Does your child look to you to find the way?
As a loving parent you want to lead your child, if only to bed at bedtime. You want to be able to impart your values and goals, especially as your child becomes an adolescent. You want to be the rock in the sometimes stormy emotional sea, giving guidance and comfort at turbulent times.
You want to lead, but is your child following?
It isn't easy being a parent. It would take a lifetime to read all the parenting books available, and we would still be confused, even more so given all the approaches that are out there.
This approach is different.
The answer is in you, in your instinct to protect and nurture your child. In fact, you are the answer. You have everything necessary to build and maintain the kind of connection that keeps your child feeling secure. You don't need a manual, even if your child had come with one.
I'm April Quan, and since 2008 I've been in awe at the way Dr. Gordon Neufeld's simple but profound approach to parenting changes lives. His work is based on the latest attachment and brain research, but resonates with the lives of human families from the earliest of times.
Through the courses I offer and in my consulting, I've had the honour of sharing the parenting journey with some of the most dedicated parents and wonderful people I could ever hope to meet. It has been a joy to help them find confidence in themselves as parents.
If you are in the Toronto area, perhaps we will meet at one of my courses or in individual consultation. I'd love to hear from you. Please sign up to receive email updates on courses and events.
How is Dr. Neufeld's approach different from most others?
Dr. Neufeld is a renowned developmental psychologist. The developmental approach takes the focus off behavioural reinforcement, incentives, and consequences. A lot of problem behaviours are simply immaturity. Our goal is to promote maturation through attachment.
Nature has a plan for development. The role of a parent is to create the right conditions for the plan to unfold. The right conditions result in a child who is securely attached to the people who are responsible for his or her well-being. The plan, the design, contains all the elements of character and maturity we hope to see in a child who is growing up as s/he should: creativity, independence, consideration of others, resilience, resourcefulness, and the list could go on.
If this is Nature's design for the human being, why aren't we all like this?
Because conditions for development need to be right, and when they aren't, maturation can get stuck.
A seed sprouting in the crack of a sidewalk is a testament to the power of life, but the odds are it won't reach its full potential. How much better it would be to have enough room to spread its roots and take solid hold of the earth that could sustain it through life. This attachment is its source of strength. A sign that your child's attachment is secure enough to promote maturation is that s/he trusts in your lead. S/he will have a compass point, you.