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Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn, hosted by my parents.
Jess and Scott.
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
Today on the show we have Dr.
Gordon Neufeld, and I'm I can't wait for this conversation.
Dr.
Neufeld is a Vancouver-based developmental psychologist.
with over 50 years of experience with children and youth and those responsible for them.
A foremost authority on child development, Dr.
Neufeld is an international speaker, a best-selling author of Hold On to Your Kids, and a leading interpreter of the developmental paradigm.
Dr.
Neufeld has a widespread reputation for making sense of complex problems and opening doors for change.
While formerly involved in university teaching and private
practice.
Now Dr.
Newfeld spends his time devoted to teaching and training others, including educators and helping professionals.
His Newfeld Institute is now a worldwide charitable organization devoted to applying developmental science
To the task of raising children.
He's a father of five and a grandfather to seven.
Welcome, Dr.
Newfeld.
I'm so excited to have you on today
My pleasure indeed, Jessica.
Good to meet you.
Yeah, nice to meet you too.
But before we get started, I won't go off too long and and make you feel uncomfortable, but I do want to mention how much of an impact your work has had on my life
I'm a registered psychotherapist and I work here in Ontario and I have my own private practice now.
But before I got into psychotherapy working specifically with families and kids, I actually was in the world of applied behavior analysis.
And I was working with autistic children.
And there was something about the work that I was doing that just wasn't feeling right to me at the time.
Very early on in my career, I had a little boy who I was working with and my supervisor at the time was really insistent on, you know, avoiding eye contact with him, if he wasn't listening or if he was being
you know, as we call noncompliant.
Yeah, the poor child.
Yes.
And I worked with him after school.
He had had just
long, long days and there was often meltdowns and there was just something inside of me that was like, this isn't right.
There's gotta be a different approach
And that's when I found your approach.
And that's when I found the Newfeld Institute.
And finding your approach, it was like what my heart knew was right, but I needed the science to back it up so that I could
switch the way I approach children.
And the impact your approach has had on myself and now my team and now anyone who listens to the podcast is just been huge.
So I just have to say thank you so much.
Well thank you for sharing that
That's always music to my ears, of course.
But I actually had a very parallel kind of experience when I started my career some 53 years ago now.
I was too working with very, very disturbed preschoolers, many of them autistic, and it was all from a behavioral approach.
approach and it just broke my heart.
Then along with having my own children, I thought there has to be something, something different, a different way, a different approach.
And and that
really was the start of my journey to convert from uh learning theory to a developmental approach.
And then of course as soon as you got to the developmental approach, you
had to put attachment underneath as the conditions that were conducive for the unfolding of human potential.
So that
Two was my journey some 50 years ago now.
And it was because of working with very disturbed preschoolers where it was, this can't be right.
This is cruel.
That's what started it.
Wow, that that's beautiful.
I don't think I realized that about you, that that's where you started.
Was there a moment or a variety of moments that brought you to the point where you're like, maybe there's science of behavior, but there's something
You know, in the heart that's just not feeling good.
Like was there a moment or what was it a collection of of moments?
It was a collection of moments, of course, as a f as a young father or a father of young children.
Well, both actually, that I'd always desired to make sense of them from inside out.
And the behavioral approach, you were sculpting their behavior, you were getting them to behave right as society was the standard
rather than the optimal development.
So the developmental approach is much older than learning theory, actually.
It has roots in this.
But I wasn't taught this in graduate school
It had been sidelined.
So as I was teaching, and I was out actually teaching, I was a prof at the University of British Columbia and teaching developmental psychology.
I was sent all of these textbooks and I started pulling out the ones that had this approach and attachment theory.
Oh my goodness, it was like I was introduced to a way of thinking that was much older actually than learning theory and was science-based.
It was
you know, this is how the brain works.
And so my conversion was quite quick.
There were a series of points, but and I never looked back.
Because oh my goodness, this is the answer not only to learning theory today, which still is the dominant paradigm, but also to the doctrine of disorder approach, which has swept the world.
We put doctors in charge of our children.
It only happened in North America, in the UK.
It didn't happen anywhere else, but now it's happening everywhere where doctors are in charge of
children, which is, no, this is never what it was meant to be.
So my Newfelt Institute has a mission and that's to put parents back in the driver's seat of their children because they need to be the answers our children need.
Absolutely, yeah, and that's so aligned with everything that we talk about on the show and everything that I do for my work too.
It's showing parents how important
their role is and putting them back as the driver's seat.
Absolutely pivotal.
And there's a crisis of confidence in parents today.
As parents think that experts know more.
Well, it doesn't matter how much you know, it is who you are to your child that counts.
And the conditions aren't about having a bright, savvy parent.
That's not what enables a child to realize their potential.
We've got it wrong.
We think that power is in knowledge.
It isn't in knowledge
It is in aligning ourselves with nature and how how nature grows a child up.
We don't have to know anything.
We just have to step up to be the answer our child needs.
And so it's much different paradigm, but one that goes deep, deep, deep into history.
It reaches very deep into an understanding.
This is the thesis of the developmental approach, that the unfolding of human potential is absolutely spontaneous if the conditions are conducive.
That is the essence of it.
And once I understood that, there was no turning back for me.
There can't be.
There can't be.
I felt the same.
As soon as I understood
Oh my goodness, I'm looking at this so so wrong.
