But...then again, my son hates some sounds. As a baby, he cried at the sound of the blender, the lawnmower, the vacuum cleaner, the doorbell, and of course the fire truck sirens. Over the year, he would put his hands over his ears when pitches or voices were too loud, too high (baby brother crying), too quiet, too garbled, too sibilant, or when there was "too much hi-hat" in a song which he said made his "brain feel like it's going to throw up" or too much bass in a voice on the radio which he said made his "stomach feel bad."

My son has always had a particular way of processing auditory information. He has described, over the years, that a room can be so loud, it's quiet. Or that it's so loud, he can't see. Explaining this to teachers or others was not always a simple transaction. People often assume you are implying that the environment must be "perfect" for your child, when that's the last concept you'd imagine might be a good idea for anyone, let alone your kid.

Environment is a teacher. Environment affects our biology. Environment is energy. Environment, and all of its sounds and frequencies, has enormous influence on how our bodies and brains operate and how our minds make sense of that.

One way I knew the way sound either soothed or aggravated his system was the emergence of something most people may find annoying or disturbing: echolalia. Children who repeat a phrase or sound over & over again...are communicating something significant. When my son was little, he would tell me that the sounds he made or the words he kept repeating were helping him to "stop the wiggles in my body."

So there is no purpose in telling a child who is repeating a phrase or a noise over and over to simply "STOP!" It's only a sign that he is working something out inside him. If we can play a mitigating role, the need for repetition will diminish. But often it's about understanding how environment--internal and external--plays a huge role leading up to some of a child's expressions.

He was 2 when we were slowly pushing the grocery cart around the end of an aisle when a lady in a wild HURRY zoomed around the bend and nearly crashed into us.

"Oh I'm sorry!" she blurted, and dashed off.

All day and evening, he repeated at various times of the day, "Dat lady say 'Oh I'm sorry'..." And he'd stare at me then out the window, like he was replaying it in his mind-movie.
And he emphasized the I'M...as in Oh *I'M* sorry." Dat lady say, Oh *I'M* sorry."

Yes, she said that, I would respond. And we played out what happened.
"She was going fast, wasn't she?"
"Yah..."
"She came around the corner like a surprise."
"Yah..."
"She said--"
"--Oh *I'M* sorry."
"Hm-hmm..."

And he'd gaze at me with his gorgeous dark blue eyes of concern. And we'd let some silence hang around us in the air for a few moments like a warm blanket.

Each time, I sensed he was processing the moment a little more deeply. And I gleaned that the moment in the store was difficult to process because it had startled him. Not scared but...STARTLED him. A different kind of internal sensory response.

Did I know he'd need to process it? No. It arose naturally as needed.
Did I have to know in advance? No. It was powerful to know and respond in the moment.
Did I learn which environments and which factors might trigger certain responses in him? Sure did.

Did I avoid the ones that bothered him? At first, when he was very young, yes, then as he grew a little, I gradually expanded his environment and sensory experiences so he could learn to understand his reactions, his "wiggles," what his "brain is doing," and his thoughts and perceptions.

When he was 4, he asked me to play a song in the car called Circle Dance...6 times in a row while he stared out the car window in silence.

"Are you trying to memorize the words?" I asked him, glancing at his sweet serious face in the rear-view.
"No, Mommy, I love this song cause it sounds like a sunset," he said.

Gulp.

His repetition and dwelling on phrases, sounds or words for a period of time were his organizing outlet...and his coping response gave me the clue: >>please stand by, do not adjust this set, I'm trying to unscramble a signal.
And so it was. And so we did. Thousands more times over the next 12 years.
My ears were piqued to the repetitions, because I knew they were saying something about how he felt. That gave me ideas about how to respond to what he really needed. And teach him, over time as he matured, to understand the social contexts, how he might be "coming across" or "received" and what he might want to share with others, friends, about how he's feeling, to help them see him authentically and understand his experience and motivation. And theirs.
He has been learning to be his own advocate.
It all counts.
It's all important.
It's all part of the process of growing, shifting, learning, healing, connecting, and redefining.

Over the last few years, my son has been introduced to (and fallen head over heels for) yoga and meditation. He has been learning that his mind is not necessarily hostage to the cacophony of internal noise he has long endured, but that he has an amazing capacity to calm his thoughts and body wherever he is.

I've learned that when a child is repeating, repeating, repeating a phrase or sound or action, instead of insisting that he stop, stop, STOP!...we can ask him, "What are you feeling right now?" and "What do you need?" This grows a child's brain in ways that expand his social and emotional insights without explicit teachings, but rather through the resilience of our trusted relationship, that steely vessel that never sinks even in the storm.

In the United States, it's legal. More than legal, it's deeply defended by millions of parents (and schools in 22 states) as not only a legitimate way to "teach" a child morality, compliance, cooperation and good values, but exists in large part because of the way we think about children.

I rarely write about spanking, not because I don't want to, but frankly because the discourse becomes quickly and futilely divisive. I've never ascribed to camps, and wrote about the fallout of parent camps in my book Let the Baby Drive. Recently, there have been some powerful findings in the scientific literature, and I feel inspired to share some thoughts in the spirit of expanding ideas and perceptions--in the name of our children.  

I once knew a mom, a hard-working mom with two master's degrees who worked her schedule around taking care of her kids, a mom so concerned about her kids' wellbeing, she didn't travel for her company for more than a day trip, who passed up promotions and sacrificed global success for the family she had created with her husband. And yet, she would get upset with her 5 year-old at the pool, nothing obvious to anyone, perhaps a quiet tug of war in words between them that nobody could hear, something that clearly pushed the needle over on the mother's internal rage gauge, and I watched as she would calmly walk her young daughter into the bathroom at our community pool...to spank her.

They'd emerge after 5 minutes. The girl's eyes red, and her chin up. Proud. Ashamed. A mix of emotions. The mother stoic, hiding her self-doubt, her ambivalence and, most of all...her own deep sense of shame.

I once asked her why she spanked. It wasn't a confrontational conversation. That's never been my style. Instead, the topic came up, of all places, on a ski-lift. Eight couples and their families from our development went skiing for the day, and here we were dangling twenty-five feet in the air, talking about one of the most delicate and divisive themes among parents.

I felt safe asking her. I think she felt safe answering.

"I don't know what else to do," she said, with a look of lost innocence and helpless resignation in her eyes.

But there's more to the story. See, when she was pregnant, she was absolutely convinced that her daughter would be born with a genetic abnormality. She was expecting it. Anticipating it.

When I gently asked her why she felt this, believed this, she said, "I didn't think I deserved to have a healthy baby."

