July 15, 2025 • 49 mins
SUMMARY
In this episode of the Being Sons podcast, we delve into "The Big Six" essential needs every child requires from their caregivers, as explained by our guest, trauma therapist, podcast host and author Adam Young. Together we discover how attunement, responsiveness, engagement, affect regulation, emotional strength, and repair can profoundly impact a child's development and secure attachment. Join us as we explore these foundational elements and learn how they shape the journey of fatherhood and personal growth. You WILL get insights that promise to transform your understanding of your child, your childhood, parenting and relationships.
TAKEAWAYS
- Understanding your own story is crucial for effective parenting.
- Children need attuned and responsive caregivers to develop securely.
- The 'Big Six' needs are essential for healthy emotional development.
- Attunement involves recognizing and understanding a child's emotional state.
- Responsiveness is about how caregivers react to a child's emotions.
- Engagement means pursuing a child's unique identity and feelings.
- Parents must regulate their children's affect during emotional dysregulation.
- It's important for parents to handle their own emotions to support their children.
- Repairing harm done in parenting is essential for healthy relationships.
- The parent-child relationship is designed for the parent to give and the child to receive.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Understanding Dysregulation and Its Impact
01:03 Introduction to Adam Young and His Work
05:15 The Importance of Personal Story in Healing
06:34 The Influence of Family of Origin on Fathering
09:48 Secure vs. Insecure Attachment Explained
11:42 The Big Six Needs of Children
16:52 Attunement: Reading Children's Emotional States
18:51 Responsiveness: The Role of Caregivers
19:48 Engagement: Pursuing the Child's Unique Identity
26:32 Regulating Children's Affect: A Parent's Role
34:50 Handling Big Emotions: The Parent's Strength
39:42 The Importance of Repair in Relationships
To learn more from Adam Young listen to his great podcast, “The Place We Find Ourselves” and read his excellent new book, “Make Sense of Your Story”
Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36bU2hcguX97EDOi9Ja0tQ?si=a29272ea704649c1
Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-place-we-find-ourselves/id1373926216
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
But what most of us tend to do is we get upset with ourselves that we're dysregulated,that we're amped up, that we're freaked out, and we try and push through and endure.
And what we end up doing is acting and speaking from a very dysregulated place, andnothing good happens when we do that.
(00:33):
Welcome back to the Being Sons podcast.
Today we are going to be talking about what every child needs from their caregivers,usually father and mother.
And I've never heard anyone explain it as well as our guest today.
Adam Young is a trauma therapist, host of the excellent podcast called The Place We FindOurselves, which is where I was introduced to his work.
(00:56):
And he's the author of this new and absolutely outstanding book called The Place We FindOurselves.
As I have read even the first chapter, I began aching to give a copy of this to everyhuman being that I know and I come into uh contact with.
And I've already started giving them out to people, as the Lord has told me to.
(01:18):
uh Adam, I'm so grateful that you said yes to join us, and I know that you have anoffering of goodness to bring us today.
So welcome to the Being Sons Podcast.
Thanks Jay, it's great to be with you.
Awesome.
Well, this book right here is an answer to prayer back in 2006, like many of the listenersto this podcast.
(01:39):
At one point in my story, for me, it was 2006.
I went to a Wild at Heart bootcamp led by John Eldridge and the team.
And that was the first time I had ever been introduced to the fact that my story was notmy resume.
My story was actually the journey of my heart, what it is.
Sustained what it is received and that I am the product of that and a lot of the issuesThat I find myself dealing with and the desires to become a better man the seeking of
(02:10):
improvement It is uh is accessible through pieces of my story and it's the first timeanybody had ever introduced me to the idea that we have wounds and that wounds come from
people and that we can then uh We can then
ask God to help bring healing to those places and we are actually able to move out ofplaces of contempt and anger and find solutions to the things that we find going on in
(02:41):
ourselves that often feel uncontrollable and that we're very ashamed of and into thisfreedom and goodness that feels elusive without that.
know, even though we read the Bible and we go through it, we pour through it without thisinteraction with God and without this healing.
uh
I was not growing much.
(03:03):
Adam, this book would have helped me so much if somebody, if I had left bootcamp with thatwhole new category and they had said, read this, this would have helped so, so much.
So the 2006, that's 19 years ago.
And I have been praying and begging and God has been giving me pieces of my story tounderstand, but your book has brought a greater clarity.
(03:31):
It has been more clearly articulating the story of my heart and helping me find thingsthat that I've been praying for for years.
So I not for a second am I saying that God is not on time with all of this, but it'sobvious to me as I read your book that God has been
(03:53):
preparing you to write this book your whole life.
And I will say similarly that God has been preparing me all my life to read this book.
ah I did something with this book that I've never done with another book.
ah I just knew after listening to your podcast that this book and it coming out and afterjust reading the cover and a couple of things about it, I knew that this book was going to
(04:16):
have a tremendous impact on me if I gave God permission to let it.
And so I'm sitting in my chair downstairs.
I get this book through Amazon and I held it up to my heart.
I've never done this with a book before.
And I said, God, I know that you want to lead me into deeper healing.
And so I commit to go wherever you want to lead me.
(04:37):
And I ask that you would minister to me through this book.
Let this be a supernatural encounter and conversation with you.
And, um, well, it's helpful that your book is really well written and I'm sure it'shelpful that I prayed that prayer.
But it's been incredible.
Incredible.
So well done.
Thank you.
Thank you for your honoring words.
(04:59):
It's so sweet to know that this book uh has moved you.
And I love the thought of you holding it up to your chest and praying that prayer.
That says a lot about your heart.
Yeah, I've been ready, know, 19 years, 19 years, working through little bits and pieces ofmy story.
(05:22):
ah So I want to get down to it because we have a lot to share.
uh I really wrestled with whether to interview you on this book as a whole.
I mean, almost up until last night because it's so good.
ah But given the audience, given the men that I get to share life with, I really wanted tofocus on what you call
(05:45):
the big six, but I know that there's kind of some preliminary information that is going tobe really helpful to all of us to understand why the big six is in fact so significant for
us, especially my primary audience is going to be men who are fathers and are looking inhumility to become the best fathers that they can be.
(06:09):
I think my very first question for you is how important
is our story.
Yeah.
Well, boy, when it comes to fathering, you know, I think few things influence ourfathering more than our own developmental story in our family of origin from zero to 18.
(06:30):
And so very often when people think of their story,
They think of like a 30,000 foot overarching view.
know, my parents got divorced when I was 11.
You know, this happened to me when I was 16.
I graduated from this school.
And that stuff may all be part of your story, but it's not really what I mean when I talkabout your story.
I'm talking about the scenes, the incidents, the moments.
(06:53):
It might be 30 seconds of your life.
It might be five minutes.
And you remember it, and you know it influenced you.
and you're not sure why it still haunts you, maybe that's the best word, haunts you, butit does.
And will you give those stories weight?
(07:13):
In other words, will you write them and will you speak them aloud to other people that canhold your stories well?
Because I can learn so much more about your brain, your heart.
by hearing one of the stories of your life than by hearing a 30,000 foot overview of yourwhole life narrative.
(07:37):
Okay, one story, 30 seconds of my life, more than my resume.
Can you explain a little bit like why, a little bit more why 30 seconds of my life canhelp you see that?
Sure, because we remember the things we remember for a reason.
They've imprinted themselves and most often what we remember, I would suggest, are ourtragedies.
(08:01):
We remember our heartaches.
We remember the moments where our heart was shattered.
And we very often don't want to engage those memories.
We want them not to be part of our story.
And so we tend to dismiss them and minimize them.
But...
If we will welcome those stories of heartache, harm, trauma, disappointment, shattering,if we will welcome them like a guest at the dinner table, and if we will listen to the
(08:35):
11-year-old boy or the 16-year-old boy, we will find a gold mine of understanding ourbrain and particularly how our brain has been wired relationally to understand the
relational world.
because we are deeply relational beings at our core and relational harm shatters thebrain.
(08:58):
By shatters, I mean it fragments the brain.
literally fragments, portions of your brain that need to be connected.
And when that happens, it plays out in your fathering.
