April 23, 2024 • 53 mins
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Ever felt like it's all on you and your kids ONLY wants you?
OR
Ever felt like, no matter what you do, you're always just second best in your child's eyes?
You're not alone. In this episode, we examine the emotional rollercoaster of the attachment hierarchy in families. Sharing my own experiences as a non-preferred parent, I peel back the layers of this complex dynamic.
As we traverse the spectrum of parenting challenges, from feeling like the backup to handling jealousy, you'll uncover strategies and reassurance that will redefine your approach to these sensitive situations.
Parenting is not a competition, yet it can certainly feel that way.
This episode sheds light on the evolutionary underpinnings of why children may gravitate towards one caregiver and how this is not an indictment of your parenting prowess. We'll navigate the tricky emotions that come with parental comparisons, offering insights into fostering secure attachments and empowering both preferred and non-preferred parents.
Then I address preferred parents and non-preferred parents directly and ask "What can you do, based on your role, to support your child and your partner?"
This was one of the most vulnerable episodes for me to record; I hope that you are encouraged and helped through listening!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Imagine that your partner was just picking
somebody else over you over andover.
It would be emotionallyexhausting.
You would feel jealous of thatrelationship if your partner was
getting really close withsomebody else.
Yeah, it's hard to watch yourkids seemingly not like you to
scream because you're the wrongperson walking in after nap time
(00:20):
which, by the way, has happenedto me more times than I can
count.
Hello and welcome to thisepisode of the Whole Parent
(00:43):
Podcast.
My name is Jon.
I'm at Whole Parent on thesocial medias Instagram, tiktok,
youtube, facebook.
I don't know, maybe I'm on anew social media and you're
listening to this episodesomeday in the future.
If you don't know me, I'm justa guy who's out here.
I study parenting.
I try and help parents toparent more effectively, to
think about their child's brainand development in the act of
(01:03):
parenting, so that they can doso knowing with confidence that
they are raising resilient kids,because that's really important
and that's really what thispodcast is all about, and it's
really what this platform is allabout, if you've encountered me
in other places as well, butthis episode is actually less
about kids and more about theexperience of being a parent.
(01:27):
Of course we're going to talkabout kids.
We're going to talk aboutresearch, like we always do, but
we are going to do something alittle bit different in this
episode.
If you've listened to all of theprevious episodes, you know
that, generally speaking, ourepisodes are divided between two
types of episode.
The first type of episode areepisodes that are primarily me
and answering questions thatcome from the community, and I'm
(01:49):
still going to do thoseepisodes from time to time.
I'm not getting rid of thatformat.
But the other type of episodeis episodes with guests.
People like Jennifer Andersonwas our last guest on the
podcast.
She did an amazing job tellingus about kids and food and
eating.
I have other podcasts recordedalready that are going to be put
out in the future at some point, one with the renowned
(02:11):
parenting author my favoriteparenting author Tina Payne
Bryson, and I've had other guestepisodes as well.
Well, this is going to be a newformat starting today and we're
going to have a different format, and this is where I'm going to
hyper focus in onto one topicand, rather than answering
questions about that topic, I'mjust going to try and explain
that topic in a way, kind oflike a TED Talk format what you
(02:32):
need to know about this topicand in our episode today we're
talking about preferred parentsor attachment hierarchy.
Why do kids prefer one parentseemingly over another?
And by prefer we are nottalking about they like them
better, but usually althoughsometimes that's what it can
feel like, as the non-preferredparent I can tell you often it
feels that way.
(02:53):
But really, what we're sayingwith preferred attachment or
preferred attachment hierarchy,preferred parent status, you're
the one who, who the child mayinsist that you are the one who
does bedtime every night, or thechild may feel so overwhelmed
that if you're not there, ifthey fall down and get hurt,
they really want you right?
They don't want your partner.
(03:13):
So we're going to talk aboutwhy that is today and, rather
than going through threequestions to tell you why that
is, I'm just going to talk aboutwhat it means to be a preferred
parent.
And just FYI, I've dodged thisepisode for a long time.
This is one of the things I getasked about most because it's
something that I talk about alot on social media and I have a
lot of videos on social mediathat have gained a lot of
traction of me expressing myvulnerability as the
(03:35):
non-preferred parent, eventhough I'm a whole parent.
I'm the guy who's talking aboutparenting.
I'm the guy who's read all theparenting books, or a lot of the
parenting books.
I'm the guy who's helping otherpeople parent better.
But in my own home it seemslike I am not the default parent
, I'm not the preferred parent,and because of that I've
expressed a lot of vulnerabilityand things like that, and
(03:57):
people ask me about this all thetime.
But it is a vulnerable thing,it's a vulnerable place to be,
and so I want to dig into thisepisode and go deep on this
topic.
But before I do that, just areally quick call to action.
I try and do this at thebeginning and end of each
episode and that's just to tellyou if you have not yet
subscribed to this podcast.
You can do that in a couple ofdifferent ways.
The first way you can do thatis if you click the first link
(04:21):
in the description below this,or the show notes, as they're
sometimes called, directly belowthis.
What I'm talking you know.
Wherever you're listening rightnow Apple podcast, spotify,
whatever that link will take youto a landing page on my website
where you can put in your emailand your first name and I will
add you to my general mailinglist, which is not a bad thing
to be on.
I just send out one email.
(04:41):
It's.
I'm not going to spam youasking you to give me money or
anything like that.
It's just one email that I sendout every single week for the
general list.
That's how can we parent better?
Like last week.
It was something related to theepisode with Jennifer Anderson
where I talked about like threetips to help your toddler who's
a picky eater.
So you'll be added to that list, but you'll also, by using this
(05:02):
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know, tell you where to clickto listen now.
And so if you're not subscribedor following the show on
Spotify or Apple, please do that, but also consider giving your
(05:25):
email to that email list.
Again, I'm not going to sellyour data to anybody.
I'm not going to spam you,asking you to pay me a lot of
money or anything like that.
I'm just going to put you on mygeneral list and also send you
updates of when the episodes areposted, so you always know when
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friends.
And that's the best compliment,by the way, that you can ever
give me is not only to subscribeyourself, to rate the podcast,
(05:45):
to write me a review I readevery single review that I get
it's also to share this withsomebody else.
And so, without further ado, Iwant to dive into what we're
talking about today, which isattachment hierarchy.
It's it's being the preferredparent, and I'm going to break
this up into three sections thatI'm going to try and somewhat
evenly space, although I imaginethe first one's going to be a
little longer.
I'm going to explain first whykids do this attachment thing
(06:07):
according to research, whatattachment researchers have
identified as the likely cause,evolutionarily, for kids to have
an attachment hierarchy, andjust how normal it is for our
kids to have an attachmenthierarchy.
So I'll kind of dispel a couplemyths about you know, is it
because one parent is, isunloved or is somehow worse than
(06:29):
the other parent?
And then I'll also just givesome some general knowledge
about the brain and things likethat.
Then, in part two, I'm going tospeak directly to preferred
parents, and I'm going to speakto what it is like to be a
preferred parent, and in thatsection I'm going to be drawing
on what I've how I've processedwith preferred parents.
I'm not necessarily going to bedrawing on my experience,
(06:51):
because I am not a preferredparent.
And then the last section I'mgoing to be talking about what
it's like to be a non-preferredparent, and that's that's
something that's near and dearto my heart, it's something that
I've done, it's something thatI am with all three of my kids.
It's something that I am withall three of my kids.
And so, without further ado,let me jump right in to section
one.
All right, so part one what isattachment hierarchy?
Why does it matter?
(07:11):
Why do kids do this wholehierarchy thing?
Well, basically, the first thingwe have to understand is that a
lot of the developing andbudding research into child
development that focuses onresilience, that focuses on
mental health outcomes for kids,is grounded in this concept of
attachment theory or attachmentscience.
(07:32):
And attachment science,attachment theory, is not new.
John Bowlby has been doing this, for was doing this for decades
.
This is not something that'slike cutting edge in any way,
but more and more and I'm seeingthis reflected in the types of
books that are being publishedabout parenting.
We are focusing more and moreon the concept of attachment,
(07:52):
and that's great news.
I mean, I've done an episode onattachment already here on the
podcast.
It's a really important part ofdevelopment understanding
secure attachment and how tofoster secure attachment.
But one thing that we have tounderstand about attachment is
that not all attachment iscreated equal, and it's not just
the difference between kids whoare insecurely attached however
(08:17):
you want to define that,whichever words you want to use
for that type of insecure,disorganized, ambivalent,
anxious, whatever you want tosay and kids who are securely
attached.
