver Conference if you can.
I tried preschool for my son. It was traumatic. I lost ten kilograms in eight weeks. My son started having nightmares, hitting himself over the head, biting himself, banging his head on his desk. It was clear this preschool thing had to stop! So I made it stop.
I was furious at myself for having caved in to the pressure of sending my son to preschool. But the entire horror did serve one purpose: I knew now that there was no way school was going to work. And it had to work – because homeschooling is illegal in Germany. It was clear to me that we were going to need help. Lots of it. And the only way to get it was to get a diagnosis.
Getting a diagnosis was not difficult. I knew the diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s, I knew my son fulfilled them, and I knew we would walk out of that doctor’s office with official verification that my son was on the autistic spectrum. This did not devastate me. On the contrary, I NEEDED that diagnosis. And I needed it to be “dramatic” enough to get as many accommodations for my son as possible. I had to find a way to keep him safe. That was all that mattered.
It was when I saw my son with the other children at school that I started feeling the pain – as a mother – of this diagnosis for my son. I had always known my son was different. From the day he was born. But because I could barely leave the house with him, I was pretty isolated. I spent all day, every day, playing with and loving my son for the sensitive, creative, intense individual he is. He was my first and only child. I had no point of comparison.
The comparisons started when I watched him in the classroom. His helplessness in contact with other children, his eccentric and often inappropriate topics of conversation, his intense emotional outbursts, and his glaring self-centeredness pained me – even embarrassed me. For the first time I was yearning for my son to try to be more “normal”. Not to be so conspicuous.
As we started being able to go out in the world more, I had to deal with looks of shock or disapproval when my son would have a meltdown in the supermarket, on the bus, in the street. I myself had always been such a “good” girl. Now I was being looked at as a bad mother. With a bad child. This felt intolerable to me. And I started getting angry at my son for “doing this” to me. As issues of aggression started arising for my son in school, I felt I was being pushed to my limit. This was more than the good girl in me could accept. MY son is aggressive?!!!
The tension in me at this time was excruciating: as a mother I was being driven by my love for my son, but as a “good girl” I was being driven by my lifelong pursuit of the love and approval of others. I felt I was being torn apart. My life had now brought me to a point where I had to take a stand. Either I submit to the temptation of being “good”, of avoiding conflict, of living up to expectations, of fitting in, or I come alongside my child.
But there was more to the story. Part of being a good girl was being “nice”. I had been a kind of Shirley Temple as a child, ringlets and all, whereas my son was hitting, kicking, biting, scratching, and screaming at people that they were Hitler! To come alongside my son meant that I also had to come alongside THIS attacking energy! To invite my son meant I had to be able to invite THIS – not only in him – but in myself, as well. There’s the rub.
I suppose this dilemma is inevitable. It makes sense that the impulse to extend a generous invitation to our children, to say yes to who they are, will bring us to tripping over the limits of the invitations we ourselves received. It is inevitable that we will stumble over the boxes we have been trying to squeeze ourselves into. And we will also encounter the pain of the rejections we have experienced – the rejection of those parts of us that were not wanted, were not loved, and which we ourselves now consider unwanted and un-loveable. I had already spent a lot of time looking at these things that I had edited out of me to be “good” and the price I had paid in doing so. Now my son’s urgent need to be invited and my deep love for him was demanding that I finally ACT on what I knew I must do. It was time to say an understanding but firm “no” to the good girl in me and a resounding “yes” to my son.
Which – like in an Escher painting – also meant finally extending my own “yes” to me. That is nature’s beautiful irony.
Editor’s Note: Jule will present a webinar on this topic on Friday, December 14, 2018, “The Generous Invitation: Nature’s Password for Unlocking the Potential of the Child Diagnosed with Autism”. For more information and to register, visit the event posting.
It was clear right from day one that there was something different about my son. He didn’t have that dreamy, half-conscious look of most newborns. He was unusually alert and awake with intense eye contact. The nurses on the maternity ward were calling him “the little professor“ or “Einstein”. Others said, “he’s an old soul”. What was it they were seeing when they looked into his eyes? Over time this became clearer.
Nursing him was only possible in the context of complete silence, as at any sound he would wrench away from me in alarm, turning his head to and fro, searching frantically for the source or alarm, while at the same time crying for the breast. When he finally calmed enough to find the breast again, he drank so desperately that he would get a stomach ache within minutes – long before he was actually satiated – and start screaming in pain. Once the pain receded, the hunger he experienced was so intense that the whole desperate process started all over again. Nursing became a never-ending story, so that it became almost impossible to leave the house. Not that leaving the house was a pleasant experience anyway. A dog barking. Another baby crying. The sound of traffic. Everything was distressing to him. Even in the safety of our home, a sudden sound like a sneeze, a cough, or the telephone ringing would elicit an intense startle response and end in panicky screams. Vacuuming was, of course, out of the question. Inviting visitors over – especially Moms with their own babies making who-knows-what sudden sounds at any given moment – was a nightmare. Idyllic visions of taking my baby to massage courses or swimming classes receded quickly into the unthinkable.