You know, it's about setting up this environment to be conducive so that the potential that our children have.
can unfold.
Just naturally unfolds.
You see it unfolding before your eyes.
And you know that at the most we're just midwives to that process.
Like life recovery potential does unfold.
So let's say a parent comes and they're just saying their kid refuses to go to school or to listen to them in the morning and they're like, how can I support them in this?
My child doesn't want to go to school.
It it's so difficult.
Is there a way that they could reframe that or or see it from a different perspective?
That's a difficult one because there may be very good reasons for the child to not want to go to school.
They may be being bullied.
They may not be understood by their teacher.
There may be no attachment figure there that they can feel at home with.
There may be all kinds of things that are going on.
So for us to believe that societal standards are the norm.
is a huge mistake.
So that's a difficult one to start off with, to simply assume that the problem is with the child instead of the problem is with the circumstances.
But let's give it to say that there's something here that is stuck with the child.
First of all, we would explore in this case is a child feeling the coercion of
And if they're feeling coercion, like you've got to go to school, it's time to get get dressed now, and so on.
Well, there may be difficulty in that the person who's bossing the child around is not the person the child is attached to
And if they are attached to, they're attached in the wrong mode, not in a dependent trusting mode, but an alpha being the boss mode.
Then it doesn't feel right for any child to take orders.
And it may be because the parent isn't collecting the child, being able to engage the attachment instincts, because that's where all the power lies.
It may be because the child is experiencing too much separation in going to school.
And it may be because the child cannot hold on to the parent.
Because attachment needs to develop.
It needs to go from being with to being the same as to belonging to significance.
Well, if the child can't hold on to mom and dad when going to school
Why would they want to separate?
That's a very good reason.
But the condition that's not there is an attachment that they can hold on to the parent when apart.
So it's looking at this.
There's not a one size fits all here.
It is looking at, okay, what's really going on?
It's making sense of the child from inside out in this case and providing that kind of thing.
But school is probably the worst invention of society.
It involves separation to even send a child to school which alarms them, which causes all kinds of problems.
And it sets up peer orientation where they revolve around their peers.
So having a child who is has trouble going to school
Would probably be a good thing developmentally and not a bad thing, but there's other reasons as well.
So that's why I say this is but it it points out the fact that as parents we must not buy into societal norms
We must not simply assume that the standard of our child is how they fit into society.
The standard that we must use is their potential unfolding.
Are they emergent curious creatures?
Can they feel their emotions and instincts?
Are they attached to those who are responsible for them?
Do they seek to be close to?
These are the things that we look at that indicate emotional health and well-being.
not whether they should protest in terms of going to school until they can hold on to mommy and daddy or and their or the village has extended to include their school.
Sorry, you didn't expect that answer, did you?
No, well, I did know I was throwing you specifically a bit of a curveball because I this is something in our practice
Um I I have six therapists and we all work with children and youth and their parents, of course.
And school refusal is just, it's at the top of our practice.
And
a lot of what we're doing is exactly what you're talking about.
Almost talking to our parents about their own expectations, you know, and and I think a lot of times the behavior that the kids are having it actually makes a lot of sense
given the circumstance.
Absolutely.
So that actually brings me to my next question and the big question that I really want to cover with you today, which is
What we know and what we're seeing or what we're hearing and what parents are very alarmed about is that kids are experiencing the highest rates of mental health diagnosis.
Yes, yes, yes.
Kids are struggling.
We we've heard from let's say the U.
S.
Surgeons General is saying that parents are struggling at higher rates of burnout than ever before.
And I know I know it's a good idea.
That parenting is a is beware because it's distressing.
It's not good for your health.
It was the most ridiculous thing ever.
Actually hold on, before we get there, I just I wanted to touch on one thing that you said right away because I know people are gonna want to know what you're saying here
You said that the developmental approach is older than, you know, all of the other approaches, like kind of the behaviorist approach, everything like that.
What I hear from people is like, oh, this, you know, parent-child relationship, this is trendy, this is new, you know, we'll filter back to punishing our kids or or using more behavioral methods
Can you speak to how this is not some trendy new approach to helping our kids and how attachment is not just
breastfeeding your baby till they're five, like some people might say to me, you know, can can you talk about the science and how it's not new?
Jessica, that's a big question.
But I'll I'll I'll try to be brief here.
Your the attachment-based approach, the problem here is language to segue, and I think this is where you probably picked it up.
It's a matter of language.
It has its roots in the ancient Greek
And through the years when science was basically the alchemical approach, and by that I don't mean trying to make
gold out of lead.
What I mean is that that was a medieval kind of reductionistic idea of alchemy.
Alchemy was
The idea that everything had a potential that could unfold.
Even the things like common lead had this potential and it
could be gold if conditions were conducive.
So it harbored the developmental approach, but it became reduced just like in today we have
reductionism with attachment thinking it is about baby bonding and it is about breastfeeding and so on and so it's not at all the quest for togetherness is the bottom drive the whole brain
is an organ of attachment.
Every neuron has to be attached to every neuron, every other neuron, and working properly to serve attachment.
Now the big breakthrough with this
was at about the time of John Bowlby when two things happened.
They realized that survival was not a human drive.
In other words, the it always had been assumed that survival was the bottom.
And Maslow's pyramid of needs, for those who remember that in IntroSyc and
in in university.