Her answer moved me. Imagine, I thought, how she felt when her baby was perfectly healthy. It's as if, now, she didn't believe she deserved to have a child who loved her.

I'm not going to argue the spanking debate. It's no longer a real conversation. There's an ocean of science, cognitive, emotional, neurobiological, interpersonal, developmental and more...showing us what effects crying it out, spanking, harsh verbal tones, yelling, grabbing, pushing, pulling, paddling in schools, belting, have on the brain and system.

I suggest that we stop parsing the language and splitting syllables over whether tapping and bopping is the same as hitting or beating. It's not really relevant anymore. Instead of pointing fingers, we can offer our hand to support each other. But as long as we argue about words and good intentions and intensity of impact and degrees of violence, we are simply speaking in defensive terms.

Defending our love, really.

We're afraid that we are hurting our kids and we may not be able to confront that. OK. That doesn't make spanking parents bad people.

Instead of defending spanking as a disciplinary method, describing the loving way we spank, the loving purpose for our spanking, and the loving way children are behaving or have turned out, perhaps we can stop warring over whether spanking is unhealthy/negative/destructive/damaging/morally wrong or not. And start an open-hearted education about what scientists are giving this country's parents, teachers, caretakers, babysitters, day care providers, foster care workers, and yes pediatricians, nurses....

...Clear, sobering, potent, health information:
--about our babies, children and growing kids,
--about how the brain works,
--how the mind and brain work and grow in tag team,
--how traumas are not always the stuff of major disasters and horrific events...but the everyday wounds, the losses, humiliations, negative remarks, childhood fears and sometimes momentary misunderstandings that never got cleared up and resolved in our young, impressionable minds.

Science isn't looking to indict anyone on twenty counts of reckless endangerment to a child's growing self. Science is something of a wide-eyed puppy, excited to show you what he dug up from the earth.

Science, I have to say, isn't one study. We can't follow one scientist anymore than we can simply accept one doctor's opinion. But when science bubbles up into a mountain of studies, thousands of studies, with research so compelling that it can be reproduced again and again, and the facts are clear and unmistakable, well, then, scientists want to share those findings with us.

Not to make you defensive.
Not to prove you wrong.
Not to make us feel guilty.
Not to start a war of words.
Not to make people scoff or bow or dig their heels in.

To tell us the news. To explain what they know about what neurons and dendrites do inside our child's brain. To explain how we can't possibly know the absolute outcomes on a child-to-child basis because we don't know their unique vulnerabilities to diseases, depression, learning disorders, substance abuse, epigentic stressors and what might emerge later in their lives when a big trauma hits. Something they didn't see coming. And the way their uniquely altered brain, showing no obvious signs of trauma along the way, now begins to manifest problems.

When a trauma specialist says, without a doubt, that spanking, crying it out and aggressive approaches in parenting and caretaking definitely are cause for concern for that child's wellbeing down the road, it's important for us all to hear what this means.

It's *not* that EVERY SINGLE child who is spanked or harshly handled will develop pathology later on or even in childhood.

It's that this way of raising kids increases their "risk" of pathology. Maybe a child doesn't necessarily exhibit signs of aggression, but she develops a health problem, migraines, learning issues. Maybe a child doesn't grow up to have any problems at work, in friendship or in family, but struggles with weight and high blood pressure. The man who was spanked as a child may be a loving father and husband but have sexual dysfunction that only he and his wife know about. Are you really going to ask him?

We cover our pathologies. We live in a culture that has become increasingly pretentious, showing others an image of ourselves, hiding our pains, heartaches, fears of monsters under the bed--and within us.

Spanking has been banned in 32 countries, but it's acceptable here by law as a parent's way to lay down the law. So to speak.

If spanking involves embarrassment, shame, humiliation or feeling small, the brain, an information-processing system, is designed to process information a very specific way: when that input is too hard to process because it's painful, scary, shaming, humiliating and makes us feel alone and scared, the brain puts it away for safekeeping. That's where trauma gets stored. And we can watch, like a painful home movie, the way it unfolds over our lives. Reel after reel. Reeling from all the scary things we never had power over as a child.

We don't know that the brain most often takes spanking and shame and locks it in our memory networks and spins it into various expressions of self-doubt, mistrust and self-protection in our adult relationships, intimacy problems, ways of numbing or distracting ourselves from our restlessness and deep unnamed anxiety.

We *know*, deep down, beneath our defenses, that spanking is wrapped and shrouded in shame. That it comes from shame. That it perpetuates shame. Shame has a moat around it. We don't let anyone in. When we argue in favor of spanking and teaching kids a hard lesson in the name of love, we can't feel the moat around our own heart, buttressed on all sides by a fortress wall.

But, the more we argue for it and defend our right to raise kids by harsh hands and words to
"keep them on track," we may be too defended against our own shame to see and feel how it can affect our child's developing self. How it affected us.

You know that girl above who was spanked in the pool bathroom, the 5 year-old?

She's thirty now.
Great job. Graduated from an Ivy League school.
Drop dead gorgeous.
Doesn't get along with her mother at all.
They fight all the time.
And, behind closed doors, she attracts all the guys she can fight with too.
Just like the long walk to the pool bathroom, where nobody sees the shame. And she emerges, red eyed with her chin up, thinking "Nobody's going to break my wall down. Nobody can hurt me anymore."

Lu Hanessian, Copyright 2012

We've asked once. Twice. More?

We are itching to leave now. We anticipate the next few hours, the things we still have to do, the grocery shopping, the making of dinner, the readying for bed, the eventual silence of a house asleep. The personal needs. What? Yes, the personal needs: for order, for peace, for feeling alive, nourished, rested, inspired.

Kids still playing on the swings, in the sandbox, at the park. Kicking the ball. Climbing the slides. Hanging from monkey bars.

Let's go, you say. Now. Please. No more please. NOW. Nothing.

Your blood boils. You feel outright ignored.

And then, you say it.

"I'm leaving, Bye."

And you walk. You walk, knowing with every cell in your body that you are not leaving. Knowing also with every fiber of your being that they will jump off the bars, slide down the slide, grab the ball, get off the swing and run. They'll come. They'll chase you down. They'll catch up. They'll be in the car in thirty seconds flat.

But you feel sullied, somehow.

Why do I have to threaten with that? THAT. That leaving thing. Why do I leverage mock abandonment when I'm feeling desperate for instant cooperation?

Here's the thing: There is NO judgment here. I don't judge any of us for our feelings, choices, actions or emotions. It's not my way to judge. What I feel for, though, is how WE feel about ourselves (and our kids) in these moments of learned helplessness and powerlessness when the best, creative idea we reach for is one we don't feel proud, confident, peaceful and grateful about.

