The problem in parenting today
The prevailing assumption today is that the key to parenting is in knowing what to do. Since children aren't born with a manual, today's parents are becoming more dependent upon so-called experts for advice. Yet despite more experts and advice than ever before, parenting is actually becoming more difficult and contrived. The problem, according to Dr. Neufeld, is that the power to parent is slipping away. Parents were never meant to have the most important responsibilities on earth without the corresponding power to do the job. Yet this is the predicament of a growing number of parents who are losing their power to guide and direct their children, to shield and protect them, to nurture and fulfill them, and even to transmit their culture to them.

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The underlying thesis
Parenting should be quite natural and instinctive. Like most deeply rooted instincts, however, the right context is required to 'push the right buttons' in both parents and their children. Science has revealed this context to be the child's attachment to the parent. When a child is in right relationship to the parent, not only is the child rendered receptive to parenting but the parent is empowered to do the job. The key therefore to effective parenting lies not in what we do but in who we are to our children.

It is the role of culture to create and preserve this context of connection between children and their parents. Unfortunately, today's society has taken an economic turn and no longer serves this vital function. As the context for parenting is being eroded, parents are losing the natural power required to fulfill their responsibilities.

The antidote to our present predicament is to become conscious of attachment and to make sense of our children from inside out. In this way we can restore natural intuition and interact in ways that support healthy development. If we fail to do this we run the risk of becoming more reactive, or alternatively, becoming more contrived in our interaction as we follow the cues of advice-givers rather than finding our own intuitive path.

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Available as a video-course on DVD
The video-course is divided into eight one-hour sessions for easy personal study and for use as an eight-session parenting course, directed or non-directed. Training is available for individuals who wish to facilitate this course for others. Consult the page on training programs for more information. A 16 page handout will be e-mailed to those who purchase the DVD set.

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An insight approach as opposed to a skill-based approach
What we do is determined more by what we see than any other factor, including the strategies we have learned, the books we have read and the knowledge that we have acquired. The more accurate our insight, the more fruitful our interaction. When a child makes sense to us from inside out, a dance evolves that is natural, intuitive, effective and affirming for both the child and the adult. Developmental science has progressed to where it is now able to equip both parents and professionals with the insights that are necessary to understand our children and interact accordingly. This parenting series is founded on the firm conviction that when we are able to truly make sense of a child in a context of compassion, we will discover within ourselves a dance that corresponds.

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Suitability and applicability
This course is suitable for both parents and professionals although addressed primarily to parents and with a focus on parenting. Usually one-third of the participants are those who work with families or children in one way or another. While the material applies equally to the school setting, the day-care setting, and to direct treatment venues, those involved in such settings may need to engage in some transposing of the material. This usually happens quite spontaneously and intuitively on the part of professionals.

The material and principles discussed are applicable to children of all ages. The focus of this course is on everyday parenting and everyday problems but the material applies even more so to the more challenging scenarios and problems.

This course is used differently by different participants: professional development, personal growth, preparation for parenting and even as a primer or enrichment for grandparenting.

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The power theme
Parenting is meant to be power-assisted. Like the cars we drive, many would be too much to handle without some power to assist us. When one is in the middle of driving and the engine cuts, managing a car designed to be power assisted can be a handful if not impossible. To manage children when our parenting power is insufficient is likewise daunting if not next to impossible. Yet millions of parents are attempting to do just that and not even aware that something is amiss.

We tend to take the power to parent for granted. There is little we can do with a child, however, that is not predisposed to attend to us, to look up to us, to depend upon us, to ask for help, to take the cues from us or to want to be good for us. These inclinations are not inherent in a child's personality nor the result of skilled parenting. Rather, they are the fruit of a good working attachment to the parent. When the attachment is weak or lacking, these predispositions will be missing in a child. When this is the case, parents are rendered impotent and parenting becomes difficult, contrived and unnatural. Parental impotence is becoming a common affliction but rarely is it recognized for what it is. We are more likely to assume that we lack the necessary skill or that we have a difficult child. The most instinctive reaction when lacking natural power is to become more forceful. Unfortunately, applying leverage such as sanctions and separation to coerce a child into compliance will not only provoke resistance but also damage the very relationship that empowers us. Sadly, such is the state of parenting today. Only when we realize our true source of power will we do everything in our power to safeguard it. Unless we have our children's hearts, we will be unable to fulfill our parental responsibilities. Once we have our children's hearts, we need to hold on to them until our task is done.

