Ep 27: Why Your Child’s Resilience Needs Your Parenting Mistakes

“The way you and your child find your way back to each other after stepping on each other’s toes speaks volumes to the quality of your relationship with your child. When I see you and your child working through the disconnection by trying to find out how the other person is feeling, maybe apologizing for stepping on some toes or forgetting some steps, I see the trust between you and your child that you’ve developed over time. And developed from what? From all the previous disconnections that you’ve had to work through together to reconnect with your child over and over again. Not from being in perfect harmony or being perfectly in-synched all the time.”

Episode Outline

• Unpacking the supremacist conditioning of perfectionism and martyrdom as parental love.

• Replacing perfectionism with rhythm (connection-disconnection-reconnection).

• Looking at attachment research: Reconnecting is an indicator of secure attachment style.

• Working through disconnection to reconnect builds your child’s development: sense of self, agency, and regulation.

• A still-face experiment: Parents in the study were in-synched with their babies only 30% of the time. 

• Disconnection was 70% and when it was followed by a reconnection, babies learned how to self-sooth and navigate stress.

• This mismatch and repair process strengthen adult-adult partnerships too.

• When parents work through their discomfort of disconnection to reconnect with their children, they practice accountability. 

• Disengagement or dissociation is a continuum of skill not a stigmatized symptom of weakness. 

• The rhythm of engagement and disengagement is a part of raising a child. Disengagement isn’t a failure. 

• An example of how to intentionally disengage from your child to briefly put your oxygen mask on first. This is an opportunity for you to practice solidarity. Also, an opportunity for your child to practice self-regulation safely with you and grow their resilience.

• Thich Nhat Hanh’s wisdom on loving well. 

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Resources Mentioned:

• Dr. Ed Tronick

• Dr. Claudia M. Gold

• Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation by Ainsworth and colleagues

• Interactive mismatch and repair: Challenges to the coping infant by Tronick and Gianino

• Mutual Regulation and Unique Forms of Implicit Relational Knowing by Tronick and Banella

• The Power of Discord: Why The Ups and Downs of Relationships Are The Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience, and Trust by Tronick and Gold

• A Still-face Paradigm for Young Children: 2½ Year-olds’ Reactions to Maternal Unavailability during the Still-face by Weinberg, Tronick, and colleagues. 

• The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott: Volume 3. 1946–1951

• Interactive Coordination Of Currently Depressed Inpatient Mothers And Their Infants During The Postpartum Period

• The Psychology of Babies by Lynne Murray

• Positive Stress vs. Toxic Stress by The Center on the Developing Child Harvard University   

• How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh

• EP 16: What Children Can Teach Us About Change & Liberation Through Emergent Strategy

• EP 4: Three Ways to Practice Social Justice through Parenting & Promote Your Child's Development At the Same Time

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