We say, "I don't know what else to say."
Or we say, "They don't listen any other way."

But, we convince ourselves this is true.

I am against the use of coercion not just because it teaches our kids to be defensively controlled through fear (even in intimate relationships), but for another reason we rarely, if ever, read or hear about: we are limiting ourselves and narrowing our creative faculties, by resorting to the quickest, simplest scare tactics that may seem benign, but may have their deepest effect...on us.

I'm not one to lay down the gavel on our parenting approaches. No. That's not my role or my place. I have a heart for our kids, of course, and equally, I have enormous compassion for parents. So when I'm talking about coercion and our parenting frustrations, it's not to have you feel guilty but to inspire and empower you to feel empathy for your own need to "play bigger game" as a parent. You know what I mean by that?

I mean that I hear from so many parents around the world who suffer. Really suffer. Guilt. Shame. Regret. Exhaustion. Doubt. Anxiety. And all of the same in their children. Or fear of the same developing in their children because of their perceived flaws. My heart is full of compassion for us all. We can feel the weight of 1000 elephants on our head some days, the air scarce to breathe, the walls closing in on other days. We lose sight of the horizon. We do what we can to get the fastest exit door.

Coercion is often the quickest route to the exit door.

My compassionate concern for us (and our kids) is that our reflexive or resigned use of coercion in parenting -- because we think we have no other recourse -- is effectively curbing our OWN enthusiasm for parenting.

Yes, coercion hurts. Everyone.

How can we gain loving cooperation from our kids when we've already set a coercive dynamic in motion?

For the most part, children love change, even if they struggle with transition. Why? Our brains are designed for novelty. Novelty actually promotes neuroplasticity, or the capacity for the brain to change. If you find you and your kids are in a "cooperation-coercion-rut," take heart.

You can change the dynamic through, well, changing the...dynamic.

It begins with us. Yes, me and you. Set a different tone and communicate your intention clearly and non-coercively to your kids.

HERE'S AN EXAMPLE of how we might do this, with explanation in parenthesis. I'll follow it up with alternate coercive language in ITALICS:

>> "(gather kids with you in a quasi huddle) Before we get to the park, I'd like to ask you 3 things.

(engaging whole brain: left brain loves numbers and order, right brain loves curiosity and context)

>> We're going to go have lots of fun, play, get sweaty, and have our snacks and all that good stuff. Now, while we're playing, I'm going to also be the Timekeeper...since we don't want to be here once the sun goes down and everyone's gone home for dinner!

(humor relaxes the brain and makes kids more open to what we are saying)

>>"So, here are the 3 things I ask of you. Ready? OK:

(eye contact and smile, engaging the right brain in our kids)

1. Play safe!
2. Have fun together and with others!
3. Listen carefully for my Time Check. When you hear me say, "OK! There's a few minutes to Takeoff...get in your last slide, your last swing, last ball kick, we'll be right ON TIME for departure! I'll call out, "OK, all aboard! Let's head home, everyone!" and we'll all run to the car. In the car, we can talk together and play word games or I Spy..."

(left brain loves the sequence, and right brain is visualizing this), (reinforcing the togetherness aspect is lost in coercive dynamics)
(connection is balm; make going home a fun thing, not the end of play, but the continuation of the feeling that play brings which is joy an connection. They will be more enthusiastic about setting the table and helping with dinner.)

I'm not one for scripting.

But sometimes, it's good to read an example of something to get the feeling behind the words. Use your own words. Always. Or it isn't coming from you. You may have to use new words. That reflect new feelings. Experiment. Listen for their responses. ENGAGE. That's one of my favorite words in parenting...and I use it in every single workshop I've ever taught.

OK so here's the flip side of that transaction:

"OK! Fine, I'll take you to the park. BUT...if you don't listen to me, we'll turn right around and go home. Do you understand me? I swear it. I have one hour. Get in the car now or we won't go. (they don't move) OK, we're staying here. (they protest) I said get in the car or we won't go. (they dawdle) That's it, we're not going! (they scramble; you're fed up; but you go)

(at the park) It's time to go home now! (no response) Hey! Did you hear me? Get down now. Alright, you know what? I'm leaving. Bye. (you feel angry, taken advantage of, and your body is shut down, you spend the rest of the car ride with at least one child crying and you yelling over her that you warned her etc.)
(in the car) That's the last time we're going to the park until you can learn to listen. (you make dinner in a fit of frustration, while the kids fight, whine to you, ignore requests for cooperative help, and you feel angry, forsaken and want to escape through the chimney)

This isn't the "wrong" way to parent. It's the draining way. I have deep love for families, parents and children everywhere. I don't want us to feel drained. I want us to feel empowered, inspired, jazzed, confident, connected, grateful, loved, loving, and fiercely proud of the families we're helping to grow.

I want us to feel healthy.

I want us to know that although coercion may be "the way the world works"...it doesn't work well.

I want us to believe that we can be great communicators. I don't think many parents believe in their ability to communicate their values, their needs, their fears and wishes in appropriate ways, their disappointment and concerns in ways that don't unintentionally shame their kids.

We are not stuck on two polar ends of the communication spectrum: not saying what we mean...or not meaning what we say. No. We can communicate our heart's intent. There's one thing we need to do that:

To access our own heart. For that, coercion cannot be invited to the party. It will overturn the table, crash the fruit punch bowl, and stop the music.

OK, so this moment. After you finish reading this. Get a pen and something to write on. A grocery receipt, even. And, if you feel inclined to, write down the answers to these 5 questions:

1. How do I want my kids to see me?
2. How do I want to feel as a parent?
3. What are the three core values I want to instill in my kids?
4. How do I personally show up in the world living and parenting with these values?
5. What will I choose to see-think-do differently today?

Here's one last bit to ponder.

Irony is this: when we use coercion on someone else, our child, we are, in essence, coercing ourselves. If I don't give my kid an ultimatum, I will look like a pushover parent. If I don't coerce him now, he will think he can ignore me.

When we get the "results" we want through coercion, we might feel strangely disconnected and dissatisfied inside. Why? Our child listened. But not to us. He listened to our coercion. That's not who we are. We're left feeling more like a beleaguered police man that catches people breaking the law, rather than a loving parent who teaches inherent law-abiding through connection and, is therefore, truly heard and felt by her child.

Lu Hanessian c2012

This 'leveraging play' approach to classroom management and parenting. This well-intended albeit futile attempt at behavior modification through the threat of the ultimate loss (next to death and taxes)...

Play.

It's our birthright to play.
It's in our DNA.
It's how we learn.
It's how we connect.
It's how we heal.
It's not only our right, but our rite. Of passage. Of development. Of humanity.
It can change our chemistry. In a matter of minutes.
It can mend broken fences, reunite so-called enemies, scrub out judgment and blame.
It's. that. powerful.