There's also hierarchy withinsecure attachment and the reason
for attachment in general.
Not only is it because we areinherently social creatures as
(08:40):
human beings.
The other reason why it'sreally important for kids to
attach to their caregiversespecially is because proximity
to your caregiver was the bestmeans of survival for children.
Human beings develop in utero,seemingly I don't want to say
less, but differently than manyother species.
(09:00):
In fact, we are born quiteprematurely, if that makes sense
, in comparison to other species, and the reason for this is
that the longer, the morecortical neurons, the more
neurons that you have in yourneocortex that you have.
The more of those you have, thelonger your adolescent or child
(09:23):
upbringing period, developmentis going to be, and this tracks
across tons of different speciesof mammal.
As humans, we spend a reallylong time developing because we
have the most cortical neuronsor neural connections in our
neocortex and so because of that, we tend to be born somewhat
(09:46):
prematurely Like our.
Our kids can't do very muchcompared to other species, right
, if you, if you see a babygiraffe be born, which is is a
is a harrowing experience.
There's videos of it at mylocal zoo.
They can, like get up and walkaround and and and I don't want
to say fend for themselves, butthey can.
They can do a lot within thefirst day, even week, of life.
In comparison to humans, I mean,we spend years just totally
(10:11):
incredibly dependent on ourcaregivers, and that extends
throughout adolescence andchildhood.
We need our caregivers for muchlonger than most other species,
in fact, probably for longerthan any other species, and so
it's really really importantthat we feel secure in that bond
(10:32):
between our caregiver and uswhen we're growing up, when
we're in those vulnerable stages, and the more secure, the less
vulnerable we feel, not becausewe are less vulnerable
individually, but because ourproximity to our caregiver makes
us less vulnerable tounderstand.
But but and more attachment isbetter, right?
(10:54):
So the more people that you canhave your child be securely
attached to, it's a law ofdiminishing marginal returns.
It's not like infinitely OK ifthey're attached to 100 people.
It's better than being attachedto 99 people.
Probably that's there'd be nodifference, but being securely
attached to three or four peopleis significantly better than
being securely attached to oneperson.
That said, even when your childis securely attached to more
(11:16):
than one person which I hopethey are I hope they're securely
attached to whoever is doingsome of their childcare.
If it's not only you and yourpartner that they're also
securely attached to yourpartner, I really hope that for
you, although it's not alwaysthe case.
I really hope that they can besecurely attached to other
family members If you have thosenearby, and those are people
who who are represent safe,stable presence in your life and
(11:36):
in the life of your child.
Even though they're going to beattached to those people, they
are going to have to rank thosepeople, and the reason for this,
according to research, isbecause in a crisis situation,
when a child is put into afear-inducing environment, that
child unconsciously orsubconsciously needs to default
(11:59):
and run to one parent or onecaregiver, to one parent or one
caregiver.
And so when you think about itin the case of like evolutionary
survival, right, you thinkabout it in terms of like okay,
the lion walks into the cave.
You don't want your childdeciding do I want to run to
mommy right now or do I want torun to daddy right now?
You want them to go.
(12:20):
And so just primarilyunderstanding that fact should
give you, whether you're apreferred parent or a not
preferred parent, a little bitof understanding that it's not
that your child in those momentsis only running to you because
they only feel safe with you.
It's because, from anevolutionary standpoint, over
(12:41):
many, many hundreds of thousandsof years, it became
advantageous for our species fora child to feel like okay, I
have this one primary person whoI'm going to attach to and I'm
going to run to that person.
And what's interesting is thatwhen they've done studies on
this and they do the studieskind of almost exactly how you
would expect them to they put achild in a room playing and then
(13:04):
they induce some sort of fear,whether that's by turning off
the lights or having a strangerwalk in, and what the child will
do is immediately run to thesame parent over and over, and
when they do this enough times,they can see that children tend
to always do this.
So then, what they do in thesecases and this is really good
news for us non-preferredparents is they'll take that
(13:27):
preferred caregiver out of theroom and they'll run the
experiment again, or they'll runit with a different population
of kids and they'll know whichparent is preferred, but then
they'll put the other parent inthe room.
Population of kids and they'llknow which parent is preferred,
but then they'll put the otherparent in the room.
And when the child has thatfear inducing experience, they
don't even hesitate.
They go to the next person onthe attachment hierarchy.
And so as we talk aboutpreferred parent, what it's like
(13:51):
to be a preferred parent andwhat are some strategies to be
able to deal with your preferredstatus and encourage your
partner and you know some ofthat burden and also what it's
like to be a non-preferredparent and how do I navigate
when it seems like my childnever wants me.
It's really important tounderstand that in the
attachment hierarchy.
It's not that your childdoesn't want you.
It's that when given the optionbetween choice A and choice B,
(14:15):
they are almost always going tochoose choice A right when
choice A is not available.
They're not going to default tonothing.
They will default.
According to this research,that's been done.
And again, attachment researchhas been around for a long time,
but they're doing more and moreof it all the time because now
they see how truly important itis and how predictive secure
(14:39):
attachment is for laterrelational success and also
later just general mental healthoutcomes, life fulfillment
outcomes.
So what they're seeing now evenmore so, is that that
attachment can easily be shifted.
As long as the child knows thatone parent the one that they
prefer is out of the room, theywill default to the other one,
(14:59):
provided that there is secureattachment there.
And so, understanding this andkind of processing through this,
we can understand sort of whykids do this and why it's not an
indictment against one parentor another.
Why kids decide which parentthey're going to be attached to
is something that we don'tentirely know.
We definitely can see that someof it is correlated with how
(15:22):
much time you spend with a child, although not entirely.
It seems like oftentimes kidsare more attached to the parent
who they have more face timewith.
Again, not always Certainly.
It can be the reverse and itdoesn't mean that that parent
who they spend more time with isa bad parent just because they
spend less time with the one whothey tend to be prefer, that
they tend to prefer in certaincircumstances.
(15:46):
It also some research has beenthat there is some relationship
between really early childhoodrelationship between really
early childhood.
So if baby, who oftentimesspends more time with mom in the
early days, because there'sthat biological need for nursing
very frequently and so momtends to have a little bit more
(16:10):
on her plate with the new baby,sometimes that early connection
experience can foster some ofthose early bonds of hierarchy
toward the mother.
The same is true, by the way,if the father is doing the
majority in the early early days, or that has been found, so we
don't exactly know it can be theparent who seems to be more
(16:32):
stable, and that could be for awhole host of reasons.
But if one parent is goingthrough something and has to be
away for an extended period oftime, the attachment hierarchy
can actually shift to the otherparent.
Kids can do that.
They can go over time.
They can actually swing to oneparent and then swing to the
other one, and that can be verydisconcerting again for the
(16:52):
person who began as thepreferred parent and then is
going what happened?
Why am I no longer thepreferred parent?
But that can happen as well.
We don't know exactly why.
What we do know is that very,very good parents, myself
included, are often thenon-preferred parent, and so if
you're sitting around thinking,man, I'm such a terrible parent,
my kids don't like me which, bythe way, are all the thoughts
that I've had about myself, like, just know that that's not what
(17:15):
research would say.
And so let's shift really quickinto section two of this
episode, where we talkspecifically.
I'm going to talk specificallyto preferred parents, and and if
you are a not preferred parent,you are more than welcome, and
the same thing is true the other, on the reverse uh, you're more
than welcome to listen to thisand understand a little bit more
from your partner.
(17:35):
The first thing that I want totell you, if you're a preferred
parent, is that, even though I'mnot a preferred parent, I know
and have counseled enoughpreferred parents, including, by
the way, my relationship, veryopen communication with my own
wife to know how hard it is todo what you're doing.
(17:56):
I appreciate how exhausting itis to always be the one that
your child seems to run to.
I appreciate how emotionallytaxing it can be to do bedtime
for 13, 15, 35, 100 days in arow five, a hundred days in a
(18:16):
row, and you just need a breakbecause you're sick or because
you have a.
You're hanging out with yourfriends and you're going out, or
you want to have a sitter orwhatever and feel like you can't
because your kid only is okayfor you.
I just want to say that isseems so overwhelming to me and
(18:40):
simply the emotional burden ofcarrying around that level of
responsibility for co-regulationwith a child feels exhausting.
Even considering it feelsexhausting.