The secret of the power to parent lies in children being in right relationship to their parents. The more difficult the child or the problems, the more this is true. It is this very relationship that is being eroded by cultural chaos, by competing attachments to peers, and by parenting practices that interfere with the development of attachment. To compensate for the loss of cultural wisdom we must become conscious of attachment and then parent with attachment in mind. The only salvation for parenting that is truly natural and intuitive is to work at attachment and let attachment work for us.

Today's parents are not only shy of power but power shy. Power has become a dirty word, undoubtedly because so many of us have experienced its abuse. Yet the most important responsibilities on earth are impossible to fulfill without the power to do the job. And when we don't have the natural power required to parent, we are tempted to resort to forcefulness and manipulation, as is the growing trend among many parents today. Examples of such coercive practices include the use of time-outs and the tendency to use what children care most about against them (often euphemized as consequences and sanctions). The kind of power that arises spontaneously out of a correctly aligned attachment relationship enables parents to be highly effective without needing to be punitive or coercive. We need to overcome our aversion to power in order to assume our rightful position in our children's lives. The kind of power that should be eschewed is power devoid of corresponding responsibility.

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Course objectives:
The primary objective of this course is to equip adults to raise children with attachment in mind and with true maturation the end result.Other objectives include:

• to make sense of children from inside out
  
  
• to provide the conceptual underpinnings to natural intuition
  
  
• to restore parents to their rightful place in their children's lives
  
  
• to provide a working model of attachment that is applicable to children of all ages and to bring the dynamic of attachment to consciousness
  
  
• to make parenting as easy and natural as possible
  
  
• to increase the ability of parents and professionals to think critically with regards to the parenting literature
  
  
• to interpret the science of relationship to those most involved with children and bring parenting in line with this science
  
  
• to cultivate an appreciation of developmental design and an ability to work in harmony with Nature's blueprint
  
  
• to foster methods of discipline that are attachment-friendly and developmentally safe
  
  
• to reveal common parenting practices that are harmful (e.g., time-outs, using what children care about against them, working the incident, using force and coercion, pushing independence) and provide safe alternatives
  
  
• to provide a model of professional involvement that does not erode the parent-child relationship
  

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Outline for the Power to Parent video-course

Session1 Why Children Need to be in Right Relationship to the Adults Responsible for Them

• what makes a child easy to parent
• how a child's attachment empowers a parent
• the pitfalls of parenting without sufficient power
• the difference between power that is natural and force that is contrived

Session 2 How a Child's Relationship to the Parent is Meant to Develop

• how the capacity for relationship is meant to develop
• what keeps a child from developing a deep relationship to a parent
• what causes a child to back out of attachment: the problem of defensive detachment
• why time-outs and the silent treatment can backfire
• how to address separation problems in children

Session 3 How to Harness the Power of Attachment

• how to create a context of connection
• why we need to connect before we direct
• why we need to back out of the incidents and into the relationship
• how to get an alpha child to relinquish control

Session 4 How to Keep From Losing a Child to Competing Attachments

• incompatibility and the dark energy of attachment
• what causes attachments to be incompatible
• why attachment incompatibility is escalating
• the true meaning of shyness and why it needs to be respected
• how to create a working village of attachment
• how to recognize a competing attachment
• how to defuse attachment incompatibility
• how to keep from being replaced

Session 5 How to Preserve (or Restore) the Ties that Empower

• assume responsibility for fulfilling a child's attachment hunger
• take responsibility for the relationship
• use structure & ritual to cultivate connection and protect the relationship
• refrain from using discipline that divides
• soften a child's heart in order to deepen the attachment and correct dominance problems
• reclaim a child if necessary

Session 6 How to Deal with Aggression Without Disrupting the Connection

• What moves a child to attack: the primary role of frustration and attachment
• Three alternative outcomes to frustration that will keep a child from attacking
• The three impediments to futility sinking in
• How to keep a child's aggression from disrupting the vital connection
• How to effectively address an aggression problem

Session 7 How to Deal with Resistance Without Sabotaging the Relationship

• Why some children are compelled to resist and oppose
• How counterwill is mistaken for willfulness
• Seven steps to counterwill-proof a relationship
• Defusing counterwill: nine ways to reduce pressure & coercion
• Reducing counterwill: harnessing the power of attachment

Session 8 How to Use Discipline that is Attachment-Safe and Developmentally Friendly: Seven Strategies for Imposing Order