Maslow's pyramid of needs had survival there.
And there was the realization with Harlow and his monkeys and all kinds of other people is, oh my goodness, there is no drive to survive.
The drive is for togetherness because the way our brains are organized is they're organized according to an algorithm that the survival lies in
togetherness.
And so that's where the drive is.
Now that's been called all kinds of things through the ages.
It's been called our relational needs.
object relations, as far as early attachment theory.
It's been called so many things.
So people didn't recognize all of this.
It was called social conformity, the quest for sameness, because that's a way of coming together.
It was called
quest for significance.
It was called intimacy in a whole nother field.
So it's like this elephant that you approach in different pieces.
You got to put them all together again.
And so the word attachment was derived to try and gather all of the pieces.
And that is what the idea is.
But it's a very old, it's it's twenty five hundred year old attachment theory, so with a new name.
uh that is only about eighty years old now.
So its new name it is, but because people are very reductionistic in their thinking, they immediately think not of togetherness
love, belonging, all of the things of intimacy, all of these things are there.
They think of these very, very reduced ways of togetherness.
Of course, all we all start out with wanting to be with
But we should continue on when we can't be with, to wanting to be like, to belonging, being a part of, to mattering to
to an emotional sense of closeness and to ultimately a sense of psychological intimacy being known from inside out.
So it's a very big topic.
And the answer parents will say or preschool teachers will say
Well, when a preschooler protests going to preschool, the separation, they will say, well, the child is too attached to the parent.
Well, that's not true.
That's not true.
If the child was attached sufficiently, in other words, if the child was able to hold on to mommy, to daddy, when apart, they wouldn't have a problem.
So the issue is not that they're too attached, but they're not attached enough.
And like a plant, when you realize and you have a proper analogy, can a plant ever be too attached?
No.
It can be too superficially attached.
It can be too insecurely attached.
Can't ever be too attached.
And so attachment is what makes the world go round.
Poets would say it's love that makes the world go around.
Scientists say it's attachment.
We're speaking the same language.
It's just that we're not allowed to use the word love.
It's a four-letter word.
for scientists.
That's so helpful.
I think parents really need to hear that because a lot of parents that we're supporting they they get this pushback from their parents.
Right.
Like, well, we never took this type of approach and this is all new and this gentle parenting, which is not what we're talking about here, right?
But parenting without punishment and seeing kids as real humans who have needs and who
Well this backlash is i in a sense unbelievable.
Should we have utmost respect for nature?
Should we assume that a t a child would make sense if we could make sense of them
Should parenting be shame free?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And oh my goodness, it we can't
have a sense of gentleness and respect and regard, there's something wrong.
However, can we be too afraid of upset
Can we not take a rightful position as being in charge?
Can we put the child in lead too much?
And so you know they're just a child.
And if they put them lead, then our care doesn't come through
That's true too.
So we're putting all kinds of things into one bag and then we're pushing it under the bus.
That's ridiculous.
It's so uninformed.
this backlash against gentle parenting is so uninformed.
Yeah, and it it's so hard for the parents doing it because I think in their heart, like both of us, right, they know that this is the right approach.
But then they hear the backlash from their parents.
And they just wonder if they are.
So I wanted them to hear it from you, right?
I wanted them to hear it straight from the source.
Yes.
And again, the question you're asking yourself if you're looking at it
Is should it be a shame-free environment?
Should the child ever feel like there's something wrong with them?
Do you ever need to bring harsh discipline into it?
Absolutely no
You shouldn't.
If the conditions are conducive, absolutely no.
Should the child be in charge of decisions that have to do with our care for them?
No
Because then our care doesn't get through.
And so when you find the balance between those two things and you step up to take your rightful role,
as being the one that takes care of your child, makes the difficult decisions that is there, and there is a sense of respect and is shame free for the child.
Yes, that's exactly what we want.
And yes, it does appear gentle, but not afraid of upset.
Yes, absolutely.
I love that you clarified that.
We are the leader and we're not afraid of upset.
We just had Dr.
Deborah McNamara on and she talks a lot about our role and our role as the caregiver and provider because we were talking about nourished.
So um people can also listen to that for more more on that topic.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week, our daughter asked Scott a truly kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a play.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from our new body safety and consent course at Nurturty First.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me.
So
Jess, if you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three, and I have taught body safety and consent education for years
This course takes all my years of experience teaching this education and gives you calm, age-appropriate language for body parts, consent, and boundaries.
You'll learn how to teach your kids that no means no, you'll learn how to teach them to read facial cues, you'll talk about safe and unfortunate.
safe touch and you'll even teach them about their uh oh feeling.
There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff like tickling that goes too far and even the difference between a secret and a surprise
We made this course at Nurture First because research shows that body safety education helps kids speak up sooner and we want that for our family, for Scott and I, but also for you.
So check the course out at nurturedfirst.
com slash body safety and to save 10% use
Use the code RobotUnicorn.
And just full disclosure here, we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it.
So let's bring it back now.
So now we kind of have the framework in which we are understanding development and understanding that children need togetherness, they need their parents, parents need to be
Yes.
Yes.
And now let's talk about my original question or comment, which is parents are struggling, kids are struggling.
How do we get here?
I mean that's a big question.
Your question was what is behind this mental health crisis with our kids?
