Be there for your child!

First lesson of happiness is the greatest gift. You can offer your children in their first seven years.
But the first three years are crucial, after they pass you can relax. If not, then you will be practicing remedy or parenting for DECADES.

Most parents have problems in understanding what it means to be there for his/her child. Most parents are busy waiting for them to get old so that they can talk and share moments. What they need to understand is that the REAL RELATIONSHIP DOES NOT DEPEND ON WORDS. It DEPENDS ON THE CAPACITY OF BEING WITH. It is like you welcome your child in your presence, to feel overjoyed in your presence. That is what your child needs from the parent and that is communicated with body language and everything to the energy that you expand. They cannot say it in words, but they can feel it.

Mothers tend to have a closer bond with their child, whereas the father tends to visit them. You know, the father goes to work and visits home for a couple of hours and then takes off again next morning.
Those fathers who stay at home with their kids, they learn how to be with their kids. So, it is not a gender issue. It is a relational issue and mothers allow themselves to be trained by their kids. Whereas the fathers tend to impose their own expectations on the kid. This is not universal. I am saying it by in large. So, those fathers that are fortunate in the civilised countries to have paternity leave, those fathers learn to relate to their kids in a different way than the average fathers somewhere else.

Think about this: cubs, puppies or animal babies play and learn in a protective environment, that is in  the presence of their parents. You, as a parent, need to give your kids space.

The basic lesson is  to Be Present.
You cannot really communicate because the two-month-old or six-months-old does not understand the words, so the communication happens on a deeper level. The children need to connect, because without connection they would not know how to survive in the hnter-gatherer bands where human beings evolved those attachments with adults, and not just one adult or,two but with a whole set  of nurturing adults, learn our culture.

We have deprived the kids of the parental presence for the most part and their brain cannot handle an attachment void where there is no attachment figure and in the absence of a parent, or the nurturing adult will fill that void with the helping group. Children become far more attach.to their peer, they become models and mentors for how to walk, how to talk. They share different values than their parents and the kids cannot handle the competition. So, the brain of the child , actually, chooses the peer group over the parent group and where that goes you can see on Facebook and you can see it in the teenage gangs and you can see it in the increasing frustration of parents who has lost a part of it; because parents think they have the responsibility, the strength and the wisdom. The parent thinks the kid belongs to him and not the peer group. Because we have taken the kid out of his natural context. We lose the part of the parent.

What do we do then? We become more authoritative. We lose the authority, so we become authoritarian and the more authoritarian we become, the more pressure you put on, the more they resist and we label them with opposition defiant disorder and we call these kids bad and naughty.
But all that they are doing is to act out their attachment dynamics.

So, if you want to discipline kids, we have to make them our disciples and not someone they are afraid of you. Somebody who loves you and wants to belong to you and follow you. This is opposite of punishment.

The most important template for the emotional development of the child as well as for the brain sis a nurturing relationship with mutual responsible adults. Everything that undermines the relationship with the child will actually undermine the child s development because it makes the child insecure and kids in state of insecurity or defensive, in flight or fight mode...they do not learn anything. They just start defending. But what have you taught your child? You taught him that the relationship is conditional and they are only acceptable to you if they please you. Furthermore, you taught them that the relationships are unstable and unreliable and that you are not available to them when they are most upset.

And this is how parents are taught to parent furthermore, parents are taught not to pick up their kids when they are crying. What lesson do they get? ...That their emotions do not matter. The parenting psychology in this culture has become anti-child.