1. do all things in a context of connection
2. impose order primarily through structure & ritual, not through bossing a child around
3. aim to change a mind instead of behaviour
4. draw out mixed feelings instead of demanding self-control
5. aim for sadness when a child is up against futility
6. take control through changing the circumstances, especially when unable to change the child
7. script the actions of the immature to buy some time for the child to grow up
   

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History & genesis of the course:
The Power to Parent course has been presented across Canada as well as in the United States and Europe. The material is consistently well-received and often results in standing ovations. The material has evolved over the course of 25 years. It first began as a parent discussion group that grew out of popular demand from young parents who took Dr. Neufeld's university courses on developmental psychology and parent-child relations. It gradually evolved into an eight-session evening course called Making Sense of Kids that was in high demand by parents and professionals in the Vancouver area for many years. Because of Dr. Neufeld's widespread reputation, pressure mounted to create a parenting course that could be taken on the road. This Power to Parent course is now a three-part series that will soon be available in matching video-course and book formats for both private and group study.

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Excerpts on 'power' from Dr. Neufeld's book Hold On To Your Kids

Today's parents love their children as much as parents ever have, but the love doesn't always get through. We want just as much to teach, but our capacity to get our knowledge across has, somehow, diminished. We do not feel empowered to guide our children toward fulfilling their potential. Sometimes they live and act as if they have been seduced away from us by some siren song we do not hear. We fear, if only vaguely, that the world has become less safe for them and that we are powerless to protect them. The gap opening up between children and adults can seem unbridgeable at times.
We struggle to live up to our image of what parenting ought to be like. Not achieving the results we want, we plead with our children, we cajole, bribe, reward or punish. We hear ourselves address them in tones that seem harsh even to us and foreign to our true nature. We sense ourselves grow cold in moments of crisis, precisely when we would wish to summon our unconditional love. We feel hurt as parents, and rejected. We blame-ourselves for failing at the parenting task, or our children for being recalcitrant, or television for distracting them, or the school system for not being strict enough. When our impotence becomes unbearable we reach for simplistic, authoritarian formulas consistent with the do-it-yourself/quick-fix ethos of our era.

The question of parental influence might not be quite so crucial if things were going well with our young. That our children do not seem to listen to us or to embrace our values as their own would, perhaps, be acceptable in itself--if they were truly self-sufficient, self-directed and grounded in themselves, if they had a positive sense of who they are and if they possessed a clear sense of direction and purpose in life. We see that for so many children and young adults those qualities are lacking. In homes, in schools, in community after community developing young people have lost their moorings. Many lack self-control and are increasingly prone to alienation, drug use, violence, or just a general aimlessness. They are less teachable and more difficult to manage than their counterparts of even a few decades ago. Many have lost their ability to adapt, to learn from negative experience and to mature. Unprecedented numbers of children and adolescents are now being prescribed medications for depression, anxiety or a host of other diagnoses. The crisis of the young has manifested itself ominously in the growing problem of bullying in the schools and, at its very extreme, in the murder of children by children. Such tragedies, though rare, are only the most visible eruptions of a widespread malaise, an aggressive streak rife in today's youth culture.

Committed and responsible parents are frustrated. Despite our loving care, kids seem highly stressed. Parents and other elders no longer appear to be the natural mentors for the young, as always used to be the case with human beings and is still the case with all other species living in their natural habitats. Senior generations, parents and grandparents of the baby boomer group, look at us with incomprehension. “We didn't need how-to manuals on parenting in our days, we just did it,” they say, with some mixture of truth and misunderstanding.
This state of affairs is ironic, given that more is known about child development than ever before and that we have more access to courses and books on child rearing than any previous generation of parents.
The psychologist Carl Jung wisely pointed out that when a disease has many proposed cures, it is only because none of them works. It is the same with parenting today. The bewildering array of books and courses on how to parent are sure testimony that we have lost touch with something previous generations took for granted: the instinctual human ability to nurture and raise children.

It is the thesis of this book that the disorder affecting the generations of young children and adolescents now heading toward adulthood is rooted in the lost orientation of children toward the nurturing adults in their lives. For the first time in history young people are turning for instruction, modeling and guidance not to mothers, fathers, teachers and other responsible adults but to people whom nature never intended to place in a parenting role-their own peers. They are not manageable, teachable or maturing because they no longer take their cues from us. Instead, children are being brought up by immature persons who cannot possibly guide them to maturity. They are being brought up by each other.