And so if you're that parentand if you're a preferred parent
listening to this, I just wantto highlight that I know how
(19:02):
hard it is and there are goingto be things that we're going to
talk about and strategies thatyou can employ to help move some
of the caregiving burden to amore balanced place.
However, you probably are notgoing to ever feel like it's 50
(19:23):
50 because whenever you're inthe room it's not going to be 50
50.
The perception is, wheneveryou're with your kid you have to
be on, and I understand howexhausting that must be.
And so I just want to take amoment and say like I don't want
anybody to come away from thisepisode feeling bad.
I don't want the preferredparents to come away feeling bad
(19:46):
.
I don't want the non-preferredparents to come away feeling bad
.
It is incredibly exhausting tobe a preferred parent and I have
had countless parents tell meJohn I just needed someone to
validate my experience that I'mnot crazy, that my kid only
wants me, that I didn't doanything to them to make them
(20:08):
this way.
You didn't, you absolutelydidn't.
It's no problem with you.
It identifies that you're asecure and stable presence for
your child.
We want kids.
By the way, this is a crazything to say because, coming out
of the 80s and the 90s, most ofus learned the opposite of what
I'm going to say.
But we actually see that kidswho are securely attached and
(20:33):
have all of those benefits fromsecure attachment, cry when
their parents leave the room,especially their preferred
parent.
So the idea that we want ourchildren to just like totally,
be free from separation anxietybeing totally and completely
free from separation anxiety isnot indicative of a child who's
securely attached.
In fact, the way, as we justhighlighted, that they do
(20:54):
attachment research so often isby putting the child in any sort
of stressful environmentoutside the presence of their
parent and then bringing theparent back in or putting them
in this, into a stressfulsituation in the presence of
their parent.
We we know that kids look totheir parents to co-regulate,
and, and especially theirpreferred parent, and so,
because of that, I just want tosay that you didn't do anything
(21:16):
wrong.
You're not.
You aren't coddling your child,you're not spoiling your child.
When you leave the room, theycry and it's not on you that
that's the case.
That is indicative of good,secure attachment.
Now, if they're totallyinconsolable when you come back
in the room, then we can talkabout how we can work through
some of that.
But the idea that your child isjust going to be okay when you
(21:38):
leave, as we have highlightedfrom the beginning of the
episode, children are not okaywhen they are outside the
presence of their secure,attentive caregivers.
They are just not.
Now we want them to develop asense of autonomy, especially we
don't want this to be the casewhen they're five, six, seven
years old, where we areconstantly supervising them at
all times and we never allowthem any autonomy and freedom to
(21:59):
explore and challengethemselves and fall down and
have to come find us.
That's totally fine at thatpoint.
But when you're talking about ayoung child, which so
frequently is when thepreference really seems to rear
up two, three, four years old,even younger sometimes, when
we're talking about kids thatare that young, they know how
vulnerable they are outside ofyour presence and so they are
(22:21):
going to cry when you leave, andthat is okay, we can work with
that.
It's not a character flaw inyou or a flaw in your parenting
or a flaw in them.
Just because there were previousgenerations that conditioned
their children to not do that,often by resorting to means that
harmed secure attachment inorder to do so, does not mean
(22:45):
that they were better than you.
In fact, what research tends topoint out is that it's the
opposite.
And so just understand I get it.
I understand how hard it is tobe a preferred parent.
I also understand what it'slike from the other side, and I
can just tell you the advicethat I've given to so many
preferred parents that they'vecome back to me.
These are folks in themembership who I've been with
for over a year now, who haveimplemented some of these things
(23:07):
over a year ago.
They can come back to me nowand say, john, this absolutely
works, this absolutely 100%works.
And I don't just come up withthis stuff right, I'm parroting
this stuff on from what I'veread in research and then kind
of worked with other parentingexperts to talk about and say,
okay, is this the right approach?
But here's my three-stepprogram for preferred parents.
(23:29):
Number one trying to not be theperson who comforts your child
and be in the presence of yourchild is really, really
difficult.
You're probably settingyourself up for failure.
So when it comes time to dobedtime, for example this is a
very common one that people willtalk to me about when it comes
(23:50):
time to do bedtime, if mom isthe preferred parent in this
example which it is not alwaysthis case, but it can be when
mom is the preferred parent.
If mom is the preferred parentin this example which it is not
always this case, but it can bewhen mom is the preferred parent
, if mom is simply seeminglychoosing not to do bedtime, if
mom is available in the eyes ofyour four-year-old,
three-year-old, whatever, butelecting not to do bedtime, that
(24:14):
is going to be very, very hardon a child whose attachment
hierarchy is pretty high,because that's also something
that I should have mentioned inthe first section.
Different kids have differentdegrees of this.
If you have a highly sensitivekid, if you have a
neurodivergent kid, oftentimestheir hierarchy can seem pretty
huge.
Right, and I've experiencedthis with my own kids.
(24:36):
My first, my oldest, has a veryextreme attachment hierarchy
between my wife and I is a biggap, and he's seven years old
and it's not changed at all.
Very little, right, he's goodwith me if she's not around,
which is what we're talkingabout now, but it's a huge gap.
It's very, very smallcomparatively with my
three-year-old, but it's stillthere.
(24:56):
With my two-year-old, thereused to be almost no seeming
attachment hierarchy, but then,lo and behold, every kid has an
attachment hierarchy and dadfound himself on the bottom
again.
So just understand that if youare in the room, it's going to
be much, much harder for yourchild to settle, to cope with
another caregiver, and so simplyremoving yourself from that
(25:18):
situation while your child isregulated, right, not putting
your child into the positionwhere you're saying, okay, well,
now I'm going to leave, it'sbedtime, you're going to go with
grandma.
Or you're going to go with dad,but I'm here but I'm not going
to go with you.
Or now I'm going to leave, nowthat it's bedtime.
That can create unnecessarystress on the system and you
just don't have to do that.
(25:39):
If you just say, hey, I'm goingto step out for ice cream or go
out with friends or just sit inmy car or whatever, or go up,
you know, walk out the frontdoor, walk in the back door, go
upstairs to your bedroom, I meanyou don't have to leave the
house as long as your child is.
Just wraps their head around theidea that you're not available,
right, which, again, it mayseem deceptive.
(26:00):
Or you're lying to your kids,then, john?
No, what we're doing is we'reworking within their brain
paradigm.
They understand if you're there, you're available, and so if
you're unavailable by choice,it's easier for them to
rationalize, conceptualize thatif you're not physically there,
so you're going to leave thatscenario before bedtime routine
(26:22):
even starts.
Maybe dad, grandma, babysitteris going to have some time to
play with the child, to dosomething the child likes.
Then we're going to transitionto bedtime.
Bedtime is going to go throughall the steps.
Is it possible?
Is it likely that that firstnight, even the 10th night, that
your child may cry for you atthe moment of bedtime?
Yes, but it's infinitely lesslikely for those for that to be
(26:46):
prolonged and for that to bedifficult for the, for the
caregiver and on the child Ifthe child has the perception
that you're not physically thereand you don't have to start
with bedtime for some kids.
I remember one mom I talked toshe she had trouble even leaving
the house without her kid inany circumstance, and so the
idea that she would not dobedtime after she basically was
(27:07):
with her child 24 hours a day,that was like a big, big step,
right.
But for her it was likemornings are good.
I'm going to go out for morningrun, coffee, whatever, away
from my child, and that's goingto be clear, right.
And so you can start baby stepson this, especially when that
hierarchy is so big.
You can start baby steps andyou can just, you know, work up
(27:29):
to the bigger things At somepoint.
You want for the non-preferredparent to be able to cope
equally in your absence, with ascraped knee, with a big fall,
with whatever, with bedtime.
That's ultimately the goal.
So just know that that's whatyou're working up to, but you
don't have to run run there,okay.
So that's number one.
Being physically present isgoing to be hard.
(27:52):
Number two one of the hardestthings I've found for preferred
parents is embodying the idea,or, I guess, believing, that
their partner especially, butoften also another caregiver,
doesn't have to be a partner,has the capability to help be an
(28:13):
adequate, secure attachment fortheir child.
And so what do I mean by this?
What I mean is, if your actionsas a preferred caregiver or as
a preferred parent undermine theability of the other parent or
the other caregiver to be ableto provide comfort and aid, that
is going to backfire on yourchild for a couple of different
(28:37):
reasons.