Imagine, now, holding that close to our chest like a wild card, a clipboard, a shield... keeping it from a child unless he _________.

It doesn't matter what he's not doing, what he shouldn't be doing, what we want him to do or stop doing, or any other variation on the theme of behavior, children and the adults who care about them.

Play ought to be a non-negotiable. Sacred. Like love.

We don't dare say, "Do your homework or no love for you."

We wouldn't say, "Don't talk to me like that or you don't get love for the next week."

We don't say, "If you don't sit still and stop talking in class, you won't be able to have love today."

Play is love.

It is. That's hard science. They both light up the same part of the brain. Play releases the same hormones and neurotransmitters in our bodies and brains.

Here's the irony...

We can't stop play from happening inside us. Sure, we can control other people's behaviors through fear and threats, but it's short-sighted and kind of falsely omnipotent of us to think we can stop a hormone from being produced in a human brain. Stop brain juice from flowing with the palm of our firm hand.

STOP!

NO PLAY!

NO HAPPY HORMONE FOR YOU!

NO SEROTONIN AND EXCITATORY SYNAPTIC ACTIVITY!

OK, so why do we do this?

We do this *sigh* because I think we, on some level, some primal, longing, innocent, nostalgic, envious level, we know how powerful and inspiring and motivating and rejuvenating and beautiful play is for a human being. For a child. And I suspect it terrifies us to let it be. To let it do what it came here to do. Grow us. Heal us. Coax our minds out of hiding and unlock the floodgates of joy and belonging.

Holy Hopscotch! That can be downright threatening to adults...for those grown-ups who were denied that right, who lost their own inner GPS of joy through a painful play deficit that was not intended but was the unfortunate outcome of play leveraging.

Bargain something else. Arrange plans with other mechanics of trust and negotiation. Teach kind lessons via other pathways. Build good boundaries that can flex with our shared imperfection. Give and take other commodities that suit the context, that don't squander the other person's sense of dignity or significance.

But, don't, for PLAY's sake, leverage play! For the sake of furthering the species, for the sake of our children who will have nearly every other aspect of their childhood scrutinized, marginalized, diminished, pressurized, tested, traded and upgraded for older models....

Please, don't leverage play.

That's the heart of your child. Preserve it.

It's your heart too. Want to know something kind of extraordinary? If we can be bold and courageous enough to defend our child's "multi-purpose" need for play, and we pay really good, close attention to that process in our child...we will find our own buried joy and need for play get reawakened, reignited. And it will offer us all the same benefits as it gives our child.

That's when that "behavior" you wanted to change through withholding play will disappear.

Yeah, play does that, too.

Lu Hanessian c 2012

"AHHH!" screamed the first woman, flailing her arms in the air to avoid the bee.
"AHHH!" echoed the second, almost in unison, with no awareness of any bee.
They flapped their arms, did a little dance in the doorway and left.

Nobody got stung. One woman was relieved. The other confused. Both had freaked out for three seconds and went on their merry way. It was a perfect example of how contagious our emotions are. When one is terrified, the other feels the fear too. When someone is laughing uncontrollably, we smile, chuckle, and start giggling too. Someone yawns, and we can start to feel a yawn stretching across our own face.

When our kids scream suddenly, our hearts race. Of course. We are wired for love...and for fear.

But, what about the less eventful moments, the emotional contagion in our every day lives, in our parenting, in our relationships?

Notice anything off in your house when you are feeling lousy? When you're worried or preoccupied? When you're there but not there? Our kids not only notice it, but often behave in ways that show their confusion, anxiety, fear, the emotions of disconnection--in their innocent efforts to let us know they've noticed something's amiss, and that it can feel painfully uncomfortable, even frightening, for them.

Amazing that a baby can sense his mother's emotions, that he *must* sense them. We are wired to detect each other's states from the moment we are born. For surviving, sure. But, really for thriving. We make relationship together, after all. Dr. Ed Tronick's famous "Still Face" experiment (check it out on Youtube) is a living, breathing testament to how instantly a 12 month-old can sense a shift in her mother's facial expression. In just a few seconds, the very aware child is beside herself with tears of distress. As if to say, "What is happening here? You're here but your face is blank, and I'm scared."

With all this wonderful co-created interconnectivity, you'd think that we would find it easy to avert pain and stress between us, to catch conflict with one hand as it's zooming across the room, like a super hero grabbing a lighting bolt before it strikes. 

But, just as we are human enough to notice someone's emotion, to feel their anxiety and stress, we are also human enough to take it on. To assume it as ours. To lose some of our footing and place in the face of another person's struggle. We aren't born with boundaries. In fact, the opposite is true. Babies don't develop a sense that they are separate human beings from their mothers until at least six months old.

When our child is in overt distress, we can't help but feel and react to it.
Sometimes, we react in distress too. Sometimes, that distress is wrapped in anger, shrouded in shame.
When our child is not herself, but preoccupied and anxious, churning and worried, we can't help but pick up on that too. Sometimes, our child is worried and anxious...because she picked up on our anxiety and worry. It's hard for people to know where the contagion begins. Harder still, for many people, to realize that it's not the other person's fault for stressing us out.

How can we blame ourselves for something our brains are designed to do: sniff out trouble?
We're built for that kind of...*sponginess.* We soak up each other's emotions. The big oil spills. Or the subtle, slow leaks.

If all of us shared the exact same secure attachment story, reliable responsiveness from infancy and a safe place to call home, this spongey love would not be a problem. In other words, it would just be the way we operate. Emotional contagion is, on the one hand, the good stuff of our shared humanity.

But, we don't all share the same story.

Though there are many shared themes, there are as many stories as there are people on this planet. Depending on how we experienced our relationships early on, we developed certain ways of showing up in the world. Certain unwritten rules, codes of conduct, ways of communicating and expressing that reflect our basic internal sense of self and safety. That sponge becomes thicker or thinner, more or less absorbent, more or less capable of durability depending on how much emotion was tolerated, expressed, suppressed, avoided, encouraged...what our parents and caregivers "did" with their emotions. And ours.

The child who grew up with parental volatility and unpredictability might have developed a super-absorbent sponge where he necessarily had to notice every tiny clue and cue, from a raise eyebrow to a sigh to a parent's tone and gait, posture and 'vibe'. Hypervigilant kids tend to be the ones holding and *absorbing* a great deal of the family stress. They are ready, prepared for sudden changes, on the alert, anticipating stress before it happens. The sponge is already full even when things are quiet.