Why are they there so
Much in trouble, right?
As a developmentalist, you're asking the question is how do these problems form
What does the brain need to function optimally?
So we can actually bring it down to questions of the brain nowadays.
And this is where the answer is very surprising, and all evidence points to it
Like there's various levels of depth, and I'll go to one and very quickly just give you a nutshell here.
But the nutshell is that feelings are what make us human and humane
They're the last evolutionary advance.
They're what fully bring us into our potential, grow us up, are at the basis of healing and recovery.
And so the bottom line, you could say, is we're losing our fa
feelings.
In fact, that is a common denominator of almost every diagnosis.
Every syndrome, troubling syndrome, is a loss of feeling.
The irony is, is that there is no measure for this.
There is not one diagnosis that takes this into consideration.
We have been blinded by thinking that feelings don't count
And they're what make us human and humane.
And so then we ask the question, why are our children losing our feelings?
Why are we losing the feelings?
feelings.
Is it because there's not emotional literacy programs going on in school?
And so people are going, okay, okay, feelings are the answer.
We've got to do this.
No, that's not the answer.
We routinely lose our feelings every day because of the stress response, as part of the stress response.
The brain can only do so much.
Feelings are the feedback that it requires to optimize its emotional operations.
In other words, our animating brain, when I mean by that, that which moves us, our emotions and instincts, require
proper feelings to find its way through.
It's blind.
And so the feelings are required to optimize the operations of the brain.
We lose our feelings, our brain doesn't function properly.
Now we have the key to dysfunction.
But what do we need for feelings?
Well, all the evidence is pointing to safety.
But people then are getting it wrong.
They think, oh, well you have to have a safe environment, safe from wounds, safe from being in you know, insulted, safe from bullying, safe from
From this.
No, no, no, no.
No.
The brain has to be in one of two operating states.
It has to be in the operating state of trusting dependence.
upon an attachment figure that is in charge of caring.
You could be in the middle of war with bombs dropping down.
If the child is in this dependent trusting thing, they feel safe
Are they safe?
No, we weren't talking about that.
They feel safe.
And because they feel safe, they can feel.
Now, should they feel safe?
Well, yes, because the brain has to feel
So they need to feel safe.
So the brain is taking care of this, but we're not taking care of this.
Because children are falling out of attachment
They're falling out of cascading care.
They're falling out of distressing dependence.
We're confusing alpha children with being independent children.
We've been chasing independence for 400 years.
We were chasing the wrong thing.
They need to be dependent upon us.
And the other one is is that the operating state of the brain is in the play mode.
Why?
Well, you think of a wolf cub when the mother wolf is in smell
The wolf cub can play.
And so that is the secondary operating state of the brain.
If attachment is taken through of children move into play.
Play and safety is part of that play.
I don't mean
video games and those kinds of things because that's not true play.
True play is is not outcome based.
So we call kinds of things a play that aren't play.
So it's safety
Then when when we say, well, why are we losing the safety?
Because of a loss of cascading care and a loss of true play, all of the research is showing that children are falling out of hierarchy into what I call peer orientation, and this is what I wrote the book about
You know, 20 years ago and it's more true than ever, is a peer-based, and they're losing their true play.
All the play theorists are are crying the the alarm.
But what are the implications
A loss of feeling, a loss of what allows the brain to operate at its potential.
So where is the source of dysfunction?
We trace it all the way down to children are falling out of cascading care.
They're no longer depending upon the adults responsible for them.
They're not attached to it and so on.
But yeah, I mean it's that's a book, right?
That's a whole volume.
That's a whole lot of books.
That's a whole volume of books.
But that's in a nutshell.
Why are we in trouble?
We're losing our feelings.
Why are we losing feelings?
Our brains don't deem us as safe.
Why uh don't they deem us as safe?
We've fallen out of cascading care and we no longer have true play.
And is that true for adults as well?
Absolutely.
We no longer depend upon a God who is there to take care of us.
We no longer depend upon our ancestors.
We no longer keep them even in our minds.
We don't do this.
All the things that indigenous cultures would have taught us, we have lost.
So we have fallen out of cascading care as well.
Everything you're saying, it it makes so much sense.
And I think for a lot of people it's gonna be really new for them, right?
Like
I think we're not talking about this, and that's again why I wanted to have you on.
Can you define cascading care for someone who has never heard that term before?
Yes, yes.
Think of a waterfall, cascading
And you think of the waterfall and with a series of pools, right?
When you receive, the overflow is from which you give care.
So it says that giving care
comes when you have received care generously, when the care is secure.
There's not a bunch of leaks everywhere, so you can overflow into care
So I ha I have seven grandchildren, is that we take care of the youngest of them, two and a half years of age, two days a week.
And all of her
play all of her whole life is in this cascading care.
She has all of her babies and stuffies that she takes care of because she feels generously taken care of.
When she doesn't, all of that stops.
And so you can see this cascading care, but it also speaks to alignment
What if the pools were not aligned?
That is the care that is given.
You know, the wonderful thing about a relationship, it's forever.
Like if you felt cared for by a grandparent that has long died, because relationship is forever, they will be your grandparent dead or alive, you can still benefit from that care
And you still shall keep them in your village of attachment and cascading care.
Experience of it.
Love it.
Feel it.
As you feel cared for, and that's aligned as you attach.
So we're we're attached
That is the transmission system of care.