Excerpt from the chapter THE POWER TO PARENT IS SLIPPING AWAY

Parenting was designed to be power assisted. In this way, it is much like the luxury vehicles of today, with power-assisted steering, brakes, and windows. If the power fails, many of the cars would be too much to handle. To manage children when our parenting power has been cut is likewise next to impossible, yet millions of parents are trying to do just that. But whereas it is relatively easy to find a good technician to help with your car, the experts to whom parents bring their childrearing difficulties seldom assess the problem correctly. Too often the children are blamed for being difficult, the parents for being inept or their parenting techniques for being inadequate. It is generally unrecognized by parents and professionals that the root of the problem is not parental ineptitude but parental impotence in the strictest meaning of that word: lacking sufficient power.

The absent quality is power, not love or knowledge or commitment or skill. Our predecessors had much more power than parents today. In getting children to heed, our grandparents wielded more power than our parents could exercise over us or we seem to have over our children. If the trend continues, our children will be in great difficulty when their turn comes at parenting. The power to parent is slipping away.

Parental impotence is difficult to recognize and painful to admit. Our minds seize on more acceptable explanations: our children don't need us any more, or our children are particularly difficult or our parenting skill is deficient.
These days many people resist the concept of power. As children, some of us knew all too well the power of parents and became painfully aware of its potential for abuse. We are mindful that power leads to temptation and have experienced that those who seek power over others cannot be trusted. In some ways power has become a dirty word, as in power-seeking and power-hungry. It is not surprising that many have come to eschew it, an attitude I encounter frequently among parents and educators.

Many also confuse power with force. That is not the sense in which we employ the word power in this book. In our present discussion of parenting and attachment, power means the spontaneous authority to parent. That spontaneous authority flows not from coercion or force but from an appropriately aligned relationship with the child. The power to parent arises when things are in their natural order, and it arises without effort, without posturing and without pushing. It is when we lack that power that we are likely to resort to force. The more power a parent commands, the less force is required in day-to-day parenting. On the other hand, the less power we possess, the more impelled we are to raise our voices, harshen our demeanor, utter threats and seek some leverage to make our children comply with our demands. The loss of power experienced by today's parents has led to a preoccupation in the parenting literature with techniques that would be perceived as bribes and threats in almost any other setting. We have camouflaged such signs of impotence with euphemisms like rewards and “natural consequences.”

Power is absolutely necessary for the task of parenting. Why do we need power? Because we have responsibilities. Parenting was never meant to exist without the power to fulfill the responsibilities it brings. There is no way of understanding the dynamics of parenting without addressing the question of power.

The power we have lost is the power to command our children's attention, to solicit their good intentions, to evoke their deference and secure their cooperation. Without these four abilities, all we have left is coercion or bribery.
Many people have concluded that parents cannot be expected to know what to do without formal training. There are all kinds of parenting courses now and even classes teaching parents how to read nursery rhymes to their toddlers. Yet experts cannot teach what is most fundamental to effective parenting. The power to parent does not arise from techniques, no matter how well meant, but from the attachment relationship.

The secret of a parent's power is in the dependence of the child. Children are born completely dependent, unable to make their own way in this world. Their lack of viability as separate beings makes them utterly reliant on others for being taken care of, for guidance and direction, for support and approval, for a sense of home and belonging. It is the child's state of dependence that makes parenting necessary in the first place. If our children didn't need us, we would not need the power to parent.

At first glance, the dependence of children seems straightforward enough. But here is the glitch: being dependent does not guarantee dependence on the appropriate caregivers. Every child is born in need of nurturing, but after infancy and toddlerhood not all children necessarily look to the parent to provide it. Our power to parent rests not in how dependent our child is, but in how much our child depends specifically on us. The power to execute our parental responsibilities lies not in the neediness of our children but in their looking to us to be the answer to their needs.

We cannot truly take care of a child who does not count on us to be taken care of, or who depends on us only or food, clothing and shelter and other material concerns. We cannot emotionally support a child who is not leaning on us for his psychological needs. It is frustrating to direct a child who does not welcome our guidance, irksome and self-defeating to assist one who is not seeking our help.

Of course, all children begin life depending on their parents but sometimes things change along the way. Many children today come depend more on their peers then the adults in their live. It is not that these children no longer needed to be taken care of. Their dependency needs had not vanished; what has changed is whom they are depending on. The power to parent will be transferred to whomever the child depends on, whether or not that person is truly dependable, appropriate or responsible or compassionate-whether or not, in fact, that person is even an adult.