A child who felt invisible to parents who took physical care but unwittingly ignored her emotional needs may have buried her own pain, feelings and needs to such an extent that her ability to sense or pick up on emotions is buried too, and may seem oblivious to other people's feelings, as well as her own. Or may become so wrapped up in her own feelings and unmet needs that she makes them the focus of every relationship to make sure people "see" her.

Back to our own emotionally distressed child. Her moods are all over the place. He is insisting on something despite your request to stop. She is yelling and crying. He is pacing and ranting. She feels restless. He feels anxious. She is telling you to get lost, that you don't get it, that you hate her. He is shut down, unwilling to talk, angry and sullen about everything. He is fighting with his sister. She is putting down her brother.

You may feel powerless and helpless and alternately angry, afraid and numb.

We can't parent our children with the strength, confidence and connection we long for while simutaneously soaking up, storing and recycling all their negative emotions along the way. The two are mutually exclusive. It's impossible for us to exhale with joy and ease, to feel good and light-hearted, to be the calm inside the storm when we are also spending all our energy getting caught up their stress to compound our own brewing cauldron of internal turmoil.

"Soaking up our kids' stress" and "supporting them through struggle" are not the same process, practice or intention. What can we do with our sticky, spongey issues?

5 things to keep in mind:

1. If you soak up stress, remember to...wring it out. Do you take on the other person's emotional state and have a hard time letting it go after the other person feels better? You know how it happens, right? Someone is having an end-of-the-world meltdown, and you come in to help calm that person down and see the light, then he walks away feeling better while you feel like you just swallowed a wild boar and it didn't quite go down. Your chest is heavy. You feel forsaken, spent and resentful. It wasn't yours to hold on to. You came in to help. Great. Remember to hit the reset button on your own internal thermostat. There a million ways to do it. Choose the ways that suit you best. Exercise. Painting. Yoga. Singing. Time alone with a book. Creative writing. Flamenco dancing. Journaling. Hot bath. Your call.

2. If you can't quite define the blurry boundary line just yet, at least recognize when you're starting to cross it. Can you notice when you begin to get worked up and anxious even when your child isn't in the room? Make a note of that. Say, "Ah, there it is." Breathe in and out slowly a few times without going anywhere. Become a personal boundary detective. Get out your invisible chalk. Draw the line in your mind. This is where I'd like to define space for myself. This is where I'd like to draw the line between loving and draining. Here's how I want to feel after being in stressful situations. Here's how I want to wring out the sponge. This is how I'd like to help through guidance or step back or support without sliding down my own slope.

3. When you notice your child escalating, take a second and notice how you feel yourself escalating too. Is it your racing heart? Your throat closing? Your stomach in knots? Just the act of taking a moment to focus your attention on that part of you that is closing down, revving up or wanting to angrily act out in the presence of your child's emotions can help reduce your own stress and slowly change your sponge factor. Noticing is powerful. Put yourself on notice. Kindly.

4. Remind yourself that you are built for sponginess....but that doesn't mean you have to be the Super Absorber for Everyone. That can do a good mom in. Taking on the stress crazies for a loved one throws your brain into neural chaos. True dat. Your poor hippocampi shrink. You can't remember where you put your keys. (They're in the fridge.) Your brain might think you *like* anxiety, so it can set the thermostat inside you on HIGH. Don't settle for burning good energy in the wrong place. Conflicts come and go. Stress is not a lifestyle. Once we absorb so much of it, we can feel overpowered by it. But, you can always choose to...

5. Lower your stress with restorative practices. What brings you back to center? It doesn't matter if you lie on the grass and stare at clouds for 10 minutes, watch old Ellen comedy routines on Youtube until your sides hurt, play Lego on your belly with your kids, eat dark chocolate in slow motion or get together with a group of friends for emotional and spiritual support. If you don't consciously opt to reduce your stress on a regular basis, it (stress) will figure you want to keep it around. It will oblige--and accumulate. Eventually, your sponge can feel like a dark thundercloud that hangs over you ready to pour down with a vengeance. You know that kind of rain. It's not good for the grass.

We can learn something from the sudden, split second screaming duet by two bee-avoidant strangers passing each other in the doorway. We are vulnerable. We affect each other. All the boundaries in the world won't prevent what our brains were built for: sharing experiences, sensing emotions, mirroring and reflecting, connecting and responding...and, yes, reacting.

Our choice is not to berate ourselves or to live poker-faced, stoic, unaffected by the emotional highs and lows of those around us, but to recognize ourselves in the storms of our lives, get to know our own stories and stressors, know the same in our loved ones, and remember to wring out our sponges.

Copyright 2012 Lu Hanessian

Courage comes from the word "coeur" which means heart.
When we feel "en"-couraged, we have heart. We feel heartened. Right?

What about when we don't feel en-couraged? Do we feel...dis-couraged?
Disheartened...

If courage is really about the heart, we can reframe its intention and purpose to be something entirely different from bravery or gutsiness in the face of fear or challenge.

What does courage have to do with parenting? What part of parenting DOESN'T call up our courage! 

The courage to parent is "heart" of connection, as I see it. I think this heart is wrapped in our "courage" to face ourselves in our children's eyes, to embrace all our struggles with grit and grace, fear and love, just as we would do for a dear friend or a loved one. Parenting takes our profound courage partly because we have the ultimate, daunting responsibility of loving our precious children with all our senses for the ultimate purpose of...letting them go.

That, my friends, is extreme courage. True grit. Amazing grace.

Coeur-age. Heartage. Heart...age. Every age takes courage: pregnancy, infancy, toddlerhood, school age, teens, young adults and beyond. Not just our child's age...but our own. We are not the same at 20 that we are at 30, at 40, at 50 and so forth. We need courage to age, to grow, to develop, at the same time that we are raising our children.

How can we grow ourselves, we wonder? Where is there time to work on us? There is no time needed, no extracurricular activity required, because the core curriculum, so to speak, for self-growth IS parenting! As each crisis arises, each challenge, each stressor, each mistake, each bump in the road, we are called forth to grow.

All we need is our heart. Courage.
Broken heart? Lost courage.
Hearts heal. Courage is restored, refueled, reclaimed in the process of heart-healing.

How do our kids help US with this process?

Whew, every day, every moment that they press, pull, tug, push, scream, cry, exquisitely and requisitely need us in their rich, raw, real and human way, messy, urgent, mournful, protests for more courage.
More courage!
Now!

And we bristle. We buck and resist. I don't have more courage right now! We want to howl. And sometimes we do. Howl. And feel dis-couraged. Losing courage. Losing heart. I gave you all I had! I have no more left! You took all my courage! I have to get some more...somewhere, somehow. Why is parenting so hard, we lament.