And so cascading care is the bottom line all the way around.
It is what makes it go through.
But notice it's
Vertically aligned, not horizontal.
Today's idea is that we belong with those who are the same as us
So people will say, well, I don't see anybody that looks like me.
You know, I don't feel like I belong.
Well, that is about the most superficial way.
That's like those birds that similarity means it is at the basis of the flocking.
No, it's about care
I belong to those who care for me and all the way down.
It is a vertical system of
care.
And so it is not about belonging to those who look like us, who are the same as us, and so on.
So we think today that children need to be with their peers.
Because they need to have a sense of belonging.
Well, you'll never get a sense of belonging of fit.
That is one of the crisis of today.
There's a crisis of not fitting.
And why is it that you don't fit?
Because it is not meant to be around sameness.
You'll forever feel your differentness.
And that is the
cry of youth today.
I don't fit.
I'm different.
And so there's all kinds of different answers to, oh, then you must be this or it's this or it's, you know, it's this.
No, no, no, no.
First of all, you're you know, where are your parents and grandparents in this?
Where are those who are caring for you?
That's where you fit and where you always meant to fit.
This is meant to be an attachment relationship of cascading care.
This is where everyone is meant to be embedded in it.
And when children fall out of that, they're in trouble.
Yeah, I think it it's huge.
And that goes back to the parent struggle, right?
Parents, I think for so long there was this push for independence, right?
Like we want to be independent, independent from our parents.
Yes.
From John Locke.
That's what we've been doing.
Independence, you know?
Like it's all what it's about.
And this is it's a ridiculous, most ridiculous thing in the world.
We should be inviting them to depend upon us.
I will take care of you
And that should be our bottom line.
The child should experience this wonderful generous.
I will take care of you.
I
I've got your back, honey.
You know, you matter to me.
Like I'm gonna hold on to you, hence the title of my book, Hold On to Your Kits.
I just have a few kind of practical stories from from what you just said
But one of them that I think about a lot, you talked about how grandparents can still care for you even if they have passed away.
And I think it's so important to remember that we still have that care that they gave us even w when they were here.
And I was thinking about this
Yeah.
Story of cascading care that came to mind the first time I heard you talk about this, which was years ago.
Uh Jessica there just for a minute.
with us but attachment isn't about being with.
You see, when it moves down, it's a relationship.
It's a forever thing.
Right.
And that's the beauty of it.
So you actually have to see
It's got nothing to do with being with.
Yeah.
It has to do with a sense of connection that is deep emotional and a sense of being known from inside out.
That's the beauty of it.
I interrupted.
Oh no, I love that interruption.
I I think it's so beautiful and I I've really grown, I think
understanding your work just to respect and realize how critical that relationship is.
And I I hope grandparents will listen to this episode too and see that they still have a role in their child's life.
To the ever.
And if they knew that they have that role dead or alive, they would prepare for that for
being that dead as well.
We have a responsibility to preserve that connection, us, with those who have gone on before.
We have that by keeping them in our memory, but also
It's the relationship that is there if if we benefited from it.
And that's just one of the mistakes we're making in in thinking.
that you know, like even grandparents belong with each other, you know, that the retired.
No, no, no.
There is nothing in our evolutionary history that suggests we belong with individuals who are the same as us.
We belong in the transmission of care, that's where our fulfillment is.
My occupation is a sideline
My real fulfillment of my evolutionary purpose is as being a grandfather.
No.
And and I wish more grandparents could see that and they could see that and have a respect for their children and what their children need.
Because I know a lot of my generation is struggling because their parents are not involved
But their parents are kinda like, oh I did my job, you know, you're raised, you're grown up, I'm gonna go to Florida for the winter.
I got my emancipation, right
Exactly.
To Arizona or someplace that's warm in the sun.
Exactly.
And then I think we have parents that don't have support, they're left on their own with their kids.
And now what?
So
I'll tell you my story because I I I just know that you will enjoy this story.
My grandmother passed away several years ago and I had a little baby at the
time and I remember being so so sad she was a my first real loss of an attachment figure it was very difficult because this is the first time I've really lost someone who I was very attached to.
So my baby's crying one night and I'm
sad about everything and I'm really, really struggling to know how to respond to my baby.
And all of a sudden, just in my mind, this Dutch lullaby that my oma used to sing to me just comes to mind.
it just pops in there and I can hear her voice singing it and I just start to sing it to my daughter.
And we just are in the room and it's dark and I'm just singing her this song.
I just start bawling, you know, crying to sinking.
Man, all those times she sang it to me, this Dutch lullaby.
I don't even speak Dutch.
I am Dutch, but I don't speak much.
But it just I wondered how many of my ancestors have sang this song and sang this song and and every child thinks it's comforting them, but is it actually comforting me?
And that's just really stuck with me.
The lullaby goes two ways, really, because it puts you in an arrangement where you're the answer to your child.
It it goes through the music is the first language.
It was the first language evolutionary.
It's the first language in the womb.
It's the first language always.
It goes so deep into the brain.
And it can orchestrate.
It's the only thing that can orchestrate because music is notes over time in a pattern that can be recognized and that is engaging.
And that's a definition of music.
And music is the only thing that brings us there.
Now what the lullaby does is it's so clever
because it's in the minor chord.
And so it's in this it's in the key of sadness.