It plays out in your husbanding.
It plays out in your vocation.
It plays out everywhere.
because the lessons we learned as children made a big impression on our neural networks.
(09:27):
Okay.
So I think before we enter into what you call the big six, it would be also really helpfulto contrast secure attachment versus insecure attachment.
What are they and why does that matter?
(09:48):
Sure.
So attachment is just a relatively recent category over the last 40 or 50 years in uhdevelopmental neuroscience, developmental psychology, and it just gets at the idea that we
are created in the image of a we and not an I.
We're created in the image of a triune god.
Therefore, relationships have a profound influence, not just on the development of yourbrain,
(10:17):
but on like what your heart longs for.
We long for deep relational connection.
Just think back when you were a boy, how you longed for relational connection with yourfather and your mother.
And if that was lacking, then it was one of the most tormenting parts of your growing upexperiences.
So, attachment falls into two broad categories, secure and insecure.
(10:43):
And secure attachment is what happens in the brain.
It refers to a healthy connected brain when your big, what I call your big six needs as achild are met, when they're satisfied by your primary caregivers.
And I'll talk about those six things in a minute.
Insecure attachment is what happens in your brain when those things are not sufficientlymet by your primary caregivers.
(11:10):
which is why I call the big six the big six, because they're oh so very important forchildren.
Okay, so we're going to round the corner.
I just want to let you do what you do so well in explaining the Big Six.
And then I want to finish up before we before our conversation ends with some encouragingwords, because what I know happened for a lot of you men and women out there who might be
(11:37):
listening to this podcast is as Adam was just explaining that
you may remember from your childhood, your deep need to receive these things from yourfather or mother, that may not even resonate with you uh at this point.
ah And there's a reason for that, which uh I know better now as a result of uh readingAdam's book.
(12:03):
There's a lot of conflict that comes up in our hearts when we begin thinking about uh
all of this, our story, relationships that were essential, the ones that uh where we didget what we wanted, when we didn't get what we wanted, there's a lot of emotions that come
(12:23):
up like contempt and confusion and a lot of conflict.
And what we are hoping to do through the course of this conversation is to make you feelwhat is absolutely true, and that is with God you are safe.
to go into these places.
Not only that, but it is essential for you to go into these places for you to become theman, the father, and the husband that you want to be.
(12:51):
uh fathers, sons, dads out there, I want you to know that I'm doing this and I want you tojust go with me on this journey because it's working.
It really is.
God is coming for the unfothered, unmothered places in us and uh He's bringing goodness.
He's bringing goodness and he's bringing hope in some of the hopeless places.
(13:13):
uh So uh Adam, have you had men come to you for counseling who are sad and scared abouthow they treat and interact with their children?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, one of the reasons I titled the book Make Sense of Your Story, that's the title,Make Sense of Your Story, is because in order to be the father that you want to be or the
(13:40):
mother that you want to be, you have to make sense, coherent sense of your owndevelopmental story in your family of origin.
Until you make sense of it, you will find yourself
what you probably consider overreacting.
In other words, you get activated, you get dysregulated, you say or do things that youregret.
(14:04):
we call that triggered.
We call that activated.
Call it whatever you want.
We all know that experience of losing it with our kids and not really being, or with ourpartners and not really being sure why.
And what I would say is that until you have made sense of your story, you are going to beperplexed by your own behavior.
(14:24):
You're going to be confused why you react so strongly when you do.
But here's the question.
What if there's a reason, what if there's a really good reason that you overreact, and Idon't even like that word, but lots of people use it, in the ways that you do and in the
moments that you do.
(14:44):
So for example, for me, whenever my son would have a temper tantrum, eight, 10, even12-year-old versions of temper tantrums,
and he would be severely dysregulated, I would have a very hard time staying grounded andstaying present to him.
Why?
Because I was never allowed as a kid in my family to have temper tantrums.
(15:08):
my gosh, not an option for me.
And therefore he was doing on a regular basis what I was never allowed to do and itfreaked my nervous system out.
and it dysregulated me deeply, and it became an obstacle to me showing up for him as thefather that I wanted to be.
(15:29):
Until I engaged that part of my story, it made it very difficult to father my son well.
And so you have found that engaging your story has had a great result on your ownparenting.
(15:50):
have as well and just to encourage the dads as we and you know the men as we move intothese things they're going to feel things.
The first thing I want them to hear is uh stick with us and you will be able to experiencethat as well.
Wonderful.
Okay so Adam.
oh Actually, I want to pray first.
I want to do that.
(16:10):
It has worked really well with regard to this topic.
So, our Father, we are your sons and daughters, and we want to thank you.
Thank you for purchasing us back into your family by your Son Jesus Christ.
And now we ask that you do what all good fathers do.
(16:32):
Meet us where we are.
Help us rest in the truth that we are seen
loved and safe with you, and lead us into the healing and freedom that Christ set us freeto experience as we learn to do life in union with you.
Okay, Adam, take us into the Big Six.
(16:52):
The first is attunement.
The first thing that every child needs from their parents is attunement.
What does that mean?
Attunement is reading the internal emotional state of the child.
So I would invite you who are listening to not think about your parenting right now, butthink about what it was like for you as a boy or a girl.
(17:16):
Were you attuned to as a third grader?
In other words,
Did you have a sense in your body that your father, that your mother knew and wanted toknow something about your internal emotional state?
Something about if you were sad, why you were sad.
(17:37):
If you were ashamed, that you were ashamed and some curiosity about why and a willingnessto understand that that was a big deal for you in your six, eight, 10 year old body.
That's what we mean by attunement.
Now the second of the big six is responsiveness.
That's the second thing every kid needs.
(17:58):
So if attunement refers to like reading your face at the dinner table, responsiveness isgetting at, okay, well, what did your dad do when he saw that you were sad or disappointed
or enraged?
How did your mother respond to your sad face after you lost your soccer game?
(18:20):
was their responsiveness from your primary caregivers to your emotional climate, youremotional states.
And for many people, when they look back on their growing up years, they don't have asense, they don't have memory of being responded to with care, with curiosity, with
(18:42):
kindness.
And when you don't have responsive caregivers, your brain
The appropriate word is damaged.
The neural circuitry of your brain does not develop sufficiently.
Why?
Because children need attuned and responsive caregivers in order for their brains todifferentiate and link.
(19:09):
In other words, in order for the portions of their brain that hold memory to become bothseparated and connected at the same time.
And that's what makes for a stable
brain, which is code for secure attachment.
So those are the first two, attunement, responsiveness.
The third one that you need, you need engagement.
(19:30):
What does that mean?
Well, children need to be pursued by their primary caretakers.
What is pursuit?
It is a drawing out of their hopes, their fears, their dreams, their idiosyncrasies.
What is it that makes eight year old Adam Adam?
(19:52):
How am I different from my brothers?
That's what engagement is getting at is I needed my dad to draw out what made Adam uniquebecause every child is unique.
And in that sense, every child needs to be parented differently.
He needs to be engaged differently.
(20:14):
So if you're a 12 year old boy,
And you think back on being a seventh grader.
Did you have a sense that your mother, that your father pursued your heart and drew outwhat made you you?
If you don't have memory of pursuit, then your heart has been wounded and that wounding isstill affecting you.
(20:42):
That's the premise of the Big Six.
So that's the first three.
Do you want me to keep going or do you want to ponder the first three together?
Um.
I do, I do want to ponder the first three.
uh The attunement portion.
(21:05):
You know, when babies are young, you point this out in your book, like they are 100 %dysregulated.
They're all over the place.
need, as little babies, we needed to be encouraged when we were down.
As little babies, when we got excited, we need somebody to calm us down.
(21:27):
At some point, I think it's apparent that parents feel like,
Well, I guess they're kind of on their own.
Like there's a moment in our stories where, well, I'd say this, a lot of babies don't evenget that truthfully.
(21:47):
Is that true?
Yes, yeah.
But then at some point we start looking at the kid and I say, as a father, ah there was apoint when my son was 12 years old and I began internally through, because of my own
story, to expect my son to be able to take care of himself.
(22:08):
Right.
Right.
So, hey man, you need to grow up.