Such a power shift spells double trouble for us parents. Not only are we left without the power to manage our child but the innocent and incompetent usurpers acquire the power to lead our children astray. Our children's peers did not actively seek this power--it goes with the territory of dependence. This sinister cut in parenting power often comes when we least suspect it and at a time when we are most in need of natural authority. The seeds of peer dependence have usually taken root by the primary grades, but it is in the intermediate years that the growing incompatibility of peer and parent attachments plays havoc with our power to parent. Precisely during our children's adolescence, just when there is more to manage than ever before and just when our physical superiority over them begins to wane, the power to parent slips from our hands.

What to us looks like independence is really just dependence transferred. We are in such a hurry for our children to be able to do things themselves that we do not see just how dependent they really are. Like power, dependence has become a dirty word. We want our children to be self-directing, self-motivated, self-controlled, self-orienting, self-reliant and self-assured. We have put such a premium on independence that we lose sight of what childhood is about. Parents will complain of their child's oppositional and off-putting behaviors, but rarely do they note that their children have stopped looking to them for nurturing, comfort and assistance. They are disturbed by their child's failure to comply with their reasonable expectations but seem unaware that the child no longer seeks their affection, approval or appreciation. They do not notice that the child is turning to peers for support, love, connection and belonging. When attachment is displaced, dependence is displaced. So is, along with it, the power to parent.

The ultimate challenge for parents of such peer-oriented children is not to enforce rules, induce compliance or to put an end to this or that behavior. Rather, It is to reclaim our children, to realign the forces of attachment on the side of parenting. We need to foster in these children the dependence that is the source of the power to parent. To regain our natural authority, we must displace and usurp the illegitimate jurisdiction of our children's unsuspecting and unwitting usurpers-their friends. While reattaching our children may be easier to conceptualize than to do in practice, it is the only way to regain parental authority. Much of my work with families-and much of the advice I will give -is intended to help parents re-assume their natural position of authority.

What enables peers to displace parents in the first place, given that such displacement seems contrary to what is needed? As always, there is logic to the natural order of things. A child's ability to attach to people who are not her biological parents serves an important function, because in life the presence of the birth parents is by no means assured. They could die or disappear. Our attachment programming required the flexibility to find substitutes to attach to and depend on. Humans are not unique in this transferability of attachments. What makes some creatures such great pets is that they can reattach from their parents to humans, enabling us to both care for them and manage them.
Since humans have a lengthy period of dependence, attachments must be transferable from one person to another-from parents to relatives and neighbors and tribal or village elders. All of these, in turn, are meant to play their role in bringing the child to full maturity. This remarkable adaptability, which has served parents and children for thousands of years, has come to haunt us in recent times. Under today's conditions, that adaptability now enables peers to replace parents.
Most parents are able to sense the loss of power when their child becomes peer-oriented, even if they don't recognize it for what it is. Such a child's attention is harder to command, his deference decreases, the parent's authority is eroded. When specifically asked, the parents of each of the three children in our case examples were able to identify when their power to parent began to wane. That erosion of natural authority is first noted by parents as simply a niggling feeling that something has gone wrong.

It takes three ingredients to make parenting work--a dependent being in need of being taken care of, an adult willing to assume responsibility and a good working attachment from the child to the adult. The most critical of these is also the one most commonly overlooked and neglected: the child's attachment to the adult. Many parents and would-be parents still labor under the misconception that one can simply step into the role of parenting, whether as an adoptive parent, a foster parent, a stepparent or the biological parent. We expect that the child's need to be taken care of and our willingness to parent will suffice. We are surprised and offended when children seem resistant to our parenting.

Recognizing that parental responsibility is insufficient for successful child rearing but still not conscious of the role of attachment, many experts assume the problem must be in the parenting know-how. If parenting is not going well, it is because parents are not doing things right. According to this way of thinking, it is not enough to don the role, a parent needs some skill to be effective. The parental role has to be supplemented with all kinds of parenting techniques-or so many experts seem to believe.