And so allowing your partnerand we'll just keep saying that,
because that's probably themost likely case of this
allowing your partner tostruggle, to not do it the right
way, to not do it the same wayas you, to not calm down your
child as quickly as you, to notget to regulation as effectively
(29:01):
as you, is better for both yourchild yourself and your
caregiver, your co-caregiver, inevery case.
Now I'm not saying that youshould set your partner up to
fail.
Right, if there's good advicethat you can present your
partner with of hey after thefact.
Oh yeah, we were going throughthis.
It was really hard.
I couldn't figure out what theywanted.
Oh, he probably just wantedwater.
(29:21):
Oh, I didn't know that.
Okay, I'll.
I'll remember that for nexttime.
Right, we'll talk about thatwith the non-preferred parents
in a moment.
But that experience ofproviding that feedback later,
totally fine.
What's less fine, what'sactually, I think,
counterproductive and countereffective, is what's going to
(29:41):
happen if you hear from theother room that your child needs
water.
Again, in this circumstance,your child ideally doesn't even
think that you're available andyou have no ability to control
your own impulse to save and tohelp and walk into that room and
fix.
That is not going to lead tosuccess, and there's two reasons
(30:02):
.
One, when you save your otherpartner out of a situation that
you feel they cannot handle andthis is different, by the way,
when the partner isdemonstrating that they are not
okay.
So it's very different whenyour partner is screaming at
(30:22):
your child, raising their fistslike they're going to harm
somebody.
They're losing it and you needto step in because, for their
own good, this is a differentscenario.
This is they're not doingthings the way that you wish
that they would do them and youinsert yourself in order to fix,
or intervene in order to fixthe problem.
(30:43):
When you do that, two thingshappen.
One, your partner believes.
My partner does not trust me todo this.
My partner does not think thatI'm a good, effective caregiver.
Their confidence is shot as aresult.
They're way less likely to beeffective in the future if they
think that you're going to comeand save them, because they're
just waiting for you to savethem.
(31:03):
But you know, who else learns tobelieve that your child, your
child, has to believe.
Ultimately, in order to be ableto be settled, comforted by
another adult other than you,the preferred caregiver, they
have to believe that that personis capable and able and
reliable.
And if they don't believe thatthat person's capable, able,
(31:23):
able and reliable, then they arenot going to develop a
relationship with that caregiverthat allows that caregiver to
be able to intervene and help inmoments of deep dysregulation.
Intervene and help in momentsof deep dysregulation.
And so when you don't believein your caregiver, you're
sending your co-parent or theother person who's parenting
(31:44):
alongside you when you don'tbelieve in them, that message is
very clearly sent.
And when your toddler thenbelieves my mom, my dad, does
not think that their partner orthis person trying to take care
of me, is capable, able, isreliable, is safe, that they can
do it, why should they believethat they're looking to
(32:07):
primarily they're securelyattached parents to decide what
in the world is good and what inthe world is bad and what in
the world is safe?
Children do not have an innateability to identify danger
effectively, and so they look tous to tell them what is good
and what is not good, and whatis safe and what's not safe, and
(32:28):
so they look to our actionsmore than anything.
And so when your actionsdemonstrate that you do not feel
that this person is good enough, your child will similarly
internalize that this person isnot good enough.
So that's one, that's two.
We'll summarize those two piecesas one try and remove yourself
entirely.
And, by the way, it's going tobe a lot easier to not try and
step in and save your partnerwhen they're struggling if
(32:51):
you're not even in the house tohear it.
Number one.
Number two is don't save right,don't rescue.
Allow your partner to struggle.
Thing number three is.
You have to realize that inorder to be your best self or
the best parent to your child,you also have to be take
impeccable care of yourself.
This is something that mostpreferred parents just do not
(33:15):
seem to get until we explicitlysay it.
If you want to be thereeffectively for your kid, you
have to take care of yourself,and I would challenge any parent
who says I can totally do allof my self-care in the hours
where my child is asleep.
I would challenge that person.
I would say you are not.
There's something missing.
You are not living your mosteffective, flourishing life if
(33:40):
you are only able to care foryourself while your child's
asleep.
So taking impeccable care ofyourself is a way of becoming a
better parent.
I'll tell you this straight upfor me, if I am hungry, if I am
tired, if I have not exercised,if I am not going to therapy, if
I am not spending time being,you know, with with friends,
(34:03):
with my wife, if I'm not havinggood conversations, if I'm
socially depleted, if I'mstressed out from work, those
are not the moments when I'm thebest parent, the moments when I
am my best, most ideal versionof parenting, when I, when I
live into the majority of theparenting principles that I
would like to live by all thetime are the moments when I have
(34:23):
taken care of myself, and sothat is true, more so for
preferred parents.
You have to take impeccablecare of yourself, and that is
going to require for your childto be able to be in the care of
others when you're not around,and so understanding that that's
just a reality and it's goodfor your child to be able to be
in the care of others whenyou're not around, and so
understanding that that's just areality and it's good for your
kid I shouldn't say that, too,it's good for your kid.
As I've already said, beingattached to more than one person
(34:45):
is good for your kid, not justbecause you won't be around
someday when they need you, butbecause the process of learning
to build secure attachment,beyond just the secure
attachment that they may havefrom birth with you, is a good
process.
Okay, last section here, andI'm not going to give a call out
to join the email list so thatyou can get all the updates, or
(35:07):
you know, I guess I'm doing itright now.
Yeah, rate and review thepodcast.
Yeah, all that Last section.
Let me talk to not preferredparents, not preferred parents.
This entire episode I've beencalling you not preferred
parents.
It probably doesn't feel verygood.
I'm just trying to be honest.
I get you, I get you, Iunderstand, I am there.
You know what's crazy.
When I talk to other parentingauthors some of your I'm not
(35:30):
going to out them on thispodcast some of your favorite
voices in parenting they willoften tell me that they are the
non-preferred parent too.
When you think about some ofyour most effective thought
leaders, they are thenon-preferred parent.
It's not better to be thenon-preferred parent or to be
the preferred parent, but if youthink that you're doing
something wrong and that'swhat's causing you to be the
(35:51):
non-preferred parent, stop.
You're not.
This is a feature, not afailure, in your child.
This is a feature of their ownevolutionary biology.
It's good that they're attachedto your partner or to whomever
they're attached to, right,that's good.
Even if you're not number oneon the call sheet, you still
have a place.
(36:12):
And if you constantly feelundermined, I would really
encourage you to take off thetraining wheels and do it on
your own, because almostinstantly you will realize that
your children responddifferently to your compassion
and care and empathy, when theydon't feel like they're being
outed by their other parent orput out by their other parent in
(36:34):
order to do so.
When your child falls andscrapes their knee, when mom or
dad is at work and you're thequote backup quarterback here,
it's amazing how they will flockto you and run to you and cry
into your shoulder, just thesame as they do to your partner,
and they may say in thosemoments I wish that dad was here
, I wish that mom was here, butthey're going to let you do your
(36:57):
job.
So you're not wrong, you're notbad.
And and I want is as much as Isaid to the preferred parents
how emotionally taxing it is tobe on all the time First of all,
remember that if you're jealousof them which I sometimes am
jealous of my wife for thisreason, like just remember how
hard it is to be them too.
To those preferred parents, whoare hopefully still listening,
(37:17):
it's hard to not feel likeyou're loved and liked.
It's hard for the person or forthe tiny people who you love
most in the world to picksomebody over.
You Just imagine that it's yourpartner for a moment.
Right, for the preferredparents listening.
For the non-preferred parents,you can just say amen when I say
this.
Imagine that your partner wasjust picking somebody else over
(37:37):
you, over and over.
It would be emotionallyexhausting.
You would feel jealous of thatrelationship if your partner was
getting really close withsomebody else.
Yeah, it's hard to watch yourkids seemingly not like you to
scream because you're the wrongperson walking in after nap time
which, by the way, has happenedto me more times than I can
(37:58):
count.
All three of my kids havescreamed because I'm not mom
walking in after nap time.
I the look of disappointmentwhen dad's doing bedtime instead
of mom and I do bedtime for oneof my kids every single night.
Like it gets better.
But if mom does bedtime for twodays in a row with a kid that
I'm typically doing bedtime with, we switch with which kid we're
typically doing.
But if, if I, if all of asudden I'm doing it when mom did
(38:21):
it, who are you?
I don't want you.
It's hard, it's emotionallytaxing.
If you're not sharing this withsomebody, please do.
Please be willing to at leastput down in a journal.