You need to start acting like a man.
And boy, did I hurt my son.
in significant ways.
Yep.
And I'm sure I've done the same with my daughter.
So for a dad,
(22:29):
uh Is there a simple way to practice kind of an entry level if we feel like we're notdoing well at attuning to our children?
Can you give us a little bit of counsel on how we might be able to do that tonight, evenat the dinner table?
Sure, like two thoughts immediately come to mind.
The first is ask questions.
(22:53):
The second is learn to read nonverbal communication.
Children, well, this is true for adults.
Human beings communicate primarily without words.
That's very important to understand.
70 % of our communication is nonverbal.
What do I mean by that?
Tone of voice, facial expression, body language.
(23:16):
So the example I give about this is if I said this to my daughter when she asked, what'snonverbal communication?
She was eight years old and I'd looked at her and I had this beaming smile on my face andI said, hope that's her name.
Hope, I hate you.
And she burst into laughter because of the contrast.
(23:38):
The words are absolutely devastating to an eight year old's heart, but that's not whatmoved her.
because she's reading my face.
So for fathers at the dinner table, do you have a face that communicates to your child adesire to know what's going on for them in their hearts and in their bodies?
(24:02):
And then are you reading their tone of voice and their facial expression?
Are you learning how to read your child?
And each child communicates differently.
And so you need to become increasingly adept at reading the face and the tone of voice ofyour sons and daughters.
(24:26):
And the one way to do that is to check in with them with questions.
Like, you look sad.
Are you feeling sad?
Or you look mad.
Are you feeling mad?
Or what's that like for you?
To ask questions gives you data about whether what you're reading is accurate or not.
And that's a great place to start.
(24:46):
Curiosity, kindness, and reading nonverbal communication.
A lot of teenagers give one word answers.
huh.
Right.
Yeah.
And for many fathers who do not have a lot of skill when it comes to helping and we alsoget scared and we also get our feelings hurt when our children, feels like they are
(25:16):
literally trying to hurt our feelings and push us away.
How do we, how would you counsel?
those fathers who it appears are being rejected and their curiosity is being deflected.
Yeah, well, it's very important that you do your own work so that you can bear whateverbig feelings you have when you are rejected by your child, whether they're a teenager or
(25:49):
they're four years old.
Like you have to and this actually leads to the number four of the big six, which is youhave to be able to regulate their affect.
You can't require them to regulate yours.
And what is affect?
Affect is your felt bodily sensations.
So we all know what it's like to get enraged, panicked, anxious.
(26:13):
That's called hyper arousal.
And many people know what it's like to get dissociated, detached, numb, ashamed.
That's called hypo arousal.
But affect exists on that continuum from hypo arousal to hyper arousal.
Children...
go through the range of affect on a daily basis, many, many different times.
(26:38):
They'll shut down, they'll get amped up with rage, they'll get amped up with panic.
My son was getting chased by a bee the other day, absolute panic.
That's called dysregulated affect or hyper arousal.
Now, here's the thing.
Children have very limited abilities to regulate their affect.
(27:01):
They do not have the necessary brain structures to calm their own body when they getfreaked out or panicked or enraged.
They need you as a father or a mother to interactively regulate their affect for them.
How do you do that?
(27:21):
By presence, by soothing, by physical touch, by bringing your nervous system next totheirs.
and helping either calm them down if they're amped up or stimulate them back to life ifthey're feeling shame, detachment, numbness.
But either way, you are regulating, you are interactively regulating their bodies.
(27:46):
And that's the fourth thing that children need from their parents is they need theirparents to be willing to and able to regulate their affect for them.
So if you as a father,
are so upset because you're feeling rejected by your sons, you know, your teenage sonspushing you away.
(28:08):
I would really encourage you to do some work with regard to your own heart, your ownstory, your own emotions, so that you can learn how to self soothe that stuff and
therefore be present to your child, regardless of what's going on for your kidemotionally.
So that's another huge conversation, obviously.
(28:30):
Another reason to read the book because that will make a lot more sense and it will, theidea of soothing yourself may sound like woo woo um if you've never been invited into that
and if you weren't taught that as a kid.
uh Okay, so we don't have time to go into all of that, but in the moment, dad is listeningto this podcast for the first time.
(28:54):
He's humble, he's sitting at the table.
with his child, he sees their child dysregulated, he out of curiosity begins to pursue.
And then in the course of that pursuit, for whatever reason, he's feeling all thesefeelings and fears rising up, okay?
Like without having read the book, without having gone deep into stuff, what is yourrecommendation to the dad who is beginning to feel dysregulated himself?
(29:21):
Yeah, it's a great question to acknowledge it, to let everyone in the family know whateveryone in the family is knowing, but they can't know.
In other words, for you to have the courage and the honesty to say, hey, I'm feeling somereally big feelings right now.
Like I'm I'm activated, triggered, whatever word you want to use for this.
(29:44):
And I need to take some time just to get grounded again so that.
I can be the father that I want to be.
have total, you have absolute every right in the world to need to take a break fromparenting and tend to your own heart when you get dysregulated.
(30:06):
That is very good fathering.
But what most of us tend to do is we get upset with ourselves that we're dysregulated,that we're amped up, that we're freaked out, and we try and
push through and endure and what we end up doing is acting and speaking from a verydysregulated place and nothing good happens when we do that.
(30:36):
Yeah, this takes me back to one of my worst moments in my story.
uh I've got a son who is two and a half years older, two years older than my daughter.
And boys, when they're young, we're talking seven, eight years old.
(30:56):
They like to discover their strength by picking on a weaker member of the family.
And my daughter was often the recipient of his hostility, unkindness, and his desire todiscover how strong he was.
And that...
reminded me of the pain of my own childhood.
(31:17):
It became one of my deepest prayers, even in the womb for them, is may their relationshipwith one another be one of love.
I pray, God, please do not let it be a repetition of what I was guilty of in my ownhousehold.
And so
(31:37):
There was one day after two years of this going on and trying to manage my son's behaviorin our home that I heard my daughter screaming.
it was the scream that happens when she's been hit.
They've got different types of screams.
(31:57):
And I went from the kitchen where I was doing dishes in what felt like a half a second.
I felt like the Hulk.
the, you know, Dr.
David Banner, if that's his name, uh something immediately flooded through my body and Ihurtled over the couch and I got in my son's face and I grabbed him with my hands, uh his
(32:25):
arms in my hands and I looked at him and I began to shake him and I yelled at him, stop.
I actually don't even remember what had happened.
because I was actually so shocked by what had just happened in my own body.
And even as it's coming out of my mouth, I had not even finished the sentence, whatever itis that I said to him.
(32:47):
And I thought, oh my God, this is gonna be a wound for him and for me.
yeah, I had to go, I had to apologize, extract myself from the situation.
And from that moment, I began thinking,
I don't know exactly what to do, but I can't react in situations anymore.
(33:08):
I have to figure out what it looks like and what it feels like to respond instead ofreact.
em So really bad memory in my story where I was clearly not going after my daughter'sheart or my son's heart.
This was all about me in that moment.
(33:28):
And it's still painful to think about that.
And it reminded me of who I was when I was...
a seven year old boy with my sisters.
Yes, and that kind of thing happens to all of us where stories from our own childhood getreenacted, repeated in some way in our fathering or mothering.
(33:52):
That happens all, is inevitable until you engage and make sense of your story as a boy.
Excellent.
Okay.
So the big six, number one, attunement.
two, responsiveness.
Number three, engagement.
Number four, as a parent, it's our job to help regulate our children's affect.
(34:18):
Okay.
Let's keep going with number five.
Number five thing, the fifth thing that kids need from their parents is you needed yourparents.
When you were a boy, when you were a girl, you needed your parents to be strong enough tohandle your big feelings, your big emotions, especially your so-called negative emotions,
(34:39):
fear, sadness, and anger.
So when you think back as a 10-year-old or a 15-year-old, was fear
welcomed in your, were you allowed to be afraid?
Or did you get reprimanded for being, you know, chicken or scaredy cat?
(35:00):
Worry was your fear welcome in your home?
And what about your anger?