And so there's a melancholy nature, but that's the only way we
We can let go of the things that we're trying to hold on to that are upsetting us.
And so it actually calms us at the very, very core, at the core of the brainstem.
actually.
It's a feeling that we need to have for the brain to function.
So the lullaby is clever.
We were talking about the brain needing feelings 'cause it walks its way through.
Well one of the feelings that it needs, it's two feelings are at the basis, the feeling of missing.
That is that you can feel the holes in your attachment fabric, in the in the fabric of togetherness.
And so you'll know that a child is relatively healthy if they can say, I miss.
And as soon as they stop saying it, you know they're in trouble.
The next thing is, is that when the brain can't fix the problem of togetherness, which is what it's committed to, then there is some sadness that is felt.
And that is the way the brain can let go and build resilience.
And the lullaby is clever in giving us that tool, and we don't even know what it's about.
That's how clever it is.
It's the oldest instrument of parenting that we know of.
It is the oldest one, and it is the one that
again as you say can be passed on through generations and every child should have their own designated lullaby you know everything
But you think of this and we think of of the the absolute intelligence that is packed into a tiny ritual.
When culture has had millennia to evolve with nature to dance and evolve this, and to our knowledge, the lullaby existed
in every traditional culture, which is amazing.
Yeah, that's incredible.
Which is absolutely amazing.
That's incredible.
That's beautiful.
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
It's just those things that allow us to have our feelings, right?
And and that can bring us back into feeling cared for, even when that person's not there.
They're not physically.
Absolutely.
Yes.
The relationship is alive.
Just because somebody dies doesn't mean the relationship dies, for better or for worse.
Yes.
I mean that might be a very terrible thing.
And it may be a very good thing, but just because you know somebody dies, we make way too much of this.
So to bring it back to our kids who are struggling, like we've talked about losing feelings, or talked about how
they're not in cascading care.
How can we protect our children?
How can we help this mental health crisis?
So where do we start?
Well that's the bottom line is to know that relationships counts and to know that
Caring is only delivered because they are in greater need of care.
The caring isn't getting through.
They are unable to have their feelings.
So once we know that, the bottom line is, and this is where we go back to the gentle parenting
which should be the bottom line in all parenting is the relationship is the bottom line.
That is, like many people say, well what's the bottom line here?
Those that criticize this say behavior should be the bottom line.
Social fit should be the bottom line.
Uh-uh.
No.
Relationship is the bottom line because there's no way to get our care through.
Everything else we can be creative about
about we can adjust, we can adapt, we can figure out our way, but we must not sacrifice the relationship.
And that is the bottom line.
And so the good news is that when we know it's relationship
It is never too late.
It's always something we could work with.
And how does a relationship begin?
With an invitation to exist in one's presence.
I want to be in relationship with you.
I invite you to be in relationship with me.
The eyes twinkle.
You know, I invite you to be
the problem behavior, regardless of our frustrations.
Like that's the bottom line.
Like you know when you had your baby, I remember my own, my third daughter, saying she was having difficulty giving birth.
Uh this was her first child.
And she started a mantra and it was just a beautiful mantra.
I gotta remember, I gotta remember to invite him to exist
I gotta remember to you know getting ready for the birth, right?
Because she was in a lot of pain and uh and so uh I gotta remember to invite him to exist in my presence and she went through with this inc
Incredible invitation to exist, which has been the dance all the way through.
Our grandchild is now twelve years of age.
Beautiful relationship, but that's the bottom line.
To invite to exist in my presence, to not let anything.
Now we can figure out what to do with the rest, but don't let anything come in between.
It's a matter of priorities.
It's a matter of knowing where to put our energy.
It's a matter of knowing to put our intervention
Most of the things that we battle against in parenting will resolve themselves spontaneously somewhere along the line.
You know, how many five-year-olds do you still know that need their diaper changed?
Most of the things will be resolved
Somewhere along the line, it will be spontaneous their development.
What nature can't do, it can't hold on to our child for us.
Again, hence the title of the book.
That's our job.
Hold on to our child.
Invite them to exist in your presence.
Make sure that invitation gets through.
Collect their eyes, a smile, collect their nods.
Do this routinely through the day, before separation, after separation, bridge anything that comes between.
Matchmake them to others who are involved in raising them because children need to be attached to those who are raising them.
That's the flaw of our school system
Our school doesn't put the parents in the lead.
It's got to put the parents in the lead.
That's the only school system that works, is when you put the parents in the lead and the matchmaker.
So relationship is the bottom line, and it starts with an invitation to exist in our presence.
That's not breakable.
That is, and that's our job to hold
That's the opposite of one of the greatest voices in Europe today that's being exported from Canada, Jordan Peterson.
who says that your children have to be nice so that you will like them.
It's their job to be nice.
And you get the
opposite that is and unfortunately he's having way more influence.
He's not a developmental psychologist.
He he should not even speak about this.
And yet the following he has is unbelievable.
And
For that reason I speak to it because you're getting the opposite message from a lot of people there who are saying, no, it's a child's responsibility to be likable.
Yeah.
I heard that one recently too and I had to shake my head.
It's like, oh my goodness, we're losing it.
And the love about your messages is so like at its core, it's so simple, right?
Like
We want to show our children we delight in them.
We want to show our children that they matter to us and and that we are with them.