We get so stuck on misbehavior. Make it stop! Make it go away! Make them stop! Make them listen! As if "misbehavior" was the tar pit of parenthood. The booby trap. The boulder in the road.

In "Children: The Challenge," Rudolf Dreikurs says "A misbehaving child is a discouraged child." Many parent educators, including me, agree that every behavior is communication.

I have a few thoughts on this that I'd like to add to the mix:

1. If a "misbehaving" child is a discouraged child, then, I suggest that a "misbehaving" parent--angry, reactive, explosive, shut down, resistant, reactive--is a discouraged parent too.

2. The word *misbehavior* cannot truly pave a path to a child's true underlying need so we can know what's (not) being communicated...until we actually choose to stop using the word misbehavior...and consider replacing the whole idea of misbehavior with the notion of "struggle."

3. Struggle is not instantly synonymous with shame, but the word misbehavior is, on the other hand, rife with feelings of shame. Depending on our own stories, each of us can feel the word in our throat, in our stomach, in our salivary glands. It hits each of us differently. The word mis-behavior does not invite a sense of open-ness, hope, compassion or togetherness. The word is more of a decision. A judgment. We reserve it for children, as if they are another species from big people.

4. We know from brain science and interpersonal neurobiology that shame has its own very real biochemistry in the brain. When we perceive a child as "misbehaving," we may say and do things "to" that child because we are unconsciously reacting to our own stories of misbehavior. Hence, the shame. And the shaming. Intended or not. Mis-behavior & shame can become intertwined when our reactions, anger, and control-tactics escalate along with our child's reaction to ours.

It's hard to find and hold onto our courage--heart--in the face of our charged emotions around "mis-behavior."

But, how might we perceive and respond differently if we saw, in our child, the struggle?

Struggling is not only human, but a hallmark of our vulnerability and our development. After all, it takes courage to grow. Courage to struggle. Courage to see beyond the struggle. Courage to forgive and guide and take cues and allow it all to filter down and make sense at the end of the day.

So, let's see...

A *struggling* child may be a discouraged child.
A *struggling* parent may be a discouraged parent.

A struggling child needs *courage*.
A struggling child may have *heart that's hurting*.

A struggling parent needs *courage*.
A struggling parent may have a *heart that's hurting*.

Different from the confines of "misbehavior," I think.

We all struggle. We all fall apart a few times in our lives, no? We all say things we don't mean or sometimes say "mean" things. When. We're. Struggling. I deeply believe that when we can shift our mindset in 2 ways...

1. See our child's struggle the same way we see our own...
2. See our child's "behavior" as a reflection of dis-courage the same way we see our own...

...then we can truly open our 'coeurs,' our hearts to "mis-behavior"--our child's and our own--and call it for what it is: a painful longing for the courage to meet our shared need to be seen, heard and known. ###

Riffing on courage...

Lu Hanessian C 2012

The article came out today with some quotes from me, Robin Grille and other parent educators and authors around the world.

I thought I'd share with you what I had sent her. These are her questions and my answers.  

HOW WOULD DEFINE ATTACHMENT PARENTING?

LH: I think of attachment parenting as "parenting with attachment in mind." What does that mean? When we understand the powerful science of how we attach and why we attach, parenting with that science is really about trusting our own bodies, brains and relationship to grow our child (and ourselves) into emotionally healthy, connected, compassionate human beings.

Science tells us very clearly that attachment is, actually, a motivational system. In other words, we have one need when we're born: to attach. Why? For survival, sure, but more than than, for our development and growth. We now know that healthy attachment means robust brain growth in the first few years of life which directly organizes the architecture of the brain by wiring it for peace, calm, connection and trust. So parenting with attachment in mind is to grow our child--and ourselves--through the power of empathic relationship.

WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS CONCEPT?

LH: My first book, "Let the Baby Drive" (St. Martin's Press, 2004), chronicled my journey, our universal journey, of discovering who my child is, what drives him, what is motivating his behavior, reactions and emotional responses so that I could parent him according to his nature. I had to get to know my son for me to understand how he felt, what he needed and why he reacted as he did in different moments. In doing so, I had to get to know myself better. This could only happen in the context of our relationship--because I was now his mother. When we are curious to know who our child is, we cultivate empathy not just for our child, but for each other. We model empathic understanding within the relationship just by, as I call it, "putting ourselves in our baby's booties."

Now that I have 13 years of life experience with my own two children, I can see the effects of practicing this process of co-creating this parenting journey with empathy, connection and lots of trust. I've had to learn to trust myself, along the way, and, of course, I've learned to trust my children to guide me with their cues, sometimes messy emotions and struggles. We all need the same thing: to feel seen, heard and loved for who we are. Parenting with attachment in mind is really about living and loving with this basic human longing to connect, and parenting with this central theme. Connection is what guides our kids, not our rigid rules.

HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THE CRITICS (IF YOU'VE FACED THEM AT ALL) WHEN YOU DECIDED TO RAISE YOUR BABY IN A DIFFERENT WAY THAN SOCIETY GENERALLY EXPECTS?

LH: There are critics in all walks of life. Parenthood. Films. Books. Art. Education. Sports. Fashion. You name it, there will be at least one person who doesn't agree with your approach, your ideas or your choices. I do think parenting tends to breed a different kind of criticism.
From what I've observed, I think there's culture-to parent criticism and there's parent-to-parent criticism. If a mother is living uniquely, following her own confident path, and it is not the common road, the culture tends to balk.Criticism can come from well-meaning relatives or friends who want to justify their own choices.
If a mother weaned her baby at 4 months or decided against breastfeeding completely, she may harshly criticize another breastfeeding mother for nursing an older baby for what she perceives to be "too long."

There is no right vs. wrong argument that can ever be won and settled.
There will always be parenting camps, debates and disagreements, and when we get caught up in this tension and conflict over "who is the better mom" we lose sight of our purpose on the journey--as well as our confidence in our own capacity for connection and joy.

As a new mother, I remember how criticism initially triggered feelings of anxiety in me. I realized I was not alone. So many mothers felt anxious when others questioned their good judgment or judged their baby as "good" or not based on whether he cried or "spoiled" if you picked him up when he cried.
To a new mother who is attuned to her baby's needs, these criticisms were not only not helpful, but isolating and alienating. We need support, respect and compassion, not a warning of how our parenting choice to nurse or tend to our baby's cries at night might negatively affect our child in five or twenty years.
Stress may be a natural part of life and growth, but this kind of stress does not promote growth and wellbeing but drains our energy and promotes defense and self-doubt. This is how taking criticism personally can end up isolating us as mothers.