Were you allowed to be enraged, angry as a boy?
And were you allowed to be sorrowful, sad?
If you weren't, if those emotions were not welcomed in your home,
(35:20):
then your brain, your heart has been wounded because you were not free to feel what imagebearers, especially when we're children, feel with great frequency, which is we feel fear,
we feel sorrow, and we feel anger.
And so you needed to be able to feel those feelings in your home.
(35:48):
I know as well of people who are not allowed to feel positive emotions, like joy, joy,joy, excitement, happiness.
was not allowed because the parents could not handle it because of their own.
That's right.
Yeah, that's right.
Okay, so now um on that one, what is the extreme of that?
(36:10):
Like a child needs to be able to say these things to a parent without the parent flippingout.
Anything, anything.
if you know, were when you were a five year old boy, think back or a seven year old boy,were you allowed to say to your mother, you know, I hate you or I'm so mad that you
(36:34):
wouldn't buy me that ice cream treat.
Were you allowed to express intensity without your mother either reprimanding you?
sending you to your room or dissolving into a proverbial puddle of tears by saying, don'tyou know that hurts mom's feelings?
How could you possibly say that to your mother?
(36:56):
mean, parents weaponize their fragility with frequency.
And when that's the case, you as a boy or a girl do not feel the freedom to be who you arewith all of your big feels.
And that's very damaging to the brain.
because at some point if the parent can't handle those things.
(37:20):
the child is actually learning at a young age to take care of their parents because theirparents can't take care of them.
Exactly the child the roles get reversed and the child begins to attune to mom rather thanmom attuning to the child the child begins to read mom's face and respond to what mom can
(37:40):
handle by self editing their own big feelings rather than mom Being the one who is selfediting and taking care of the child and that happens all the time Especially if you have
a history of trauma
You said in the book, which I highlighted and have gone back to over and over and overagain, and by the way, my wife is reading the book at the same time.
(38:07):
She's one chapter behind me.
And so it has been amazing for the two of us to be able to have conversations about this.
Like so many things are becoming clear, but you said it is the job of the parent to give,give, give.
And it is the job of the child to receive.
Receive, receive.
(38:28):
Such a simple statement, and yet.
so elusive in so many homes.
Absolutely.
That's the way it's designed and it's the only relationship on the planet that should belike that, but the parent-child relationship is not designed to be reciprocal.
(38:53):
I've got a 22 year old and a 21 year old and still it feels it's that way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's growing.
I'm understanding it to be that way.
There's something in me as a parent that's like, okay, now you can take care of yourself.
You can take care of yourself.
And uh I want now uh some things that my children probably still can't give, but that'smore my issue.
(39:22):
And it's not theirs.
So learning how to give them the freedom that they need and make them feel safe.
Because ultimately I want them coming back home again and again and again and I don't wantthem feeling like they have to take care of me and dance around me.
ah Okay, number six.
(39:42):
And it's probably the most important.
You, as a boy or a girl, needed your parents to be willing to repair the harm that theydid when they did it.
All parents do harm.
That doesn't make them bad people.
I'm a parent.
I've done plenty of harm to my children.
The question is, were your primary caregivers willing and open and initiating of repairconversations?
(40:10):
What do I mean by that?
I'm sorry, sweetheart, that I did that.
Bud, I lost my temper the other day and I am sorry and I regret it and I'm working on itand if you want to tell me more what that was like for you, I want to hear.
That is the language of repair.
(40:31):
Any language that invites the child to say more about what the experience was like, thatowns the harm that was done.
and that communicates to the child, I want to not do that anymore.
That's the language of repair.
And you needed that not only when you were five, 10, 15, if your parents are 80 and you're50, you still need that.
(40:58):
We need repair because the world of relationships ruptures all the time.
That's just what it means to be human.
The question is, will the person who did the harm
initiate and be open to conversations of repair.
And sadly, for many of the listeners, the idea of saying to their mom or dad, even ifthey're, you know, 75 years old, dad, could we have a conversation about some of the ways
(41:29):
you harmed me growing up?
Like they, the listeners are like, I could never say that sentence to my dad.
Well, that had a big effect.
in terms of attachment, i.e.
insecure attachment on your brain, because you needed that deeply, and you still do.
Mm-hmm You and your book um explain that there's a exactly what a healthy relationship isin light of what you just said about rupture and repair mm-hmm and Correct me if I'm wrong
(41:59):
uh But what you said was a healthy relationship is not marked by one where there is noconflict where there is no rupture.
It's actually Go ahead and
It's the willingness of the parent to own and rectify failure when it does occur.
All parents do harm.
All parents fail at attunement, responsiveness, engagement.
(42:23):
That's just part of being human.
The question is, will you as a father recognize when you've hurt your son or yourdaughter?
And will you go into their room that night, sit on the edge of their bed, and say, look,
I realized that when I said or did that thing earlier today, it probably really affectedyou.
(42:47):
And I really wish I hadn't said that or done that thing.
And I'm sorry.
And I would love to talk with you about what that was like for you whenever you want.
That's initiating a conversation of repair.
That stuff needs to happen in healthy relationships, not just with children, but withcoworkers, with spouses.
(43:09):
Repair is very important.
Mm-hmm.
I'm learning to do that now with my wife at the age of 53.
Great!
It wasn't a skill that I learned growing up.
So it's hard, uh it's scary, and yet it's breathtakingly beautiful.
And there is uh fresh air in our home that has not been here for years because uh neitherof us really were taught how to do that well.
(43:35):
Yes.
How often does a parent have to get it right?
Our goal
of course is to raise securely attached children.
um many of us are probably...
Say that again?
50 % of the time is what the research shows is necessary for attunement, responsiveness,engagement.
(43:56):
You only have to hit one out of every two at bats.
Here's the key is, will you repair when you miss a tune?
When you realize that you struck out, that you didn't do it well, will you go back andhave conversation with your son or daughter?
(44:18):
about what that was like for them, what it was like for you, and will you repair themisattunement or the lack of responsiveness or the lack of pursuit, whatever it is, will
you repair?
That's why that one, number six, is so very, important because it allows for reconnection.
(44:41):
with the child in a state of shame or disconnection and that is incredibly healing for thebrain of a child.
and for the parent.
And for the parents.
Yeah.
Well, friends, sons, uh I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Adam Young.
(45:02):
uh Adam, thank you for writing this.
Thank you for sharing your time with us, giving just a little bit of insight into uh whatGod wants to do in us, even as parents.
ah He's going back in our story.
And uh one of the things that
You will find as you read this book, one of the things that I'm so grateful to you forAdam is that you stress kindness over and over again, because every time I've tried to
(45:29):
engage my story in the past, it has been with contempt and with fear and with like a needto edit in the moment.
I have to get this right in the moment.
And you have a completely different approach to this, which has made this book, whichyears ago probably would have been terrifying or I've read books.
(45:50):
listen to podcasts from other people, which actually almost invite contempt as we go backinto our story, you have done the impossible, it feels like.
uh You have written a book that is the kindness of God.
It is his heart saying, come, let us discuss this together.
Let's go back in your story.
(46:10):
I have things to tell you.
I have a story to tell you that you do not yet know.
And it's wonderful.
It's just incredible.
So Adam, thank you so much for your time and for your wisdom and for creating thisbeautiful book that I'm going to give to as many people as possible.
Thank you, Jay.
It's been good to
(46:30):
be with you.
you.
uh And so you can go and listen to Adam uh on the Where We Find Ourselves podcast and youcan find this book on Make Sense of Your Story on Amazon.
Thanks a lot.
See ya.
Bye.
Sons, I hope you appreciated that conversation with Adam.
(46:52):
He has so much to give and I want to encourage you to continue to pursue your healing andto do it in a way
that was probably maybe the most disruptive part of the process, and that is to do it withgreat kindness.
Here's what I am finding is that to choose to engage my story, to treat my heart withkindness as opposed to contempt is resulting in me experiencing the kindness of God, but
(47:22):
also looking to God and in asking Him
to reveal His kindness to me as I move into my story is allowing me to be more kind tomyself.
So like it's this beautiful cycle as I show kindness to myself, God reveals His kindnessto me.