But si simple doesn't mean easy, Jessica
Simple does not mean easy.
Because you know giving an invitation to somebody to exist in your presence, your partner, for instance, okay, challenges everything inside of you
It challenges you to grow up.
And so, you know, people say often say, well, don't you have to grow up first before you can be an effective parent?
I said, no, no, no.
Step up to the plate to be the answer your child needs and
You will grow up, guaranteed.
What about parents who are just like, I don't know, Gordon?
They're like, I don't know how to build a relationship.
I've never seen it.
I don't have a relationship with my own parents
You know, maybe there was abuse or hardship there.
How do I show delight?
Where do I start?
That suggests it's a skill.
It's not a skill.
It's part of being human.
Togetherness is part of being human.
It's knowing that it's important and knowing I'm the answer.
When you say, well, how do I do this?
I have no model.
It suggests that the answer is having the right answers.
That's not what I'm talking about.
It's being the answer.
The child is looking to you for a sense of significance, for a sense of invitation.
for a sense of being held on to to matter to you.
That's not skill.
That's a matter of stepping up to the plate.
That's a matter of of just coming there.
If you start this is a dance, the oldest dance
in the universe, you know how to do it to your pets.
We need to do it to our children.
As soon as you go to how do I do this, you're starting to look at a manual
You can't dance looking at a manual.
There's no interaction there.
Let me see what's the right thing to do is you do that.
Your child has lost you.
It's not about doing the right thing.
And you can make a thousand mistakes.
Your child is not thinking, oh, you're doing it right or you're doing it wrong.
Their question always is the same.
Does mommy love me?
Am I important?
Daddy's not holding on to me.
Those are the questions.
And those are the questions we can answer.
We don't need knowledge to answer it.
We just need to know that
We are the answer.
We don't need to have answers.
We are the answer.
My father died before I wrote the book.
He he died about uh five years earlier and he's yeah, but I was already talking about
w writing Hold On to Your Kids.
And he said to me, Gordy, that's going to be a bad mistake.
He said, I disagree with you.
Uh you know, he could have said over his dead body, I suppose, because he was dead and I did it, you know.
But his point was well taken.
He said to me,
Gordon, I'll I'll tell you a secret.
We never knew what we were doing.
We never knew how.
He said, I don't think anybody has ever known how.
You should feel inadequate.
It's the most important job in the world.
You should feel inadequate
But we knew that you needed to know that we knew what we were doing.
So we had to step up.
And what he was saying in effect is that, no, just get there.
If you have to bluff it, bluff it if you if you need to, but just
be the answer.
And he was the answer for me.
I felt he inspired me to trust in him.
Did he ever read a book in parenting?
Never.
Did he believe in parenting books?
Never.
Did he believe that I should write a parenting book?
Never.
I did, but I wanted it to be a book like none other.
I wanted it to be a book not about how-tos.
Yes, there are chapters.
on how-tos there.
But I want to tell your viewers that that was not my idea.
I just got signed up by the largest publishing house in the world, Random House, and they said we won't publish your book unless you put some how
how-tos there.
And I said it insults people to put how to's.
It suggests that the answer is in the how to's rather than they can be the answer to their children.
I want it to be a book on relationship.
And then they said, well deal broken then, and I caved.
But I caved not because I believed I caved.
I believed my father.
I should never tell individuals how to parent because it dumbs them down.
I should tell parents their children need them and help them to become the answers their children need.
Yeah.
I hear what you're saying there.
And I actually think of my own father.
My father is a
mechanic and sells used cars and he always tells the story to us about how when I came home, I'm the oldest, he was like, well where's the manual?
because for every car that he would always fix, he'd have this user manual, right?
And he would spend every night reading his user manuals.
And I remember he told me this story.
He said
Because I was wondering where the manual was for my own kids when I had my oldest um over eight years ago.
And he said, he said, Jess, you'll you'll want a manual.
You know, you'll look everywhere for it.
I he's like, I did, and I couldn't find it
He's like eventually I realized I was the manual.
You're the answer.
Yeah.
So similar.
Yeah.
Yes.
And if and if you have more than four children or more than one child, I mean, I you know
I I have five children.
It is a different dance for each child in being the answer they need.
But there is no dance more rewarding, more fulfilling for both uh parts and now to be the grandfather.
that your gr grandchildren need.
But that's a question to ask is how can I be the father, the grandfather, the mother that this child needs?
That question will bring you to the dance.
That will be
And that isn't through reading a book, even my book, although I hope my book is different than others.
Yeah.
But d you know, read it to
To make sense of your child from inside out.
Yeah.
And and can you speak to the parents that are struggling about how this might also help them?
Because
I I think we we don't talk enough about the reciprocal relationship between the parent and the child and how being the answer your child needs can actually benefit you as well and and help you with your burnout.
Well uh nature is very efficient in how it works.
Both partners of the dance experience great fulfillment because it's the most important dance, the most important responsibility in a sense to raise our offspring to their potential.
And uh you can think of this in terms of partners, like what gives the juice to a marriage, you know.
I mean, in today's cultures you think of romance, but romance requires surprise.
And if you're bright at all
uh you can't keep on being surprised by the same things.
So romance has a half-life to it.
But people don't realize that, you know, no, you can't act that dumb all the time and you can't be ahead of the game, especially if you have an intelligent partner.
is uh is you can't do this.