Like man, this sucks sometimesbecause it does Like it seems
like you know, I put in as muchwork to parent as well as I can,
as almost anybody else Right, Ispend at least 50% of my kids
(38:44):
waking hours with one of them.
Like, I'm not saying my wifedoesn't do the same.
I'm not knocking anything thatshe does as a parent.
I'm just saying I put in awhole heck of a lot of work and
it sometimes it feels like itdoesn't amount to a hill of
beans.
The only reason that I feelthat way is because I am in a
constant battle of comparisonNon-preferred parents listen to
me very carefully Comparingyourself to the non-preferred
(39:05):
parent, to the preferred parentSorry, let me say that again
self, especially to therelationship between your
child's preferred parent, yourpartner and you.
No good will come of that.
No good, you will onlyexperience pain as a result.
(39:27):
You will not get better, youwill not parent better, you will
only feel shame, and when youfeel shame, dollars to donuts
you're going to feel worse.
You're going to parent worse.
You're going to be way harderon your partner than you need to
be.
Who didn't do anything to putthemselves in this position, by
the way, except for maybe saveyou a couple times, which we've
(39:47):
just?
We've just told them thatthey're not supposed to do that,
and so remind them of thisepisode, remind them how they
need to let you struggle andstop comparing yourself to them.
Stop Comparison and parenting isnot just the thief of joy, like
comparison is the thief of joy.
If you've ever heard thatcomparison and parenting is a
(40:07):
path to destruction.
If you find yourself comparingyourself to me or to anybody who
I've interviewed on thispodcast or anyone else you see
on social media, or even yourown partner stop.
No good will come of that.
You can try to be the bestparent you can be and if you're
listening to this podcast,chances are that's what you're
trying to do.
If you're reading the booksthat you're supposed to be
(40:29):
reading whenever you can, ifyou're spending time actually
investing in this area of yourlife, you're probably doing a
pretty good job.
Stop comparing yourself, becauseyou can't win against the
preferred parent anyway.
Like I know that that's maybe ahard thing to say you can be a
quote unquote better parent.
You can be more empathetic.
You can be more caring.
(40:49):
You can lose your cool.
Less you can.
You can be the one who takesthem out for ice cream.
You can do all of the positivethings right, and even then you
will never.
It's not.
It's not a choice that yourchild's making.
So stop comparing yourself.
Number two be willing and opento struggle period.
You're going to struggle.
It's going to be harder for yousometimes, seemingly, than your
(41:12):
partner.
Remember that their labor,their burden, is not in the
individual experiences, it's inthe, it's in the piling up of
the experiences.
Your burden may be in the moreindividual experiences, and you
had a really hard interactionwith your child where they just
wanted their, your partner, andnot you.
They just don't.
You just don't know yet how tocalm them down when they're
really losing it or they justdon't let you right,
(41:35):
co-regulation is a two-waystreet.
Really losing it or they justdon't let you right,
co-regulation is a two-waystreet.
You can't make your child do it.
You're doing your best and it'sstill hard.
You got to give yourself somegrace and you got to let
yourself struggle.
Don't throw your hands up andgive up and say, well, I'm just
not the way, I just I'm a badparent and everybody hates me.
If you do that, you areguaranteeing failure.
(41:59):
So don't go down that road.
Keep struggling, keep fightingand, you know, maybe talk to
your partner and say, hey, it'shard for me to struggle with you
in the room.
If you don't think that yourkids are going to respond to you
differently when your partnertheir preferred parent is is
watching, you're wrong.
I can't regulate my kids downhalf as well If mom's even in
(42:19):
the house.
Are you kidding me?
I just went through this.
I kid you not.
An hour before this momentrecording this podcast, just
went through this two of my kids.
Mom is putting the third onedown for a nap.
Why does she have to do it?
Because he saw her before nap,so he's never going to tolerate
me.
So now I got to go put down.
I got to go deal with theseother two.
(42:39):
Somebody threw something behindthem they weren't thinking it
was a dumb move Hit the otherone in the face.
Everybody's screaming,everybody's crying, everybody's
losing it.
Neither of them wanted me toco-regulate.
Now, if mom was at a photoshoot, gone, whatever probably
could have done it.
She was in the house somewhere.
We know she is.
Give us mom.
It's hard, and so you may haveto have a conversation with your
(43:00):
partner and say, look, I needyou to be a little bit less
available for our kids.
I'm not saying that you have tobe absent when you're here.
I'm saying, maybe just be alittle bit more absent in
general, that might be morehelpful for you.
You need as with anything inlife, you need reps in order to
get good at anything and chancesare, most of us spend a lot of
(43:22):
our time that we're with ourkids, also with their preferred
parent.
If we're the non-preferredparent, it means that we have a
whole lot less reps than ourpreferred parent partner.
We have a whole lot less repsand we're going to need to get
those reps if we're going to beeffective.
We're probably never going tohave as many reps as them, but
we are going to need to haveenough to feel effective and to
feel like I can take my kids out, go do this, go do that.
(43:43):
Really, really important to getthose in to do that work.
Okay, number three I want you toswallow your pride and debrief
with your preferred parentpartner when you're actually
going through the process ofgetting these reps.
One it's going to make themfeel so much better if you are
honest with them, if you tellthem about the struggle, if they
(44:08):
don't feel like they'reabandoning their child and then
they're never going to find outwhat happened.
They're going to feel so muchbetter about it if you're
willing to debrief with them.
And, number two, you're goingto be able to ask them what was
going on in those moments.
Because, guess what, they'vedone it more than you.
In all likelihood, it's notbecause they're better than you,
it's not because they're morekind than you, it's because your
child has demanded that they doit more, and so they have done
it more.
(44:28):
And just to keep the peace,they've done it more than you
and they probably have someinsight that would be valuable
to you.
And so, with that being said,be willing to debrief, be
willing to own it up.
If your preferred parentpartner has listened to this
episode, they are not going tojudge you for your struggle, or
(44:49):
they better not.
That's not the goal Processwith them.
And if they go, you know what?
I think you probably justwanted water Go.
Okay, you didn't know.
Mistakes are not the enemy.
Mistakes are how we learn.
You didn't know that you didn'thave the right blanket in the
right place.
You didn't know that when theyscream like that, what they
really want is to go outside, orthat that's a helpful tool.
Or I just take them into thebathroom and turn on the water,
and then they just play.
(45:10):
You don't know all of the tipsand tricks.
You haven't had the reps.
Be willing to learn from theperson who has with your
specific kids Doesn't mean thatthey're a better parent than you
.
It just means that they havemore reps.
Swallow your pride.
You're not comparing to themanymore.
Just be willing to own it.
I would not be whole parent if Ihad not done this with my own
wife.
I'm just telling you thatstraight up.
(45:31):
I would still be languishing inbitterness that my kids didn't
like me, which is nonsense.
My kids love the absolute messout of me.
Just because they don't want mewhen they fall and scrape their
knee and I'm standing next tomy wife does not mean my kids
don't like me.
They love me, they want to bearound me, they they have fun
with me.
We laugh more than we cry.
It's a fantastic life that Ilive.
(45:52):
Do not feel bad for me.
That said, if I was still tryingto compare myself and if I was
not taking good advice when itwas offered, I would not be
where I am.
I would not be parenting in theway that I am.
I certainly would not be on apodcast talking about parenting
period.
I read the books that my wifetold me to read.
I went to the courses that mywife told me to go to.
It just so happened that at thesame time I happened to be
(46:13):
going through some counselingtraining and realized that this
is apples and apples parentingand therapy, and emotional
health and neuroscience.
But you have to be willing togo there, and so that's what I
have for you on this episode.
I hope this has helped you tolearn a little bit more about
being a preferred parent and ifyou're a not preferred parent,
(46:34):
being a not preferred parent, Ihope that you walk away with
this understanding that you arenot bad just because your child
has attachment hierarchy, thatit is normal, that it is natural
that it is even expected.
And last note, before we endand I saved this one for the end
, it's a golden nugget at theend the last thing I want you to
know is that it's temporaryAttachment hierarchy tends to go
(46:56):
away or balance out when achild enters a phase in which
they feel safer, more autonomousin the world, and so giving
your kid freedom within healthyboundaries, giving your kid
unsupervised time to play withfriends to you know, play at the
park without you constantlyfollowing them around, whatever
you have to do.
(47:16):
When your child's seven, eight,nine years old and they feel
more stable, resilient,confident in and of themselves,
the preference hierarchy thingjust dissipates.
