Being with.

The idea of ‘being with’ someone sounds so simple, a total no-brainer, so you might find this kind of focus on it a bit pointless. Perhaps even one that you want to reject immediately as a load of hippybollocks over-thinking. But please, in the interest of your little ones, have a read. Sit with it and see what it brings up for you.

It is very simple…and can also be incredibly hard to do. “Being-With” is how we describe the thing that our babies and children most require. (And to alleviate parental performance anxiety straight away, it’s almost the polar opposite of “being a perfect parent” or even of “getting it right”). It is just a relaxed presence, the willingness and ability to slow down…. really listen, be with what a little one is needing in real time, from moment to moment. Undistracted. Not multi-tasking. Just you and the little one, face to face, eye to eye. This isn’t something we can (or should) do all day long, but we can (and should) do it many times during a day. Quoting the Circle of Security guys again, they say that Being-With is a way of expressing…

“I’m fully here…..I can see your joy as you play or as you come to me…rather than picking up my phone to text a friend, I delight in your excitement as you climb in the park…I stay with you and honour it as important…..and as you come back I welcome you in because I know it’s time to fill your cup with a little tenderness”

We need to not be distracted and follow rather than lead. In these moments, there is no other agenda. No learning, teaching, questioning or praising. Just Being-With.

Jude Cassidy, the great attachment researcher says the message a parent is giving in such moments is “I’m here…and you’re worth it”

And of course, that grows in the infant the complementary message “You’re here, therefore I must be worth it”

So why can it be hard to get right? After working with all kinds of families for a long time, I’m in solid agreement with Kent Hoffman  who says unequivocally that "all parents bring some degree of patterned, consistently un-repaired absence to their children." Or put more clearly, we all have blind spots or hot spots around certain emotions and almost all parents have moments of difficulty Being-With the full range of their children's feelings.  Some of us are great with sadness, but become undone when our kids get angry. Or we're good with closeness and cuddles but independence feels like we’re being rejected or we’re not needed.  For some parents it’s fear, for others it’s need, anxiety, even joy or curiosity. We can allow and resonate with some of these emotional states, but it’s very rare to find a parent who can genuinely support all of them.

We all have “stuff”. Everyone carries baggage of some sort from our earliest experiences. And of course it's mostly unconscious and unintentional. Kent gives the example of a child crying whose parent attempts to cheer him up or distract, thinking that making the child happy will take away "the problem" of his sadness. What this translates to however is that the message of "cheer up" or "don't cry" or "be a happy baby for me" is translated by the baby/child as “I am here without someone who can tolerate and help me with my sadness.” And the well meaning, loving parent has no idea how sadness in the child has triggered his own unresolved sadness (only that they need to move away from it fast.) And they would probably also be shocked to find what the child’s mind has made of the interaction.

So what does the baby make of this interaction? Unless the sadness feeling is validated in some way through empathic attunement, understanding and comfort the infant makes the interpretation … “ I'm alone here with my sadness.”  Repeat this interaction  over time and the message becomes locked in: you can't have that feeling...don't be you in this particular way. The infant/child's experience is, I'm sad and I need connection... but no-one can connect with me here. If I'm going to be sad, I'm on my own with it.  And Donald Winnicott (who is our great inspiration) names this as the exact point where the innate true self begins to construct the false or adapted self. Or to put it more simply, the little one starts to give mum and dad what they seem to want rather than expressing the things they are actually feeling..

Is this the implicit message we want to give our babies and little children? I need you to hide your sadness.                                                                                                       
Or muffle your anger.                                                                                                                          
Be pleasant. Be bright. Be cheery.                                                                                                    
Change yourself and make the unacknowledged anxiety I have about this feeling go away.        Keep that hidden.   I don't want to see how you really feel. Real feelings frighten me.   Don’t want things, because when you do it brings up all my own unacknowledged and unmet needs.

I don't think this is what any of us want. Have a think about what you’re good (and less good) at Being-With.

(We’d love to hear your comments and experience.)

For those interested, here’s Kent Hoffman talking about exactly this concept. http://www.spokesman.com/audio/2011/jun/04/wise-words-kent-hoffman/

"Nothing is more important than the attachment relationship"

- L. Alan Sroufe, founder of the 35 year Minnesota
longitudinal Study of attachment.