What was going on? I knew long before my son was diagnosed with autism that he was sensitive. Extremely sensitive. I knew long before I understood the nature of autism that my son had no filters – that the world penetrated into him and overwhelmed him. The intense, alert look in his eyes that sometimes seemed wise and knowing, and that often unnerved people, was somehow, as Dr. Neufeld coins it, an “unnatural brightness”. My son was taking in more than his brain could handle. And his brain was working very, very hard to handle it. Dr. Neufeld speaks of the rapid brain growth that ensues in autistic babies as their brains try to process the mass of sensory input they are receiving as a result of the problems in their sensory gating system. And that this rapid brain growth can sometimes result in an increased head circumference. That would fit to my son. Doctors were noticing his unusually large head. Nothing dangerous, nothing really alarming as such, but noticeable enough that the doctors kept measuring it. I had heard that Einstein had had a big head as a child, too, so I tried not to worry. Maybe my child was just really smart.
Well, he was smart. But that wasn’t the whole story. Intuitively I began orchestrating the world around us in order to make it more “palatable” for my son. I resisted pressures to “toughen him up” and, instead, tried to reduce input and protect him from overload – both sensory and emotional. I did these things intuitively – not strategically – although, as it turns out, these were wise things to be doing. Dr. Neufeld speaks of adults needing to take on the task of the sensory gating system for their hypersensitive child. In hindsight, I realize that this is what I was doing. At the same time, I was playing with my son as much as possible – singing, dancing, playing peek-a-boo, playing games with sounds and facial expressions – working very hard to engage him and create a shared world with him. As my son became a preschooler, we also started making up stories and wrote “books” about troublesome things like how scary playgrounds are or what it feels like when you hear a baby crying. Life was extremely intense and exhausting. I was working very hard, but at least my son was developing. At the age of 3 he taught himself to read. At the age of 5 he was able to google for information he was curious about (exotic musical instruments were his passion at the time) and he was trying to compose his first “symphonies”. He was also beginning to be able to tell me about how he experienced the world. How he could hear exactly what each instrument in a band was playing individually – which is why large orchestras and classical music were “way too much”; how he needed to touch things all the time when we were in the supermarket because otherwise the air would swallow him up. He was telling me clearly that he was taking in so many individual details that it was really hard to hold on to himself or a coherent whole. And that this was really scary.
As my son got older, things got even scarier. What got added into the picture was the issue of separation. I hadn’t realized how much my strong attachment to my son had been shielding him and compensating for his hypersensitivity. I hadn’t realized how hard I had been working to “hold” his attention and help him focus on me. I had intuitively fine-tuned the dance of attachment with him so that I could “collect him, get his eyes, get a smile and a nod”, as Dr. Neufeld describes it, and “cut through” the swarm of details overwhelming him enough to weave an attachment “hammock” for him to rest in. This attachment “hammock” had always been fragile in a certain way – it was deep but easily broken and needed to be guarded carefully. So it was no surprise that it would break under the load of stimuli that school would bring.
At school, our attachment hammock developed giant holes and my son fell through them. He couldn’t hold on to me enough to be shielded emotionally. And he surely couldn’t handle the sensory cacophony. So he gradually began to lose the alertness in his eyes. My son had always had moments of overload where he would “space out”, but now this “spacy-ness” became systemic. I felt my son retreating, detaching. I felt a tremendous sadness about this, but I also saw the necessity. It was all way too much for him and, as Dr. Neufeld so poignantly describes, when survival is at stake, the brain will move to protect the child from unbearable wounding by retreating or “shutting down” – on sensory, emotional, or relational levels. The price for this strategic move of the brain is high – it results in a developmental “stuckness” that brings with it its own share of problems (impulsiveness, aggression problems, for example), not to mention the price in terms of the unfolding of individual potential. Of course, I tried my best to hold on to my son. I desperately tried to compensate even more than before. I fought for understanding and supports in the outside world. And – I played and played and played with him.
This was the time that we started making movies. We made up all kinds of stories; we played out every possible natural disaster: earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes; we died and grieved and came back to life over and over again. We learned how to edit film and how to highlight the emotions in the story by adding the appropriate background music. When we were done, we watched our films over and over again. All of this we did together. It strengthened our attachment. And it emotionally kept my son’s head above water at school. He played out his anxiety and his aggression in his movies. Or he became the powerful musical super-hero whose magical compositions would save the day. Dr. Neufeld emphasizes the importance of play, particularly for the hypersensitive. I can surely attest to its life-jacket qualities – not just for my son, but also for the autistic children and adolescents I ended up working with. Whether it be making movies, or painting, or playing piano, or playing hide-and-seek, or re-playing traumatic events, or just running and jumping together – whatever kind of play holds the attention of the child and makes their eyes come alive – this is the “royal road” of healing and growth. And thank goodness we are drawn to it intuitively.
My journey with my son is still a very challenging one. Even as an adolescent, he is still plugging his ears at sudden noises, spacing out when overloaded, swinging for hours in his hammock to calm himself, or asking the same question over and over again. He is still needing what he needed as a child: someone who can help him “hold on” to his attachments; someone who can help him stay “soft” and adaptive; someone who will take the responsibility to do for him what his sensory gating system is not able to do (reduce stimuli, uphold structure). But he is beginning to develop a relationship with himself – getting a sense of who he is and what he needs – and beginning to move towards becoming his own person. He still has the impulse to play – nowadays it is mostly playing guitar and singing: Nirvana when he is frustrated; Morrissey when he is melancholic. Or to act out upsetting things that happen to him in order to vent and manage his emotions. And he still comes to me with his secrets, wanting to be his “true self” with me, as he tells me. Our relationship is deep and solid. So we are on a good path. We still have hurdles ahead. But I believe in him and in us. We will find our way through the maze.