As I seek God's kindness, He offers me the ability to engage my own story and my own heartwith greater kindness.
(47:49):
It's really beautiful.
And the enemy is losing ground.
So after 19 years, after a long,
hard fought battle using warfare, journaling, counseling, multiple counseling, counselingintensives, weekly counselings, um going to places to try and get my heart back, places of
(48:14):
wilderness and frontier, going to conferences.
uh All of them failed to have the impact on me that I wanted them to in the moment.
but all of them gave me something, a peace that he is now bringing together.
So I just want to encourage you, do not give up.
(48:34):
God is in this, he is a long haul God.
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
He is in everything and through everything.
And to become comfortable with God's lifelong pursuit of you, to be comfortable with thefact that healing comes partially
(48:56):
uh But his love is there always in whole.
To discover that leads us to every subsequent step of healing.
And I just want to encourage you to know that.
And I want to invite you to take that journey with me.
So thank you, sons, for joining Adam Young and I as we walk and talk a mile on the triedand true road to being sons.
But what most of us tend to do is we get upset with ourselves that we're dysregulated,that we're amped up, that we're freaked out, and we try and push through and endure.
And what we end up doing is acting and speaking from a very dysregulated place, andnothing good happens when we do that.
(00:33):
Welcome back to the Being Sons podcast.
Today we are going to be talking about what every child needs from their caregivers,usually father and mother.
And I've never heard anyone explain it as well as our guest today.
Adam Young is a trauma therapist, host of the excellent podcast called The Place We FindOurselves, which is where I was introduced to his work.
(00:56):
And he's the author of this new and absolutely outstanding book called The Place We FindOurselves.
As I have read even the first chapter, I began aching to give a copy of this to everyhuman being that I know and I come into uh contact with.
And I've already started giving them out to people, as the Lord has told me to.
(01:18):
uh Adam, I'm so grateful that you said yes to join us, and I know that you have anoffering of goodness to bring us today.
So welcome to the Being Sons Podcast.
Thanks Jay, it's great to be with you.
Awesome.
Well, this book right here is an answer to prayer back in 2006, like many of the listenersto this podcast.
(01:39):
At one point in my story, for me, it was 2006.
I went to a Wild at Heart bootcamp led by John Eldridge and the team.
And that was the first time I had ever been introduced to the fact that my story was notmy resume.
My story was actually the journey of my heart, what it is.
Sustained what it is received and that I am the product of that and a lot of the issuesThat I find myself dealing with and the desires to become a better man the seeking of
(02:10):
improvement It is uh is accessible through pieces of my story and it's the first timeanybody had ever introduced me to the idea that we have wounds and that wounds come from
people and that we can then uh We can then
ask God to help bring healing to those places and we are actually able to move out ofplaces of contempt and anger and find solutions to the things that we find going on in
(02:41):
ourselves that often feel uncontrollable and that we're very ashamed of and into thisfreedom and goodness that feels elusive without that.
know, even though we read the Bible and we go through it, we pour through it without thisinteraction with God and without this healing.
uh
I was not growing much.
(03:03):
Adam, this book would have helped me so much if somebody, if I had left bootcamp with thatwhole new category and they had said, read this, this would have helped so, so much.
So the 2006, that's 19 years ago.
And I have been praying and begging and God has been giving me pieces of my story tounderstand, but your book has brought a greater clarity.
(03:31):
It has been more clearly articulating the story of my heart and helping me find thingsthat that I've been praying for for years.
So I not for a second am I saying that God is not on time with all of this, but it'sobvious to me as I read your book that God has been
(03:53):
preparing you to write this book your whole life.
And I will say similarly that God has been preparing me all my life to read this book.
ah I did something with this book that I've never done with another book.
ah I just knew after listening to your podcast that this book and it coming out and afterjust reading the cover and a couple of things about it, I knew that this book was going to
(04:16):
have a tremendous impact on me if I gave God permission to let it.
And so I'm sitting in my chair downstairs.
I get this book through Amazon and I held it up to my heart.
I've never done this with a book before.
And I said, God, I know that you want to lead me into deeper healing.
And so I commit to go wherever you want to lead me.
(04:37):
And I ask that you would minister to me through this book.
Let this be a supernatural encounter and conversation with you.
And, um, well, it's helpful that your book is really well written and I'm sure it'shelpful that I prayed that prayer.
But it's been incredible.
Incredible.
So well done.
Thank you.
Thank you for your honoring words.
(04:59):
It's so sweet to know that this book uh has moved you.
And I love the thought of you holding it up to your chest and praying that prayer.
That says a lot about your heart.
Yeah, I've been ready, know, 19 years, 19 years, working through little bits and pieces ofmy story.
(05:22):
ah So I want to get down to it because we have a lot to share.
uh I really wrestled with whether to interview you on this book as a whole.
I mean, almost up until last night because it's so good.
ah But given the audience, given the men that I get to share life with, I really wanted tofocus on what you call
(05:45):
the big six, but I know that there's kind of some preliminary information that is going tobe really helpful to all of us to understand why the big six is in fact so significant for
us, especially my primary audience is going to be men who are fathers and are looking inhumility to become the best fathers that they can be.
(06:09):
I think my very first question for you is how important
is our story.
Yeah.
Well, boy, when it comes to fathering, you know, I think few things influence ourfathering more than our own developmental story in our family of origin from zero to 18.
(06:30):
And so very often when people think of their story,
They think of like a 30,000 foot overarching view.
know, my parents got divorced when I was 11.
You know, this happened to me when I was 16.
I graduated from this school.
And that stuff may all be part of your story, but it's not really what I mean when I talkabout your story.
I'm talking about the scenes, the incidents, the moments.
(06:53):
It might be 30 seconds of your life.
It might be five minutes.
And you remember it, and you know it influenced you.
and you're not sure why it still haunts you, maybe that's the best word, haunts you, butit does.
And will you give those stories weight?
(07:13):
In other words, will you write them and will you speak them aloud to other people that canhold your stories well?
Because I can learn so much more about your brain, your heart.
by hearing one of the stories of your life than by hearing a 30,000 foot overview of yourwhole life narrative.
(07:37):
Okay, one story, 30 seconds of my life, more than my resume.
Can you explain a little bit like why, a little bit more why 30 seconds of my life canhelp you see that?
Sure, because we remember the things we remember for a reason.
They've imprinted themselves and most often what we remember, I would suggest, are ourtragedies.
(08:01):
We remember our heartaches.
We remember the moments where our heart was shattered.
And we very often don't want to engage those memories.
We want them not to be part of our story.
And so we tend to dismiss them and minimize them.
But...
If we will welcome those stories of heartache, harm, trauma, disappointment, shattering,if we will welcome them like a guest at the dinner table, and if we will listen to the
(08:35):
11-year-old boy or the 16-year-old boy, we will find a gold mine of understanding ourbrain and particularly how our brain has been wired relationally to understand the
relational world.
because we are deeply relational beings at our core and relational harm shatters thebrain.
(08:58):
By shatters, I mean it fragments the brain.
literally fragments, portions of your brain that need to be connected.
And when that happens, it plays out in your fathering.
It plays out in your husbanding.
It plays out in your vocation.
It plays out everywhere.
because the lessons we learned as children made a big impression on our neural networks.
(09:27):
Okay.
So I think before we enter into what you call the big six, it would be also really helpfulto contrast secure attachment versus insecure attachment.
What are they and why does that matter?
(09:48):
Sure.
So attachment is just a relatively recent category over the last 40 or 50 years in uhdevelopmental neuroscience, developmental psychology, and it just gets at the idea that we
are created in the image of a we and not an I.
We're created in the image of a triune god.
Therefore, relationships have a profound influence, not just on the development of yourbrain,
(10:17):
but on like what your heart longs for.
We long for deep relational connection.
Just think back when you were a boy, how you longed for relational connection with yourfather and your mother.
And if that was lacking, then it was one of the most tormenting parts of your growing upexperiences.
So, attachment falls into two broad categories, secure and insecure.
(10:43):
And secure attachment is what happens in the brain.
It refers to a healthy connected brain when your big, what I call your big six needs as achild are met, when they're satisfied by your primary caregivers.
