Raising a Secure Child:
Creating an Emotional Connection Between You and Your Child
by
Zeynep
Biringen, Ph.D. (Author)
"Every new parent
and professional who works with children should read Raising a
Secure Child. It is that good. Biringen has
distilled many years of experience as a researcher, clinician, and parent
into every page of this well-written book. She knows what
she is talking about. She describes the complex subject of
attachment between parent and child in a way that is useful for the
clinician as well as for the parent. I rarely come across a
work that is so useful in my work as a child psychiatrist."
-- Gerald E. Nelson, M.D., child psychiatrist, author of Good Discipline,
Good Kids and One Minute Scolding
|
FACT: 25% to 30% of "normal" families have emotionally
insecure children -- and are observed to need improvements in the emotional
availability of their parent-child relationships.
The
emotional security of children plays a significant role in shaping their lives
-- from their personality, confidence, success in future relationships,
and mental health -- as they grow. It is widely accepted fact that
children from loving and caring households go on to become well-adjusted adults,
while children from abusive, broken, or neglectful homes often grow up to have
serious emotional or even mental problems. But it is less well known that many
concerned, caring, and well-meaning parents are still observed to need
improvements in their relationships so that their children can grow up to be
emotionally secure.
"Research has repeatedly demonstrated that
emotional connection is a crucial element in a parent-child relationship,"
explains Dr. Zeynep
Biringen,
associate professor at
Colorado State University, and licensed child psychologist. "The benefits of
parents connecting emotionally with their children are
far-reaching.
When parents are emotionally reachable and are able to 'read' the emotional
signals of their kids, the children will perform better in a wide variety of
situations."
|
"Emotionally secure children and
emotionally available relationships help children to become emotionally
intelligent in their lives."
--Zeynep Biringen, Ph.D. |
In her ground-breaking book,
Raising a Secure Child: Creating an
Emotional Connection Between You and Your Child,
Dr. Biringen distills over 40 years of research on attachment and two
decades of research on emotional availability
into a single volume. It is the first book that describes this
scientifically validated work for parents and other caregivers, and
allows parents not only a clear and measurable way to understand if a
child is emotionally secure and his/her emotional needs are being met,
but also a way to assess themselves "on the job." (See Chapter 2 about
which pattern
-- secure or one of
the three insecure patterns -- you and your child might most fit.
See later chapters for strategies on how you can help create security for
your baby, preschooler, school-age child, or adolescent.)
Further, Dr. Biringen provides guidelines about how parents can
improve their emotional availability and understand the needs of
their children so that each of their
relationships with children have the best chance of security, the
cornerstone of early development.
Raising a Secure Child: Creating an
Emotional Connection Between You and Your Child is the first book about
child rearing that is based on massive empirical evidence drawn upon
scientific research from national (and international) child development
laboratories, as well as hundred of hours of parent interviews and
firsthand observations of parent-child interactions in her own laboratory.
Among other things, she explains why emotional availability is a
timeless concept, that when mastered, can help you relate to your
children from the baby years to adolescence. Each of the
"ingredients" of emotional availability (structuring, nonintrusiveness,
and nonhostility) are explained with lively stories and anecdotes of
two-parent mothers, fathers, divorced dads, adoptive mothers, foster
mothers, and so on. (See Chapter 3 and other sections to learn how
"insignificant" daily events can be opportunities to create emotional
availability and security for your child.)
A
parent's emotional availability goes beyond just good or bad
parenting. There are
fine nuances that can spell the difference between emotionally healthy
and secure children, or children that develop serious problems in adolescence and
beyond.
Most parents assume they are raising their children well because they provide their
children with adequate food, shelter, clothing, and education. They do
nice things for their children and take care of other (nonemotional) more
functional aspects of life. However, they are often unaware that providing these things
don't necessarily contribute to a child's emotional security. Just because a
child is born into a so-called normal home, where he/she is adequately provided
for and attended to, it doesn't mean that the child is happy, responsive
or secure.