Many parents, too, reason something like this: if others can get their children to do what they want them to do but I can't, it must be because I lack the requisite skills. Their questions all presume a simple lack of knowledge, to be corrected by “how to” types of advice for every conceivable problem situation: How do I get my child to listen, How can I get my child to do his homework, What do I need to do to get my child to clean his room, What is the secret to getting a child to do her chores, How do I get my child to sit at the table? Our predecessors would probably have been embarrassed to ask such questions or, for that matter, to show their face in a parenting course. It seems much easier for parents today to confess incompetence rather than impotence, especially when our lack of skill can be conveniently blamed on a lack of training or a lack of appropriate models in our own childhood. The result has been a multi-billion-dollar industry of parental advice-giving, from experts advocating time-outs or reward points on the fridge to all the how-to books on effective parenting. Child-rearing experts and the publishing industry give parents what they ask for instead of the insight they so desperately need. The sheer volume of the advice offered tends to reinforce the feelings of inadequacy and the sense of being unprepared for the job. The fact that these methodologies fail to work has not slowed the torrent of skill teaching.

Once we perceive parenting as a set of skills to be learned, it is difficult for us to see the process any other way. Whenever trouble is encountered the assumption is that there must be another book to be read, another course to be taken, another skill to be mastered. Meanwhile, our supporting cast continues to assume that we have the power to do the job. Teachers act as if we can still get our children to do homework. Neighbors expect us to keep our children in line. Our own parents chide us to take a firmer stand. The experts assume that compliance is just another skill away. The courts hold us responsible for our child's behavior. Nobody seems to get the fact that our hold on our children is slipping.

The reasoning behind parenting as a set of skills seemed logical enough, but in hindsight has been a dreadful mistake. It has led to an artificial reliance on experts, robbed parents of their natural confidence and often leaves them feeling dumb and inadequate. We are quick to assume that our children don't listen because we don't know how to make them listen; that our children are not compliant because they have not yet learned the right tricks; that children are not respectful enough of authority because we, the parents, have not taught them to be respectful. We miss the essential point that what matters is not the skill of the parents but the relationship of the child to the adult who is assuming responsibility.

When we focus narrowly on what we should be doing, we become blind to our attachment relationship with our children and its inadequacies. Parenthood is above all a relationship, not a skill to be acquired. Attachment is not a behaviour to be learned but a connection to be sought.

Parenting impotence is hard to see because the power that parents used to possess was not conscious of itself. It was automatic, invisible, a built-in component of family life and of tradition-based cultures. By and large, the parents of yesteryear could take their power for granted because it was usually sufficient for the task at hand. For reasons we have begun to explore, this is no longer the case. If one does not understand the source of one's ease, one cannot appreciate the root of one's difficulty. Owing to our collective ignorance of attachment, our difficulty recognizing parental impotence and our aversion to power itself, the most common affliction in parenting is left begging for an explanation.
The obvious alternative to blaming the parent is to conclude that there is something amiss or lacking in the child. If we are not given to doubt our parenting, we assume the source of our trouble must be the child. We take refuge in the child-blaming thought that we have not failed, but our children have failed to live up to the expected standards. Our attitude is expressed in questions or demands such as Why don't you pay attention? Stop being so difficult! Or, Why can't you do as you're told?

Difficulty in parenting often leads to a hunt to find out what is wrong with the child. We may witness today a frantic search for labels to explain our children's problems. Parents seek the formal diagnoses of a professional or grasp at informal labels-there are, for examples, books on raising the “difficult” or the “spirited” child. The more frustrating parenting becomes, the more likely children will be perceived as difficult and the more labels will be sought for verification. It is no coincidence that the preoccupation with diagnoses has paralleled the rise in peer orientation in our society. Increasingly, children's behavioral problems are ascribed to various medical syndromes such as oppositional defiant disorder or attention deficit disorder. These diagnoses at least have the benefit of absolving the child and of removing the onus of blame from the parents, but they camouflage the reversible dynamics that cause children to misbehave in the first place. Medical explanations help by removing guilt but they hinder by reducing the issues to oversimplified concepts. They assume that the complex behavior problems of many children can be explained by genetics or by miswired brain circuits. They ignore scientific evidence that the human brain is shaped by the environment from birth throughout the lifetime and that attachment relationships are the most important aspect of the child's environment. They also dictate narrow solutions, such as medications, without regard to the child's relationships with peers and with the adult world. In practice, they serve to further disempower parents.

The most salient issue for us as parents is not what is wrong with our parenting or what is wrong with our children but rather, what is missing in our children's relationship to us. Parenting was meant to be natural and intuitive but can only be so when our children are deeply attached to us. To regain the power to parent we must bring our children back into full dependence on us--not just physical dependence, but psychological and emotional too, as nature has ever intended. We must be perceived by them as the primary answer to their needs for contact and closeness.

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