Now.
It may be that they always goto one partner for one thing,
one partner for another thing.
(47:36):
That's okay, kids do that.
But the hierarchy is going togo away.
This, too, shall pass.
This is how we're going tosurvive the early years and if
we do this right 10 years old,11 years old we're going to be
securely attached to two adultswho feel confident in the
raising of that child, or threeor four, or even five, and that
(47:59):
process is going to be betterfor you, better for your child,
better for your partner, nomatter which side you're on on,
the preferred not preferredthing or their other caregiver.
If the preferred not preferredis if you're a single parent and
this whole episode you've beenthinking about the not preferred
parent is your mother or yourfather who's helping you, or or
(48:19):
a caregiver or a nanny, that'sokay, whatever it is.
If you're in a situation whereyou live in two separate homes,
right from your, your ex partnerand and you're co-parenting
with a person who you're nolonger in a relationship with
and you're the not preferred orthe preferred.
Some of this stuff's gonna berelevant At 10,.
If you do your work, we'regonna get back to some balance,
(48:40):
and so understanding this, thatit's temporary, that we're
moving through this is gonnamake this so much easier on you,
on everyone else.
That's what I have for youtoday.
On the Whole Parent Podcast,I've already gone way longer
than I wanted to for thisepisode.
I'm gonna have to figure outhow to trim these down, but this
is a really important topic andI hope you feel better as a
result of listening to it.
As I said at the beginning ofthe episode, you can go to the
(49:02):
first link in the show notes.
You can click there, enter youremail and your first name and
you will be added to the list ofpeople who get the podcast.
If you're already on the emaillist and you do that, you will
not get two emails from me.
You'll just automatically beadded also to the podcast list.
If not if you're not gettingemails from me yet and you just
like the podcast, you're not sosure about the email list get
(49:23):
ready, you're going to love thatas well.
So that's all I have for youtoday.
I really hope that this episodehas helped you.
Don't forget to rate and review, to share this with parents in
your life.
Probably so many parents arestruggling with this exact same
thing right now in your friendgroup.
Be willing to share it.
Be willing to be vulnerable andsay, hey, I'm struggling.
(49:43):
I hope this helps you.
Maybe you are too.
Until next time.
This has been the Whole ParentPodcast.
Imagine that your partner was just picking
somebody else over you over andover.
It would be emotionallyexhausting.
You would feel jealous of thatrelationship if your partner was
getting really close withsomebody else.
Yeah, it's hard to watch yourkids seemingly not like you to
scream because you're the wrongperson walking in after nap time
(00:20):
which, by the way, has happenedto me more times than I can
count.
Hello and welcome to thisepisode of the Whole Parent
(00:43):
Podcast.
My name is Jon.
I'm at Whole Parent on thesocial medias Instagram, tiktok,
youtube, facebook.
I don't know, maybe I'm on anew social media and you're
listening to this episodesomeday in the future.
If you don't know me, I'm justa guy who's out here.
I study parenting.
I try and help parents toparent more effectively, to
think about their child's brainand development in the act of
(01:03):
parenting, so that they can doso knowing with confidence that
they are raising resilient kids,because that's really important
and that's really what thispodcast is all about, and it's
really what this platform is allabout, if you've encountered me
in other places as well, butthis episode is actually less
about kids and more about theexperience of being a parent.
(01:27):
Of course we're going to talkabout kids.
We're going to talk aboutresearch, like we always do, but
we are going to do something alittle bit different in this
episode.
If you've listened to all of theprevious episodes, you know
that, generally speaking, ourepisodes are divided between two
types of episode.
The first type of episode areepisodes that are primarily me
and answering questions thatcome from the community, and I'm
(01:49):
still going to do thoseepisodes from time to time.
I'm not getting rid of thatformat.
But the other type of episodeis episodes with guests.
People like Jennifer Andersonwas our last guest on the
podcast.
She did an amazing job tellingus about kids and food and
eating.
I have other podcasts recordedalready that are going to be put
out in the future at some point, one with the renowned
(02:11):
parenting author my favoriteparenting author Tina Payne
Bryson, and I've had other guestepisodes as well.
Well, this is going to be a newformat starting today and we're
going to have a different format, and this is where I'm going to
hyper focus in onto one topicand, rather than answering
questions about that topic, I'mjust going to try and explain
that topic in a way, kind oflike a TED Talk format what you
(02:32):
need to know about this topicand in our episode today we're
talking about preferred parentsor attachment hierarchy.
Why do kids prefer one parentseemingly over another?
And by prefer we are nottalking about they like them
better, but usually althoughsometimes that's what it can
feel like, as the non-preferredparent I can tell you often it
feels that way.
(02:53):
But really, what we're sayingwith preferred attachment or
preferred attachment hierarchy,preferred parent status, you're
the one who, who the child mayinsist that you are the one who
does bedtime every night, or thechild may feel so overwhelmed
that if you're not there, ifthey fall down and get hurt,
they really want you right?
They don't want your partner.
(03:13):
So we're going to talk aboutwhy that is today and, rather
than going through threequestions to tell you why that
is, I'm just going to talk aboutwhat it means to be a preferred
parent.
And just FYI, I've dodged thisepisode for a long time.
This is one of the things I getasked about most because it's
something that I talk about alot on social media and I have a
lot of videos on social mediathat have gained a lot of
traction of me expressing myvulnerability as the
(03:35):
non-preferred parent, eventhough I'm a whole parent.
I'm the guy who's talking aboutparenting.
I'm the guy who's read all theparenting books, or a lot of the
parenting books.
I'm the guy who's helping otherpeople parent better.
But in my own home it seemslike I am not the default parent
, I'm not the preferred parent,and because of that I've
expressed a lot of vulnerabilityand things like that, and
(03:57):
people ask me about this all thetime.
But it is a vulnerable thing,it's a vulnerable place to be,
and so I want to dig into thisepisode and go deep on this
topic.
But before I do that, just areally quick call to action.
I try and do this at thebeginning and end of each
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subscribed to this podcast.
You can do that in a couple ofdifferent ways.
The first way you can do thatis if you click the first link
(04:21):
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(04:41):
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(05:45):
to write me a review I readevery single review that I get
it's also to share this withsomebody else.
And so, without further ado, Iwant to dive into what we're
talking about today, which isattachment hierarchy.
It's it's being the preferredparent, and I'm going to break
this up into three sections thatI'm going to try and somewhat
evenly space, although I imaginethe first one's going to be a
little longer.
I'm going to explain first whykids do this attachment thing
(06:07):
according to research, whatattachment researchers have
identified as the likely cause,evolutionarily, for kids to have
an attachment hierarchy, andjust how normal it is for our
kids to have an attachmenthierarchy.
So I'll kind of dispel a couplemyths about you know, is it
because one parent is, isunloved or is somehow worse than
(06:29):
the other parent?
And then I'll also just givesome some general knowledge
about the brain and things likethat.
Then, in part two, I'm going tospeak directly to preferred
parents, and I'm going to speakto what it is like to be a
preferred parent, and in thatsection I'm going to be drawing
on what I've how I've processedwith preferred parents.
I'm not necessarily going to bedrawing on my experience,
(06:51):
because I am not a preferredparent.
And then the last section I'mgoing to be talking about what
it's like to be a non-preferredparent, and that's that's
something that's near and dearto my heart, it's something that
I've done, it's something thatI am with all three of my kids.
It's something that I am withall three of my kids.
And so, without further ado,let me jump right in to section
one.
All right, so part one what isattachment hierarchy?
Why does it matter?
(07:11):
Why do kids do this wholehierarchy thing?
Well, basically, the first thingwe have to understand is that a
lot of the developing andbudding research into child
development that focuses onresilience, that focuses on
mental health outcomes for kids,is grounded in this concept of
attachment theory or attachmentscience.
(07:32):
And attachment science,attachment theory, is not new.
John Bowlby has been doing this, for was doing this for decades
.
This is not something that'slike cutting edge in any way,
but more and more and I'm seeingthis reflected in the types of
books that are being publishedabout parenting.
We are focusing more and moreon the concept of attachment,
(07:52):
and that's great news.
I mean, I've done an episode onattachment already here on the
podcast.
It's a really important part ofdevelopment understanding
secure attachment and how tofoster secure attachment.
But one thing that we have tounderstand about attachment is
that not all attachment iscreated equal, and it's not just
the difference between kids whoare insecurely attached however
(08:17):
you want to define that,whichever words you want to use
for that type of insecure,disorganized, ambivalent,
anxious, whatever you want tosay and kids who are securely
attached.