When people questioned my choices as a new mother 13 years ago, from sleeping to nursing to feeding to school and parenting, sometimes I tried to offer explanations, and at other times I offered up the science behind my parenting. And sometimes, I joked with them.
There were those who wanted to learn, be open and receptive, and those who could have been shown the earth was round and still believed it was flat because that's what they see with their eyes.

The more we know about the brain and development in recent years, the more I believe our culture and cultures around the world will slowly gradually shift their misperceptions about children to accepting--and simply living--the science of love and empathy and practicing peace.

PEDIATRICS AROUND THE WORLD SAY THAT YOU HAVE TO TEACH YOUR BABY TO BE ABLE TO SLEEP ALONE AND YOU SHOULD BREASTFEED THE BABY IN BREAKS 3 HOURS APART FROM EACH OTHER. DO YOU BELIEVE THIS IS ALL WRONG?

LH: There are decades of research and studies now proving the benefits of having baby sleep "near" his mother. The science is undeniable, from immune system advantages to better vagal tone, activation of the parasympathetic nervous system to creating a child's lower stress response. There is one scientific fact that we can't deny and it's this: a baby who sleeps in close "proximity" to his mother, in other words, not alone in another room, is better off in the short and long run in terms of physical, mental, emotional and relational health. As a baby grows, as parents and babies grow in their relationship, we are able to adjust our arrangements as we feel is best.

Babies need to internalize a sense of security and safety in their early weeks, months and years so that their brains grow optimally. This is the newest and most powerful science of the last few years: we are the architects of our baby's brain.

We build this architecture of peace, calm and connection through the way we respond to our child's cues, cries and needs. It's not about answering every cue perfectly, but rather about being in relationship with our child--imperfect, trusting, forgiving, and always growing and shifting.

WHY DOES ATTACHMENT PARENTING WORK AND WHY IS IT BETTER FOR BABIES?

LH: When we parent with attachment in mind, we are not focused on what works or what's better for baby, but instead, we are deeply trusting the relationship process to grow our child and us--together. It isn't a "way" of parenting, but rather that we decide to create optimal relationship through the human trials, triumphs and errors of togetherness, trusting that we are designed to respond to each other's needs in order to grow and thrive.

For me, the key is this: when we know that our brains and bodies are operating at this amazing unseen level of explosive growth *just* by being in empathic relationship, we can realize that understanding the power of attachment is really the very heart of human connection.

Attachment research has spanned the world, from the early work of Mary Ainsworth, Mary Main in the U.S., John Bowlby in England, and the powerful studies done over the last few decades, shows the enormous importance of parenting with attachment in mind. This is not to be confused with a "style" of parenting which many assume to be attachment parenting, but rather the "science of attachment" which informs the way we can choose to parent--with empathy, with attentiveness, with mindfulness, with curiosity and connection. Ultimately, AP is about growing healthy, caring, kind human beings who can go out in the world and thrive.

HERE IN BRAZIL WE KNOW VERY LITTLE ABOUT AP. DO YOU THINK IT IS EASY FOR A MOTHER WHO GETS TO KNOW THE CONCEPT TO DO ALL THE THINGS AP SAYS IN A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE ARE NOT USED TO SLEEP WITH CHILDREN OR BREASTFEED AFTER 2 YEARS?

LH: I don't believe that parenting is prescriptive. When parents feel that they have to follow rules for loving and raising their kids, invariably, we will feel "less than" or "not enough." There's a fallout from this search for how-to and prescriptive parenting: we lose touch with our own intuition.

Parenting with attachment in mind is not right or wrong, but is about intuitively trusting in our innate capacity for connection and our built-in neurobiological relational system with our child. It's not solely and narrowly defined by co-sleeping, baby-wearing and breastfeeding, but about responding with empathy, desire for connection and understanding.

All of the ways we respond---through picking up our baby when he cries, being present and close when possible, seeing our child's needs as important and legitimate and understanding our own emotions and reactions---are as individual as each of us. There is no wrong way to love our child. And love never spoils.

SOME BLOGS SAID THERE IS A "MOTHER'S WAR" IN THE U.S. AND IT BECAME A LITTLE WORSE WITH THE COVER OF TIME. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS SO-CALLED WAR?

LH: There are definite hot-button issues that have recently divided mothers in this country: at-home versus at-work, bottle versus breast, early weaning versus child-led or long-term breastfeeding, gentle discipline versus spanking, and so forth. I don't like the term "mommy wars," but the media has coined it and it has stuck. Various outlets in the US media do tend to polarize through provocative images and misleading or inflammatory headlines.

But there's another thing some media outlets do: they only tell a very small piece of a story. What TIME did by using that cover, besides sell a lot of magazines, was bring an important conversation to the foreground, but right now it seems to be a conversation without any clear resolution.

With TIME's emotionally volatile question " Are you Mom enough?" the button was pushed further. TIME obviously knew it would guilt mothers and create a national stir, but this is one area I feel is most destructive for mothers especially.
Nobody benefits from feeling "less than" or "not enough" as a mother. I know so many mothers who already carry so much guilt, and doubt their own choices constantly. With this kind of headline and cover, it intensifies the guilt and deepens the anxiety over choices and how they affect our children's wellbeing. And it does nothing to elevate the discussion, educate, or inspire people. It doesn't celebrate mothers' freedom to choose what's best for their families.

It also misses a huge opportunity to share the robust science of attachment that has only been discovered in recent years--research that shows the correlation between sensitive, attuned, nurturing parenting and connected, healthy, well-adjusted children in adulthood.

One important finding from the latest research in interpersonal neurobiology is this: the best predictor of a child's wellbeing is a parent's self-understanding. This is the core of secure attachment. ###

by Lu Hanessian, Copyright 2012

Modern neuroscience has found its way to ancient intuition.

Neuroscience-of-attachment researchers tell us that when we parent our child, we are intuiting every moment, *before we are conscious of our thoughts, what is going on our our relationship, in ourselves and with our child.  

In other words, our brain/body knows what drives our child--and us--even before we are aware that we know. And in that knowing, our brain can release cortisol before we even realize we're stressed, worried or anxious.

Intuition, researchers say, is embodied cognition. It's our body's and brain's way of knowing internal data from our own insula, from our right brain, from the powerful world between our central and autonomic nervous systems...and acting on it.

Neuroscientists reveal that intuition is our body's wisdom, deeply embedded from our experiences, communicated via our cells, circuits and systems of how we're made, how we've processed our stories or stores our traumas, and how we function in relationship and in the world.

But, intuition, I've come to learn over the past 13 years of parenting (intuiting) must be nurtured and strengthened through the practice of living and trusting in it. When we don't practice our capacity to intuit in relationship, we lose our conscious ability to get "into it."