And I'll talk about those six things in a minute.
Insecure attachment is what happens in your brain when those things are not sufficientlymet by your primary caregivers.
(11:10):
which is why I call the big six the big six, because they're oh so very important forchildren.
Okay, so we're going to round the corner.
I just want to let you do what you do so well in explaining the Big Six.
And then I want to finish up before we before our conversation ends with some encouragingwords, because what I know happened for a lot of you men and women out there who might be
(11:37):
listening to this podcast is as Adam was just explaining that
you may remember from your childhood, your deep need to receive these things from yourfather or mother, that may not even resonate with you uh at this point.
ah And there's a reason for that, which uh I know better now as a result of uh readingAdam's book.
(12:03):
There's a lot of conflict that comes up in our hearts when we begin thinking about uh
all of this, our story, relationships that were essential, the ones that uh where we didget what we wanted, when we didn't get what we wanted, there's a lot of emotions that come
(12:23):
up like contempt and confusion and a lot of conflict.
And what we are hoping to do through the course of this conversation is to make you feelwhat is absolutely true, and that is with God you are safe.
to go into these places.
Not only that, but it is essential for you to go into these places for you to become theman, the father, and the husband that you want to be.
(12:51):
uh fathers, sons, dads out there, I want you to know that I'm doing this and I want you tojust go with me on this journey because it's working.
It really is.
God is coming for the unfothered, unmothered places in us and uh He's bringing goodness.
He's bringing goodness and he's bringing hope in some of the hopeless places.
(13:13):
uh So uh Adam, have you had men come to you for counseling who are sad and scared abouthow they treat and interact with their children?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, one of the reasons I titled the book Make Sense of Your Story, that's the title,Make Sense of Your Story, is because in order to be the father that you want to be or the
(13:40):
mother that you want to be, you have to make sense, coherent sense of your owndevelopmental story in your family of origin.
Until you make sense of it, you will find yourself
what you probably consider overreacting.
In other words, you get activated, you get dysregulated, you say or do things that youregret.
(14:04):
we call that triggered.
We call that activated.
Call it whatever you want.
We all know that experience of losing it with our kids and not really being, or with ourpartners and not really being sure why.
And what I would say is that until you have made sense of your story, you are going to beperplexed by your own behavior.
(14:24):
You're going to be confused why you react so strongly when you do.
But here's the question.
What if there's a reason, what if there's a really good reason that you overreact, and Idon't even like that word, but lots of people use it, in the ways that you do and in the
moments that you do.
(14:44):
So for example, for me, whenever my son would have a temper tantrum, eight, 10, even12-year-old versions of temper tantrums,
and he would be severely dysregulated, I would have a very hard time staying grounded andstaying present to him.
Why?
Because I was never allowed as a kid in my family to have temper tantrums.
(15:08):
my gosh, not an option for me.
And therefore he was doing on a regular basis what I was never allowed to do and itfreaked my nervous system out.
and it dysregulated me deeply, and it became an obstacle to me showing up for him as thefather that I wanted to be.
(15:29):
Until I engaged that part of my story, it made it very difficult to father my son well.
And so you have found that engaging your story has had a great result on your ownparenting.
(15:50):
have as well and just to encourage the dads as we and you know the men as we move intothese things they're going to feel things.
The first thing I want them to hear is uh stick with us and you will be able to experiencethat as well.
Wonderful.
Okay so Adam.
oh Actually, I want to pray first.
I want to do that.
(16:10):
It has worked really well with regard to this topic.
So, our Father, we are your sons and daughters, and we want to thank you.
Thank you for purchasing us back into your family by your Son Jesus Christ.
And now we ask that you do what all good fathers do.
(16:32):
Meet us where we are.
Help us rest in the truth that we are seen
loved and safe with you, and lead us into the healing and freedom that Christ set us freeto experience as we learn to do life in union with you.
Okay, Adam, take us into the Big Six.
(16:52):
The first is attunement.
The first thing that every child needs from their parents is attunement.
What does that mean?
Attunement is reading the internal emotional state of the child.
So I would invite you who are listening to not think about your parenting right now, butthink about what it was like for you as a boy or a girl.
(17:16):
Were you attuned to as a third grader?
In other words,
Did you have a sense in your body that your father, that your mother knew and wanted toknow something about your internal emotional state?
Something about if you were sad, why you were sad.
(17:37):
If you were ashamed, that you were ashamed and some curiosity about why and a willingnessto understand that that was a big deal for you in your six, eight, 10 year old body.
That's what we mean by attunement.
Now the second of the big six is responsiveness.
That's the second thing every kid needs.
(17:58):
So if attunement refers to like reading your face at the dinner table, responsiveness isgetting at, okay, well, what did your dad do when he saw that you were sad or disappointed
or enraged?
How did your mother respond to your sad face after you lost your soccer game?
(18:20):
was their responsiveness from your primary caregivers to your emotional climate, youremotional states.
And for many people, when they look back on their growing up years, they don't have asense, they don't have memory of being responded to with care, with curiosity, with
(18:42):
kindness.
And when you don't have responsive caregivers, your brain
The appropriate word is damaged.
The neural circuitry of your brain does not develop sufficiently.
Why?
Because children need attuned and responsive caregivers in order for their brains todifferentiate and link.
(19:09):
In other words, in order for the portions of their brain that hold memory to become bothseparated and connected at the same time.
And that's what makes for a stable
brain, which is code for secure attachment.
So those are the first two, attunement, responsiveness.
The third one that you need, you need engagement.
(19:30):
What does that mean?
Well, children need to be pursued by their primary caretakers.
What is pursuit?
It is a drawing out of their hopes, their fears, their dreams, their idiosyncrasies.
What is it that makes eight year old Adam Adam?
(19:52):
How am I different from my brothers?
That's what engagement is getting at is I needed my dad to draw out what made Adam uniquebecause every child is unique.
And in that sense, every child needs to be parented differently.
He needs to be engaged differently.
(20:14):
So if you're a 12 year old boy,
And you think back on being a seventh grader.
Did you have a sense that your mother, that your father pursued your heart and drew outwhat made you you?
If you don't have memory of pursuit, then your heart has been wounded and that wounding isstill affecting you.
(20:42):
That's the premise of the Big Six.
So that's the first three.
Do you want me to keep going or do you want to ponder the first three together?
Um.
I do, I do want to ponder the first three.
uh The attunement portion.
(21:05):
You know, when babies are young, you point this out in your book, like they are 100 %dysregulated.
They're all over the place.
need, as little babies, we needed to be encouraged when we were down.
As little babies, when we got excited, we need somebody to calm us down.
(21:27):
At some point, I think it's apparent that parents feel like,
Well, I guess they're kind of on their own.
Like there's a moment in our stories where, well, I'd say this, a lot of babies don't evenget that truthfully.
(21:47):
Is that true?
Yes, yeah.
But then at some point we start looking at the kid and I say, as a father, ah there was apoint when my son was 12 years old and I began internally through, because of my own
story, to expect my son to be able to take care of himself.
(22:08):
Right.
Right.
So, hey man, you need to grow up.
You need to start acting like a man.
And boy, did I hurt my son.
in significant ways.
Yep.
And I'm sure I've done the same with my daughter.
So for a dad,
(22:29):
uh Is there a simple way to practice kind of an entry level if we feel like we're notdoing well at attuning to our children?
Can you give us a little bit of counsel on how we might be able to do that tonight, evenat the dinner table?
Sure, like two thoughts immediately come to mind.
The first is ask questions.
(22:53):
The second is learn to read nonverbal communication.
Children, well, this is true for adults.
Human beings communicate primarily without words.
That's very important to understand.
70 % of our communication is nonverbal.
What do I mean by that?
Tone of voice, facial expression, body language.
(23:16):
So the example I give about this is if I said this to my daughter when she asked, what'snonverbal communication?
She was eight years old and I'd looked at her and I had this beaming smile on my face andI said, hope that's her name.
Hope, I hate you.
And she burst into laughter because of the contrast.
(23:38):
The words are absolutely devastating to an eight year old's heart, but that's not whatmoved her.
because she's reading my face.