There's also hierarchy withinsecure attachment and the reason
for attachment in general.
Not only is it because we areinherently social creatures as
(08:40):
human beings.
The other reason why it'sreally important for kids to
attach to their caregiversespecially is because proximity
to your caregiver was the bestmeans of survival for children.
Human beings develop in utero,seemingly I don't want to say
less, but differently than manyother species.
(09:00):
In fact, we are born quiteprematurely, if that makes sense
, in comparison to other species, and the reason for this is
that the longer, the morecortical neurons, the more
neurons that you have in yourneocortex that you have.
The more of those you have, thelonger your adolescent or child
(09:23):
upbringing period, developmentis going to be, and this tracks
across tons of different speciesof mammal.
As humans, we spend a reallylong time developing because we
have the most cortical neuronsor neural connections in our
neocortex and so because of that, we tend to be born somewhat
(09:46):
prematurely Like our.
Our kids can't do very muchcompared to other species, right
, if you, if you see a babygiraffe be born, which is is a
is a harrowing experience.
There's videos of it at mylocal zoo.
They can, like get up and walkaround and and and I don't want
to say fend for themselves, butthey can.
They can do a lot within thefirst day, even week, of life.
In comparison to humans, I mean,we spend years just totally
(10:11):
incredibly dependent on ourcaregivers, and that extends
throughout adolescence andchildhood.
We need our caregivers for muchlonger than most other species,
in fact, probably for longerthan any other species, and so
it's really really importantthat we feel secure in that bond
(10:32):
between our caregiver and uswhen we're growing up, when
we're in those vulnerable stages, and the more secure, the less
vulnerable we feel, not becausewe are less vulnerable
individually, but because ourproximity to our caregiver makes
us less vulnerable tounderstand.
But but and more attachment isbetter, right?
(10:54):
So the more people that you canhave your child be securely
attached to, it's a law ofdiminishing marginal returns.
It's not like infinitely OK ifthey're attached to 100 people.
It's better than being attachedto 99 people.
Probably that's there'd be nodifference, but being securely
attached to three or four peopleis significantly better than
being securely attached to oneperson.
That said, even when your childis securely attached to more
(11:16):
than one person which I hopethey are I hope they're securely
attached to whoever is doingsome of their childcare.
If it's not only you and yourpartner that they're also
securely attached to yourpartner, I really hope that for
you, although it's not alwaysthe case.
I really hope that they can besecurely attached to other
family members If you have thosenearby, and those are people
who who are represent safe,stable presence in your life and
(11:36):
in the life of your child.
Even though they're going to beattached to those people, they
are going to have to rank thosepeople, and the reason for this,
according to research, isbecause in a crisis situation,
when a child is put into afear-inducing environment, that
child unconsciously orsubconsciously needs to default
(11:59):
and run to one parent or onecaregiver, to one parent or one
caregiver.
And so when you think about itin the case of like evolutionary
survival, right, you thinkabout it in terms of like okay,
the lion walks into the cave.
You don't want your childdeciding do I want to run to
mommy right now or do I want torun to daddy right now?
You want them to go.
(12:20):
And so just primarilyunderstanding that fact should
give you, whether you're apreferred parent or a not
preferred parent, a little bitof understanding that it's not
that your child in those momentsis only running to you because
they only feel safe with you.
It's because, from anevolutionary standpoint, over
(12:41):
many, many hundreds of thousandsof years, it became
advantageous for our species fora child to feel like okay, I
have this one primary person whoI'm going to attach to and I'm
going to run to that person.
And what's interesting is thatwhen they've done studies on
this and they do the studieskind of almost exactly how you
would expect them to they put achild in a room playing and then
(13:04):
they induce some sort of fear,whether that's by turning off
the lights or having a strangerwalk in, and what the child will
do is immediately run to thesame parent over and over, and
when they do this enough times,they can see that children tend
to always do this.
So then, what they do in thesecases and this is really good
news for us non-preferredparents is they'll take that
(13:27):
preferred caregiver out of theroom and they'll run the
experiment again, or they'll runit with a different population
of kids and they'll know whichparent is preferred, but then
they'll put the other parent inthe room.
Population of kids and they'llknow which parent is preferred,
but then they'll put the otherparent in the room.
And when the child has thatfear inducing experience, they
don't even hesitate.
They go to the next person onthe attachment hierarchy.
And so as we talk aboutpreferred parent, what it's like
(13:51):
to be a preferred parent andwhat are some strategies to be
able to deal with your preferredstatus and encourage your
partner and you know some ofthat burden and also what it's
like to be a non-preferredparent and how do I navigate
when it seems like my childnever wants me.
It's really important tounderstand that in the
attachment hierarchy.
It's not that your childdoesn't want you.
It's that when given the optionbetween choice A and choice B,
(14:15):
they are almost always going tochoose choice A right when
choice A is not available.
They're not going to default tonothing.
They will default.
According to this research,that's been done.
And again, attachment researchhas been around for a long time,
but they're doing more and moreof it all the time because now
they see how truly important itis and how predictive secure
(14:39):
attachment is for laterrelational success and also
later just general mental healthoutcomes, life fulfillment
outcomes.
So what they're seeing now evenmore so, is that that
attachment can easily be shifted.
As long as the child knows thatone parent the one that they
prefer is out of the room, theywill default to the other one,
(14:59):
provided that there is secureattachment there.
And so, understanding this andkind of processing through this,
we can understand sort of whykids do this and why it's not an
indictment against one parentor another.
Why kids decide which parentthey're going to be attached to
is something that we don'tentirely know.
We definitely can see that someof it is correlated with how
(15:22):
much time you spend with a child, although not entirely.
It seems like oftentimes kidsare more attached to the parent
who they have more face timewith.
Again, not always Certainly.
It can be the reverse and itdoesn't mean that that parent
who they spend more time with isa bad parent just because they
spend less time with the one whothey tend to be prefer, that
they tend to prefer in certaincircumstances.
(15:46):
It also some research has beenthat there is some relationship
between really early childhoodrelationship between really
early childhood.
So if baby, who oftentimesspends more time with mom in the
early days, because there'sthat biological need for nursing
very frequently and so momtends to have a little bit more
(16:10):
on her plate with the new baby,sometimes that early connection
experience can foster some ofthose early bonds of hierarchy
toward the mother.
The same is true, by the way,if the father is doing the
majority in the early early days, or that has been found, so we
don't exactly know it can be theparent who seems to be more
(16:32):
stable, and that could be for awhole host of reasons.
But if one parent is goingthrough something and has to be
away for an extended period oftime, the attachment hierarchy
can actually shift to the otherparent.
Kids can do that.
They can go over time.
They can actually swing to oneparent and then swing to the
other one, and that can be verydisconcerting again for the
(16:52):
person who began as thepreferred parent and then is
going what happened?
Why am I no longer thepreferred parent?
But that can happen as well.
We don't know exactly why.
What we do know is that very,very good parents, myself
included, are often thenon-preferred parent, and so if
you're sitting around thinking,man, I'm such a terrible parent,
my kids don't like me which, bythe way, are all the thoughts
that I've had about myself, like, just know that that's not what
(17:15):
research would say.
And so let's shift really quickinto section two of this
episode, where we talkspecifically.
I'm going to talk specificallyto preferred parents, and and if
you are a not preferred parent,you are more than welcome, and
the same thing is true the other, on the reverse uh, you're more
than welcome to listen to thisand understand a little bit more
from your partner.
(17:35):
The first thing that I want totell you, if you're a preferred
parent, is that, even though I'mnot a preferred parent, I know
and have counseled enoughpreferred parents, including, by
the way, my relationship, veryopen communication with my own
wife to know how hard it is todo what you're doing.
(17:56):
I appreciate how exhausting itis to always be the one that
your child seems to run to.
I appreciate how emotionallytaxing it can be to do bedtime
for 13, 15, 35, 100 days in arow five, a hundred days in a
(18:16):
row, and you just need a breakbecause you're sick or because
you have a.
You're hanging out with yourfriends and you're going out, or
you want to have a sitter orwhatever and feel like you can't
because your kid only is okayfor you.
I just want to say that isseems so overwhelming to me and
(18:40):
simply the emotional burden ofcarrying around that level of
responsibility for co-regulationwith a child feels exhausting.
Even considering it feelsexhausting.