Intuition, our golden compass, can get buried under years of sediment. How do we unearth it? How might it remain buried?

I have long been intrigued by what kinds of habits, practices, thought patterns, dynamics and ways of relating, living and loving might tend to *block* our capacity to foster and trust our intuition?

Here's what I've come up with. My short list of Intuition Blockers:

1. anxiety/stress (unresolved emotional traumas, fears)
2. unresolved anger (toward someone, one’s self or a situation)
3. worrying about the future (fear of choices backfiring)
4. rehashing the past (holding onto past events, wounds or wishes)
5. resentment (fueling a perceived injustice)
6. multi-tasking (keeping ourselves from being in the moment)
7. dwelling on criticism, mistakes (feeding self-doubt, shame)
8. trying to get needs met by negative people (chronic disappointment)
9. spending energy focusing on or controlling others (keeping focus off of us)
10. wanting immediate answers (anxiety of ambiguity)
11. recurring conflicts with others (gridlocks, power struggles, blame games)
12. rigid thinking (not questioning one’s opinions and perceptions)
13. chronic chaos (internal or external)

What preserves our intuition? What kinds of practices, thoughts, activities and approaches to living, learning and loving can help us reclaim our intuitive voice...and sustain it even in the storm?

My short list of Intuition Preservers?

1. surrender (as opposed to resistance)
2. self-questioning (as opposed to self-doubt)
3. empathy “If I were in his shoes…”
4. seeing others as they are (not as you wish them to be)
5. using fear as a navigational tool (to confront as opposed to avoid issues)
6. trust in your child’s needs (and stop worrying if they’ll backfire down the road)
7. listening to the sound of your own voice (tone, volume, choice of words, messages, contradictions, silence, etc. )
8. knowing your body and how & where it reacts to/expresses/holds stress
9. letting go of negative or unrealistic expectations
10. remembering your dream themes and how you felt
11. staying present (uni-tasking helps
12. extending yourself in service to others (out of the 'foxhole' and into community!)
13. prayer/meditation (balm for our frayed spirits)

Trusting our intuition is a cultivated process, one that is cultivated in relationship--with our children, our loved ones, our friends, and the world.

*Trust your gut.*

That's not just good philosophy. It's the science of our body's wisdom and the blueprint for our biology of love.

Lu Hanessian © 2012
www.letthebabydrive.com
www.parent2parentu.com

We are quick to judge others who become addicted under stress without knowing the painful reality of how stress can change the brain and how trauma affects the central nervous system and how despair and fear look for exit signs and fixes in the face of loneliness and fear. We assume that people make "bad choices" out of a rational, calm mind, instead of seeing the runaway train and realizing that they never found the brakes.

We forget that they were children once. We have no idea how their life experiences, their early attachments, and their social-emotional development were shaped and co-created along the way.

We see the troubled adult, not the scared child.
We make presumptions about what people are "supposed to do" in difficult--what they should have done. We are quick to condemn the choice.

We assume a person can take simply take the left turn instead of the right. "He should have done X" "She shouldn't have done Y..."

It's never that easy. For some of us, laden with a different blend of anxiety, pressure, stress, expectation and backstory and a brain/mind and body that learned a way of coping, it's not as simple as we may believe.

We want our children to grow up with the self-compassion to pace themselves, to not strive for universal approval from people who will not stand by them in their hour of grief. As parents, we must begin by not condemning ourselves to perfectionism, to suppressing our needs and emotions, to denying the impact of our own story on our fullest expression of self.

Whitney, Michael, and all the others we never hear about who die alone...you tasted fame, fortune, adulation, pressure to keep up, the myth of perfection, and the relentless push to be somebody the world created. But, you probably never really knew peace, contentment, simplicity, tranquility, and true freedom in your lifetimes. We learn from you and others who suffered and never lived to relieve it.

But what does it mean? It's a phrase of assumptions.

It's not that children are resilient, and say, adults are not. Or children are resilient...as compared to daffodils. Or polar bears. Or some other living species.

When we hear that "children are resilient"...it's usually in the context of trauma, disappointments, losses, family challenges, divorce, painful struggles, crying-it-out sleep training, as in, Children who experience these stressors can survive them because they are "resilient" by virtue of the fact that they're...children.  

When we assume resilience in babies, we may also assume they don't feel pain, don't remember pain, don't hold onto pain in their (right) brains and bodies.
When we assume resilience in toddlers, we assume they don't internalize unhealed separation fears, don't remember when we lashed out or numbed out, and assume they must have gotten over those stresses because they are still smiling.

Sometimes, we assume that our child's resilience is a given in the face of our own old traumas, our family history or our current stresses, and in so doing, we assume our kids don't feel our anxiety, don't come into the world already influenced by the previous nine months, don't absorb our fear, don't take our rage personally, don't adjust their own emotional thermostat down or up according to how much heat we're comfortable with.

What if we thought of resilience in less *compensatory* terms...and looked at it, instead, in *restorative* terms? Like, resilience as a brilliant way that we human beings restore connection and emotional health after times of turmoil, (big or little t) trauma and relational imbalance.

What I've learned from research, neuroscience, parenting and life experience is this:

--Resilience is not something children have. It's something children learn in relationship.
--Just because we can't see unprocessed emotional trauma on the innocent face of a young child doesn't mean she is resilient.
--If we have "made it through" our own difficulties, as adults, it's because we may have poignantly learned to adapt and protect ourselves in the face of our attachment wounds and losses.
--Resilience is the "wellspring" of our "interactive sloppiness," as esteemed researcher Ed Tronick says. Look up his "Still Face Experiment" video on You Tube. He explored what emotional stress, reconnection...and resilience looks like in a baby when he knows he has lost the attunement from and with his mama, found her loving gaze again, and goes right back into relationship without having to build in internal defense for fear it will happen again.

Our resilience, as we have thought of it, is so much more than coping. Or compensating. Or surviving.

Resilience is the brain's process of growing new neural pathways for empathy and peace, the result of the mind's capacity to keep hope alive and our relational desire to trust in each other.

When we think of a baby as resilient, maybe we can invite a new way of looking at this tiny person: instead of rationalizing that babies can take a lot of distress and still manage to grow, we might see a baby as having the immense internal reserve of biological drive to connect and therefore will make bids for that connection to re-align himself with his parent's (right) brain, mind and body...

...to cultivate resilience in himself...and us.

Perhaps then, resilience is not just how we learn to cope but how we preserve hope. Not as a defensive longing, but as that bright flame within each of us, regardless of our story, that doesn't go out no matter how strong the wind blows.

--Lu Hanessian