Podcast Episode #14 – Is Your Parenting Leading to Secure Attachment?
Attachment and Healthy Development
Maybe you’ve seen the articles and memes, or heard the jokes that portray attachment parenting as extreme, unattainable, and actually harmful to the parents that attempt it.
Is attachment parenting realistic? Is it desirable? Is it only for privileged parents? Or is it attainable for all? Must we meet the many “requirements” of attachment parenting for our kids to be happy and healthy? What does it really mean to be an attached parent?
Parents today are being given mixed messages about attachment parenting. With heavy workloads, lack of support, children with high needs, and conflicting parenting advice, many parents feel attachment parenting requires too much of them.
The truth
The truth is, responsiveness to stress and upset and attunement to big emotions builds secure attachment – and this can be created consciously at any age or family stage. And it’s actually the high needs children that can be best supported through this style of parenting.
Despite the daily pressure many parents experience, making the choice to tune in to children’s emotions with acceptance and empathy can build the secure attachment that helps children feel safe and secure. Creating emotional health in this way sets children up for resiliency and happiness.
Surprisingly, recent research shows that 40% of children are actually insecurely attached, which has far-reaching negative consequences.
Are you unknowingly using common parenting practices that actually lead to detachment with your children?
What is actually necessary to build and maintain secure attachment with your kids?
In today’s podcast, we’ll unpack what attachment parenting looks like in everyday life at different stages, what’s actually required, and what the benefits are.
If you’re looking to help your children feel safe and secure now, and then grow into emotionally healthy and thriving adults, you’ll want to listen in on my second conversation with Tracy Cassels.
Resources from this episode:
About Tracy Cassels
Tracy Cassels, PhD is the founder of Evolutionary Parenting. She obtained her B.A. in Cognitive Science from the University of California, Berkeleym an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the University of British Columbia, and her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, also at the University of British Columbia. Her academic works have been published in many peer-reviewed journals including Psychological Assessment, PLoS One, Personality and Individual Differences, Midwifery, and more.
Tracy serves as an Adviser to the Children’s Health & Human Rights Partnership, a non-profit agency dedicated to ending routine infant circumcision. She previously worked at the Canadian Council on Learning, a non-profit agency dedicated to researching myriad elements of learning across the lifespan, where her role was to critically analyse educational research to help form policy decisions at local school board and provincial government levels.
Most importantly to her, though, she is a mother to daughter Madeleine (Maddy, age 6), son Theodore (Theo, age baby), stepson Desmond, and wife to husband Brian.