So what's the juice?
Well the juice is very simple.
The juice is you have two people who are committed themselves
taking care of each other.
Now you can't do that exactly at the same time, but one person takes care of the other, so it moves into hierarchy.
You take turns, reciprocal, taking care of each other.
There's nothing
That is more juicy in a relationship, more fulfilling and nurturing than believing you're the answer to the other.
There's nothing more fulfilling.
And if that is true in adulthood, how much is it true when you're holding that baby
When you're at dinner with your adolescent and you realize that you are the answer to a sense of significance, to belonging, to a sense of being seen from inside out.
I don't think there is anything more fulfilling in the world.
It gets you to the core.
You understand your purpose in life.
your role in the whole scheme of things, in the circle of life.
You finally got it in terms of this.
And it is all of a sudden all the job worries melt.
They go into perspective, what they are there, the insecurities we feel in the world.
It doesn't matter what nationality you are, it doesn't matter, you know, this or that or whatever.
It's something foundational to our being.
is to be the answer to another and that is what we have as an opportunity as as a parent, as a grandparent, to experience fulfillment like none other can have.
It is an incredible.
sense of fulfillment that we we get to step into.
Oh I just I love that so so much.
I think we've lost that and
so many parents that I see, right?
We're we're stuck.
We're we're reading so many books and we're feeling so overwhelmed.
Like it's this job, this task that we have to do.
And we forget the honor that it is and the gift
that it is to have someone just fully depend on you and see you as their whole world.
And I think if we can bring that back and we can help parents see that
That is a gift.
It's such an honor.
And I know people tease me on the podcast because I always talk about that.
I always say, oh, it's such a gift.
But it's starting to catch on a little bit, which I like.
And I'll just leave it with one last story of this
I think which perfectly illustrates the conditions being right.
My daughter, uh I have a sensitive, sensitive girl, um, my middle child.
And you know, sensitive kids, there's just some extra layers there.
She has not been able to fall asleep without me.
And I've been okay with that.
I have known the time will come and she'll be ready.
So every night for about the last five years, I've been with her until she's fallen asleep.
It's fine.
We have a great routine.
She falls asleep good, sleeps through the night
One day last week, uh I'm putting her down.
We're did our routine, everything, and she goes, hmm, mom, you can go shower now.
What do you mean I can go shower?
I lay with you every night and she's like, No, I think I want to try it myself.
And so
I go and I shower and I come and I get out of the shower.
I'm crying because I'm like, oh, she's five.
Like I'm not ready for this
Because it's been beautiful for me too to take care of her.
And I get out of the shower, hear a little voice, Mama.
Can you actually come back?
I'm not ready.
Yes.
But the construct of readiness that she has inside is is a construct that's very close to her own intuitions that she will be able to do it by herself
And so that readiness, um Odessa, the two and a half year old often says now.
I I will be ready when I'm a little
Yeah, we get that.
And it's a beautiful construct because it says where they're heading.
They already have this in line.
They have this idea that to be able to do it.
Patience and providing those conditions for it to happen this way rather than to be forced is is is beautiful.
And it goes back to, you know, and I g maybe my closing
thing here to leave with you is that it really comes down to trusting that nature is benevolent, that it does have this blueprint
for the spontaneous unfolding of potential.
We can afford to trust it.
That is a relieving thing for a parent because it's not all up to us.
Can you think if if getting a baby out of the womb was all up to us of just how absolute first of all, how dreadful it would be and how much we'd mess it up
You know, it's a n all we do is play midwife to that process, including, you know, all the way around.
It is
a process, it's a spontaneous potential that needs to be realized and that will be there when conditions are conducive.
So that we can afford to trust and that's an answer to our own burnout.
It's not all up to
to us.
Beautiful.
Well, thank you so, so much for coming on today.
It's been an honor to talk to you.
And I know that this is going to be incredibly eye-opening and helpful for everyone listening.
Is there a resource?
I mean we've talked a lot about hold on to your kids.
Um anything else that you want to share with listeners of of where they can find you?
Well I got to have my dream of my life come true when I stopped teaching university and retired from
from private practice is is I got to create courses because that's what I love to do the most.
And so I've created uh well about thirty-four of those courses are available through the Newfelt Institute online
So that's where my legacy is.
Those are their courses for parents, for professionals, for teachers.
They're all about making sense of kids and all about becoming the answers our children need.
And uh so that's what I would refer you to.
That's my life's work.
Uh anybody can access them from anywhere in the world.
Some of them are in up to eight languages, so that's uh
That's uh there and of course if you haven't read Hold On to Your Kids, it it's it's uh doing better than it ever has.
It became a bestseller in Canada again on Amazon's top twenty-five list and
And so on this this last year, so it's uh it it's more needed than ever.
So you think, oh, it's an old book.
Well, no, we added a chapter
uh Gabra Matei and I added a chapter on peer orientation and mental health for a new release, 20th anniversary.
But it speaks even more to what is happening in our world today than even it did 20 years ago
Yeah, it's exceptional how your book 20 years to now it it's so so needed and I mean I we hear constantly from people who've read it
and how life-changing it's been your courses as well for professionals too.
I know we have a lot of professionals who listen, so definitely check out the Newfeld Institute um for their courses as well.
Thank you so much.
Well thanks for having me.
Of course
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