So for fathers at the dinner table, do you have a face that communicates to your child adesire to know what's going on for them in their hearts and in their bodies?
(24:02):
And then are you reading their tone of voice and their facial expression?
Are you learning how to read your child?
And each child communicates differently.
And so you need to become increasingly adept at reading the face and the tone of voice ofyour sons and daughters.
(24:26):
And the one way to do that is to check in with them with questions.
Like, you look sad.
Are you feeling sad?
Or you look mad.
Are you feeling mad?
Or what's that like for you?
To ask questions gives you data about whether what you're reading is accurate or not.
And that's a great place to start.
(24:46):
Curiosity, kindness, and reading nonverbal communication.
A lot of teenagers give one word answers.
huh.
Right.
Yeah.
And for many fathers who do not have a lot of skill when it comes to helping and we alsoget scared and we also get our feelings hurt when our children, feels like they are
(25:16):
literally trying to hurt our feelings and push us away.
How do we, how would you counsel?
those fathers who it appears are being rejected and their curiosity is being deflected.
Yeah, well, it's very important that you do your own work so that you can bear whateverbig feelings you have when you are rejected by your child, whether they're a teenager or
(25:49):
they're four years old.
Like you have to and this actually leads to the number four of the big six, which is youhave to be able to regulate their affect.
You can't require them to regulate yours.
And what is affect?
Affect is your felt bodily sensations.
So we all know what it's like to get enraged, panicked, anxious.
(26:13):
That's called hyper arousal.
And many people know what it's like to get dissociated, detached, numb, ashamed.
That's called hypo arousal.
But affect exists on that continuum from hypo arousal to hyper arousal.
Children...
go through the range of affect on a daily basis, many, many different times.
(26:38):
They'll shut down, they'll get amped up with rage, they'll get amped up with panic.
My son was getting chased by a bee the other day, absolute panic.
That's called dysregulated affect or hyper arousal.
Now, here's the thing.
Children have very limited abilities to regulate their affect.
(27:01):
They do not have the necessary brain structures to calm their own body when they getfreaked out or panicked or enraged.
They need you as a father or a mother to interactively regulate their affect for them.
How do you do that?
(27:21):
By presence, by soothing, by physical touch, by bringing your nervous system next totheirs.
and helping either calm them down if they're amped up or stimulate them back to life ifthey're feeling shame, detachment, numbness.
But either way, you are regulating, you are interactively regulating their bodies.
(27:46):
And that's the fourth thing that children need from their parents is they need theirparents to be willing to and able to regulate their affect for them.
So if you as a father,
are so upset because you're feeling rejected by your sons, you know, your teenage sonspushing you away.
(28:08):
I would really encourage you to do some work with regard to your own heart, your ownstory, your own emotions, so that you can learn how to self soothe that stuff and
therefore be present to your child, regardless of what's going on for your kidemotionally.
So that's another huge conversation, obviously.
(28:30):
Another reason to read the book because that will make a lot more sense and it will, theidea of soothing yourself may sound like woo woo um if you've never been invited into that
and if you weren't taught that as a kid.
uh Okay, so we don't have time to go into all of that, but in the moment, dad is listeningto this podcast for the first time.
(28:54):
He's humble, he's sitting at the table.
with his child, he sees their child dysregulated, he out of curiosity begins to pursue.
And then in the course of that pursuit, for whatever reason, he's feeling all thesefeelings and fears rising up, okay?
Like without having read the book, without having gone deep into stuff, what is yourrecommendation to the dad who is beginning to feel dysregulated himself?
(29:21):
Yeah, it's a great question to acknowledge it, to let everyone in the family know whateveryone in the family is knowing, but they can't know.
In other words, for you to have the courage and the honesty to say, hey, I'm feeling somereally big feelings right now.
Like I'm I'm activated, triggered, whatever word you want to use for this.
(29:44):
And I need to take some time just to get grounded again so that.
I can be the father that I want to be.
have total, you have absolute every right in the world to need to take a break fromparenting and tend to your own heart when you get dysregulated.
(30:06):
That is very good fathering.
But what most of us tend to do is we get upset with ourselves that we're dysregulated,that we're amped up, that we're freaked out, and we try and
push through and endure and what we end up doing is acting and speaking from a verydysregulated place and nothing good happens when we do that.
(30:36):
Yeah, this takes me back to one of my worst moments in my story.
uh I've got a son who is two and a half years older, two years older than my daughter.
And boys, when they're young, we're talking seven, eight years old.
(30:56):
They like to discover their strength by picking on a weaker member of the family.
And my daughter was often the recipient of his hostility, unkindness, and his desire todiscover how strong he was.
And that...
reminded me of the pain of my own childhood.
(31:17):
It became one of my deepest prayers, even in the womb for them, is may their relationshipwith one another be one of love.
I pray, God, please do not let it be a repetition of what I was guilty of in my ownhousehold.
And so
(31:37):
There was one day after two years of this going on and trying to manage my son's behaviorin our home that I heard my daughter screaming.
it was the scream that happens when she's been hit.
They've got different types of screams.
(31:57):
And I went from the kitchen where I was doing dishes in what felt like a half a second.
I felt like the Hulk.
the, you know, Dr.
David Banner, if that's his name, uh something immediately flooded through my body and Ihurtled over the couch and I got in my son's face and I grabbed him with my hands, uh his
(32:25):
arms in my hands and I looked at him and I began to shake him and I yelled at him, stop.
I actually don't even remember what had happened.
because I was actually so shocked by what had just happened in my own body.
And even as it's coming out of my mouth, I had not even finished the sentence, whatever itis that I said to him.
(32:47):
And I thought, oh my God, this is gonna be a wound for him and for me.
yeah, I had to go, I had to apologize, extract myself from the situation.
And from that moment, I began thinking,
I don't know exactly what to do, but I can't react in situations anymore.
(33:08):
I have to figure out what it looks like and what it feels like to respond instead ofreact.
em So really bad memory in my story where I was clearly not going after my daughter'sheart or my son's heart.
This was all about me in that moment.
(33:28):
And it's still painful to think about that.
And it reminded me of who I was when I was...
a seven year old boy with my sisters.
Yes, and that kind of thing happens to all of us where stories from our own childhood getreenacted, repeated in some way in our fathering or mothering.
(33:52):
That happens all, is inevitable until you engage and make sense of your story as a boy.
Excellent.
Okay.
So the big six, number one, attunement.
two, responsiveness.
Number three, engagement.
Number four, as a parent, it's our job to help regulate our children's affect.
(34:18):
Okay.
Let's keep going with number five.
Number five thing, the fifth thing that kids need from their parents is you needed yourparents.
When you were a boy, when you were a girl, you needed your parents to be strong enough tohandle your big feelings, your big emotions, especially your so-called negative emotions,
(34:39):
fear, sadness, and anger.
So when you think back as a 10-year-old or a 15-year-old, was fear
welcomed in your, were you allowed to be afraid?
Or did you get reprimanded for being, you know, chicken or scaredy cat?
(35:00):
Worry was your fear welcome in your home?
And what about your anger?
Were you allowed to be enraged, angry as a boy?
And were you allowed to be sorrowful, sad?
If you weren't, if those emotions were not welcomed in your home,
(35:20):
then your brain, your heart has been wounded because you were not free to feel what imagebearers, especially when we're children, feel with great frequency, which is we feel fear,
we feel sorrow, and we feel anger.
And so you needed to be able to feel those feelings in your home.
(35:48):
I know as well of people who are not allowed to feel positive emotions, like joy, joy,joy, excitement, happiness.
was not allowed because the parents could not handle it because of their own.
That's right.
Yeah, that's right.
Okay, so now um on that one, what is the extreme of that?
(36:10):
Like a child needs to be able to say these things to a parent without the parent flippingout.
Anything, anything.
if you know, were when you were a five year old boy, think back or a seven year old boy,were you allowed to say to your mother, you know, I hate you or I'm so mad that you
(36:34):
wouldn't buy me that ice cream treat.
Were you allowed to express intensity without your mother either reprimanding you?
sending you to your room or dissolving into a proverbial puddle of tears by saying, don'tyou know that hurts mom's feelings?