Many parents do not seem to be aware of anything being remiss in their
relationship with their
child
until adolescence, which often provides the litmus test, and
therein lies the reason for serious deficiencies in child rearing. When a parent is unaware that he or
she is emotionally unavailable, problems have a way of materializing even
when parents try hard in other ways (rarely leaving children with
baby-sitters, supervising numerous playdates, paying tuition for private
school or college, and so on).
Emotional availability between parent (or
caregiver) and child has been the subject of extensive research pioneered by
John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who introduced
attachment theory in the 1950s.
Dr. Biringen's book,
Raising a Secure Child: Creating an
Emotional Connection Between You and Your Child,
is destined to change the way parents relate to children, resulting
in more fulfilling relationships on both sides.
The first part of the book explains the eight general principles of
emotional availability, and uses a wealth of examples to illustrate
these principles in action. If you are a parent (or caregiver),
the book will enable you to:
-
Identify your own strategies
to connect with your child
-
Assess the strengths and
weaknesses in your current parent-child relationship
-
Develop new ways of creating
stronger, more nourishing emotional bonds with children of any age
-
Weave an emotional "safety
net" to help kids feel more secure in a scary world
-
Deal with behavior problems
without creating emotional distance
-
Help your child become
emotionally aware, making friends
-
"Be there" for your child,
especially during times of stress (including divorce and adolescence)
Much more than just another how-to book on parenting,
Raising a Secure Child: Creating an
Emotional Connection Between You and Your Child
explains a crucial and confusing parenting responsibility that for too
long has been misunderstood. Dr. Biringen lays out in concise terms
why raising an emotionally secure child is not only important --
but also simple to do.
"What Dr.
Spock did for children's physical health, Dr. Biringen does for mental
health. A must read for all adults who relate to
children and want them to have emotional intelligence. Learn new
skills for emotional availability between parents and children, which are
also 'life skills' that will help individuals in all their
relationships."
-- Lawrence D. Martel, Ph.D., author of The 7 Secrets of Learning
Revealed and
School Success |
-
How does a parent
provide discipline in ways that help rather than hurt a
child? See page 157.
-
What does it mean when
your baby cries a lot? Does it have to do with
your baby's nature (genetics and/or inborn temperament) --
or the lack of parental nurture (emotional environment)? See
page 110.
-
What nonverbal messages
do children pick up when they listen to words that are said
to them in rage? See page 159.
-
If a child enjoys
emotionally connected relationships with his or her parents,
is the child more likely to pick better friends, withstand
peer pressure and engage in fewer problematic behaviors
during adolescence? See page 174.
-
Is adolescent drug use
more influenced by peers or parents? See page 174.
-
Is the emotional
availability of a mother more highly predictive of a child's
peer relationships than that of the father -- or vice versa?
See page 181.
-
Are children from more
emotionally available parent-child relationships more likely
to be attentive to teachers?
See page 194.
-
If your child shows the
characteristic of wanting to be close with you always, does
it mean that he or she is strongly attached to you?
See page 24.
-
When you encourage your
children to do well in homework, encourage them to eat
enough, or advise them that hanging out with the wrong crowd
can only be bad for them, are you being emotionally
available -- or are you a well-meaning parent who has become
intrusive?
See page 94.
-
What can you do during
the first three months of your child's life that will make
your child cry less by the time he or she is nine months to
a year old? See page 110.
-
Are mothers likely to
relate to their daughters differently than they do their
sons? Is there a difference in the extent to which mothers
are emotionally available toward children of a particular
gender? See pages 118-119.
-
What determines the way
your child will ultimately respond to their world -- their
inborn temperament or the parent-child relationship?
See pages 110-111.
-
How do father-son
interactions score in emotional connection compared to other
parent-child interactions (mother-son, father-daughter,
mother-daughter)? See page 119.