How could you possibly say that to your mother?
(36:56):
mean, parents weaponize their fragility with frequency.
And when that's the case, you as a boy or a girl do not feel the freedom to be who you arewith all of your big feels.
And that's very damaging to the brain.
because at some point if the parent can't handle those things.
(37:20):
the child is actually learning at a young age to take care of their parents because theirparents can't take care of them.
Exactly the child the roles get reversed and the child begins to attune to mom rather thanmom attuning to the child the child begins to read mom's face and respond to what mom can
(37:40):
handle by self editing their own big feelings rather than mom Being the one who is selfediting and taking care of the child and that happens all the time Especially if you have
a history of trauma
You said in the book, which I highlighted and have gone back to over and over and overagain, and by the way, my wife is reading the book at the same time.
(38:07):
She's one chapter behind me.
And so it has been amazing for the two of us to be able to have conversations about this.
Like so many things are becoming clear, but you said it is the job of the parent to give,give, give.
And it is the job of the child to receive.
Receive, receive.
(38:28):
Such a simple statement, and yet.
so elusive in so many homes.
Absolutely.
That's the way it's designed and it's the only relationship on the planet that should belike that, but the parent-child relationship is not designed to be reciprocal.
(38:53):
I've got a 22 year old and a 21 year old and still it feels it's that way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's growing.
I'm understanding it to be that way.
There's something in me as a parent that's like, okay, now you can take care of yourself.
You can take care of yourself.
And uh I want now uh some things that my children probably still can't give, but that'smore my issue.
(39:22):
And it's not theirs.
So learning how to give them the freedom that they need and make them feel safe.
Because ultimately I want them coming back home again and again and again and I don't wantthem feeling like they have to take care of me and dance around me.
ah Okay, number six.
(39:42):
And it's probably the most important.
You, as a boy or a girl, needed your parents to be willing to repair the harm that theydid when they did it.
All parents do harm.
That doesn't make them bad people.
I'm a parent.
I've done plenty of harm to my children.
The question is, were your primary caregivers willing and open and initiating of repairconversations?
(40:10):
What do I mean by that?
I'm sorry, sweetheart, that I did that.
Bud, I lost my temper the other day and I am sorry and I regret it and I'm working on itand if you want to tell me more what that was like for you, I want to hear.
That is the language of repair.
(40:31):
Any language that invites the child to say more about what the experience was like, thatowns the harm that was done.
and that communicates to the child, I want to not do that anymore.
That's the language of repair.
And you needed that not only when you were five, 10, 15, if your parents are 80 and you're50, you still need that.
(40:58):
We need repair because the world of relationships ruptures all the time.
That's just what it means to be human.
The question is, will the person who did the harm
initiate and be open to conversations of repair.
And sadly, for many of the listeners, the idea of saying to their mom or dad, even ifthey're, you know, 75 years old, dad, could we have a conversation about some of the ways
(41:29):
you harmed me growing up?
Like they, the listeners are like, I could never say that sentence to my dad.
Well, that had a big effect.
in terms of attachment, i.e.
insecure attachment on your brain, because you needed that deeply, and you still do.
Mm-hmm You and your book um explain that there's a exactly what a healthy relationship isin light of what you just said about rupture and repair mm-hmm and Correct me if I'm wrong
(41:59):
uh But what you said was a healthy relationship is not marked by one where there is noconflict where there is no rupture.
It's actually Go ahead and
It's the willingness of the parent to own and rectify failure when it does occur.
All parents do harm.
All parents fail at attunement, responsiveness, engagement.
(42:23):
That's just part of being human.
The question is, will you as a father recognize when you've hurt your son or yourdaughter?
And will you go into their room that night, sit on the edge of their bed, and say, look,
I realized that when I said or did that thing earlier today, it probably really affectedyou.
(42:47):
And I really wish I hadn't said that or done that thing.
And I'm sorry.
And I would love to talk with you about what that was like for you whenever you want.
That's initiating a conversation of repair.
That stuff needs to happen in healthy relationships, not just with children, but withcoworkers, with spouses.
(43:09):
Repair is very important.
Mm-hmm.
I'm learning to do that now with my wife at the age of 53.
Great!
It wasn't a skill that I learned growing up.
So it's hard, uh it's scary, and yet it's breathtakingly beautiful.
And there is uh fresh air in our home that has not been here for years because uh neitherof us really were taught how to do that well.
(43:35):
Yes.
How often does a parent have to get it right?
Our goal
of course is to raise securely attached children.
um many of us are probably...
Say that again?
50 % of the time is what the research shows is necessary for attunement, responsiveness,engagement.
(43:56):
You only have to hit one out of every two at bats.
Here's the key is, will you repair when you miss a tune?
When you realize that you struck out, that you didn't do it well, will you go back andhave conversation with your son or daughter?
(44:18):
about what that was like for them, what it was like for you, and will you repair themisattunement or the lack of responsiveness or the lack of pursuit, whatever it is, will
you repair?
That's why that one, number six, is so very, important because it allows for reconnection.
(44:41):
with the child in a state of shame or disconnection and that is incredibly healing for thebrain of a child.
and for the parent.
And for the parents.
Yeah.
Well, friends, sons, uh I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Adam Young.
(45:02):
uh Adam, thank you for writing this.
Thank you for sharing your time with us, giving just a little bit of insight into uh whatGod wants to do in us, even as parents.
ah He's going back in our story.
And uh one of the things that
You will find as you read this book, one of the things that I'm so grateful to you forAdam is that you stress kindness over and over again, because every time I've tried to
(45:29):
engage my story in the past, it has been with contempt and with fear and with like a needto edit in the moment.
I have to get this right in the moment.
And you have a completely different approach to this, which has made this book, whichyears ago probably would have been terrifying or I've read books.
(45:50):
listen to podcasts from other people, which actually almost invite contempt as we go backinto our story, you have done the impossible, it feels like.
uh You have written a book that is the kindness of God.
It is his heart saying, come, let us discuss this together.
Let's go back in your story.
(46:10):
I have things to tell you.
I have a story to tell you that you do not yet know.
And it's wonderful.
It's just incredible.
So Adam, thank you so much for your time and for your wisdom and for creating thisbeautiful book that I'm going to give to as many people as possible.
Thank you, Jay.
It's been good to
(46:30):
be with you.
you.
uh And so you can go and listen to Adam uh on the Where We Find Ourselves podcast and youcan find this book on Make Sense of Your Story on Amazon.
Thanks a lot.
See ya.
Bye.
Sons, I hope you appreciated that conversation with Adam.
(46:52):
He has so much to give and I want to encourage you to continue to pursue your healing andto do it in a way
that was probably maybe the most disruptive part of the process, and that is to do it withgreat kindness.
Here's what I am finding is that to choose to engage my story, to treat my heart withkindness as opposed to contempt is resulting in me experiencing the kindness of God, but
(47:22):
also looking to God and in asking Him
to reveal His kindness to me as I move into my story is allowing me to be more kind tomyself.
So like it's this beautiful cycle as I show kindness to myself, God reveals His kindnessto me.
As I seek God's kindness, He offers me the ability to engage my own story and my own heartwith greater kindness.
(47:49):
It's really beautiful.
And the enemy is losing ground.
So after 19 years, after a long,
hard fought battle using warfare, journaling, counseling, multiple counseling, counselingintensives, weekly counselings, um going to places to try and get my heart back, places of
(48:14):
wilderness and frontier, going to conferences.
uh All of them failed to have the impact on me that I wanted them to in the moment.
but all of them gave me something, a peace that he is now bringing together.
So I just want to encourage you, do not give up.
(48:34):
God is in this, he is a long haul God.
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
He is in everything and through everything.
And to become comfortable with God's lifelong pursuit of you, to be comfortable with thefact that healing comes partially
(48:56):
uh But his love is there always in whole.
To discover that leads us to every subsequent step of healing.
And I just want to encourage you to know that.
And I want to invite you to take that journey with me.
So thank you, sons, for joining Adam Young and I as we walk and talk a mile on the triedand true road to being sons.
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