And so if you're that parentand if you're a preferred parent
listening to this, I just wantto highlight that I know how
(19:02):
hard it is and there are goingto be things that we're going to
talk about and strategies thatyou can employ to help move some
of the caregiving burden to amore balanced place.
However, you probably are notgoing to ever feel like it's 50
(19:23):
50 because whenever you're inthe room it's not going to be 50
50.
The perception is, wheneveryou're with your kid you have to
be on, and I understand howexhausting that must be.
And so I just want to take amoment and say like I don't want
anybody to come away from thisepisode feeling bad.
I don't want the preferredparents to come away feeling bad
(19:46):
.
I don't want the non-preferredparents to come away feeling bad
.
It is incredibly exhausting tobe a preferred parent and I have
had countless parents tell meJohn I just needed someone to
validate my experience that I'mnot crazy, that my kid only
wants me, that I didn't doanything to them to make them
(20:08):
this way.
You didn't, you absolutelydidn't.
It's no problem with you.
It identifies that you're asecure and stable presence for
your child.
We want kids.
By the way, this is a crazything to say because, coming out
of the 80s and the 90s, most ofus learned the opposite of what
I'm going to say.
But we actually see that kidswho are securely attached and
(20:33):
have all of those benefits fromsecure attachment, cry when
their parents leave the room,especially their preferred
parent.
So the idea that we want ourchildren to just like totally,
be free from separation anxietybeing totally and completely
free from separation anxiety isnot indicative of a child who's
securely attached.
In fact, the way, as we justhighlighted, that they do
(20:54):
attachment research so often isby putting the child in any sort
of stressful environmentoutside the presence of their
parent and then bringing theparent back in or putting them
in this, into a stressfulsituation in the presence of
their parent.
We we know that kids look totheir parents to co-regulate,
and, and especially theirpreferred parent, and so,
because of that, I just want tosay that you didn't do anything
(21:16):
wrong.
You're not.
You aren't coddling your child,you're not spoiling your child.
When you leave the room, theycry and it's not on you that
that's the case.
That is indicative of good,secure attachment.
Now, if they're totallyinconsolable when you come back
in the room, then we can talkabout how we can work through
some of that.
But the idea that your child isjust going to be okay when you
(21:38):
leave, as we have highlightedfrom the beginning of the
episode, children are not okaywhen they are outside the
presence of their secure,attentive caregivers.
They are just not.
Now we want them to develop asense of autonomy, especially we
don't want this to be the casewhen they're five, six, seven
years old, where we areconstantly supervising them at
all times and we never allowthem any autonomy and freedom to
(21:59):
explore and challengethemselves and fall down and
have to come find us.
That's totally fine at thatpoint.
But when you're talking about ayoung child, which so
frequently is when thepreference really seems to rear
up two, three, four years old,even younger sometimes, when
we're talking about kids thatare that young, they know how
vulnerable they are outside ofyour presence and so they are
(22:21):
going to cry when you leave, andthat is okay, we can work with
that.
It's not a character flaw inyou or a flaw in your parenting
or a flaw in them.
Just because there were previousgenerations that conditioned
their children to not do that,often by resorting to means that
harmed secure attachment inorder to do so, does not mean
(22:45):
that they were better than you.
In fact, what research tends topoint out is that it's the
opposite.
And so just understand I get it.
I understand how hard it is tobe a preferred parent.
I also understand what it'slike from the other side, and I
can just tell you the advicethat I've given to so many
preferred parents that they'vecome back to me.
These are folks in themembership who I've been with
for over a year now, who haveimplemented some of these things
(23:07):
over a year ago.
They can come back to me nowand say, john, this absolutely
works, this absolutely 100%works.
And I don't just come up withthis stuff right, I'm parroting
this stuff on from what I'veread in research and then kind
of worked with other parentingexperts to talk about and say,
okay, is this the right approach?
But here's my three-stepprogram for preferred parents.
(23:29):
Number one trying to not be theperson who comforts your child
and be in the presence of yourchild is really, really
difficult.
You're probably settingyourself up for failure.
So when it comes time to dobedtime, for example this is a
very common one that people willtalk to me about when it comes
(23:50):
time to do bedtime, if mom isthe preferred parent in this
example which it is not alwaysthis case, but it can be when
mom is the preferred parent.
If mom is the preferred parentin this example which it is not
always this case, but it can bewhen mom is the preferred parent
, if mom is simply seeminglychoosing not to do bedtime, if
mom is available in the eyes ofyour four-year-old,
three-year-old, whatever, butelecting not to do bedtime, that
(24:14):
is going to be very, very hardon a child whose attachment
hierarchy is pretty high,because that's also something
that I should have mentioned inthe first section.
Different kids have differentdegrees of this.
If you have a highly sensitivekid, if you have a
neurodivergent kid, oftentimestheir hierarchy can seem pretty
huge.
Right, and I've experiencedthis with my own kids.
(24:36):
My first, my oldest, has a veryextreme attachment hierarchy
between my wife and I is a biggap, and he's seven years old
and it's not changed at all.
Very little, right, he's goodwith me if she's not around,
which is what we're talkingabout now, but it's a huge gap.
It's very, very smallcomparatively with my
three-year-old, but it's stillthere.
(24:56):
With my two-year-old, thereused to be almost no seeming
attachment hierarchy, but then,lo and behold, every kid has an
attachment hierarchy and dadfound himself on the bottom
again.
So just understand that if youare in the room, it's going to
be much, much harder for yourchild to settle, to cope with
another caregiver, and so simplyremoving yourself from that
(25:18):
situation while your child isregulated, right, not putting
your child into the positionwhere you're saying, okay, well,
now I'm going to leave, it'sbedtime, you're going to go with
grandma.
Or you're going to go with dad,but I'm here but I'm not going
to go with you.
Or now I'm going to leave, nowthat it's bedtime.
That can create unnecessarystress on the system and you
just don't have to do that.
(25:39):
If you just say, hey, I'm goingto step out for ice cream or go
out with friends or just sit inmy car or whatever, or go up,
you know, walk out the frontdoor, walk in the back door, go
upstairs to your bedroom, I meanyou don't have to leave the
house as long as your child is.
Just wraps their head around theidea that you're not available,
right, which, again, it mayseem deceptive.
(26:00):
Or you're lying to your kids,then, john?
No, what we're doing is we'reworking within their brain
paradigm.
They understand if you're there, you're available, and so if
you're unavailable by choice,it's easier for them to
rationalize, conceptualize thatif you're not physically there,
so you're going to leave thatscenario before bedtime routine
(26:22):
even starts.
Maybe dad, grandma, babysitteris going to have some time to
play with the child, to dosomething the child likes.
Then we're going to transitionto bedtime.
Bedtime is going to go throughall the steps.
Is it possible?
Is it likely that that firstnight, even the 10th night, that
your child may cry for you atthe moment of bedtime?
Yes, but it's infinitely lesslikely for those for that to be
(26:46):
prolonged and for that to bedifficult for the, for the
caregiver and on the child Ifthe child has the perception
that you're not physically thereand you don't have to start
with bedtime for some kids.
I remember one mom I talked toshe she had trouble even leaving
the house without her kid inany circumstance, and so the
idea that she would not dobedtime after she basically was
(27:07):
with her child 24 hours a day,that was like a big, big step,
right.
But for her it was likemornings are good.
I'm going to go out for morningrun, coffee, whatever, away
from my child, and that's goingto be clear, right.
And so you can start baby stepson this, especially when that
hierarchy is so big.
You can start baby steps andyou can just, you know, work up
(27:29):
to the bigger things At somepoint.
You want for the non-preferredparent to be able to cope
equally in your absence, with ascraped knee, with a big fall,
with whatever, with bedtime.
That's ultimately the goal.
So just know that that's whatyou're working up to, but you
don't have to run run there,okay.
So that's number one.
Being physically present isgoing to be hard.
(27:52):
Number two one of the hardestthings I've found for preferred
parents is embodying the idea,or, I guess, believing, that
their partner especially, butoften also another caregiver,
doesn't have to be a partner,has the capability to help be an
(28:13):
adequate, secure attachment fortheir child.
And so what do I mean by this?
What I mean is, if your actionsas a preferred caregiver or as
a preferred parent undermine theability of the other parent or
the other caregiver to be ableto provide comfort and aid, that
is going to backfire on yourchild for a couple of different
(28:37):
reasons.
And so allowing your partnerand we'll just keep saying that,
because that's probably themost likely case of this
allowing your partner tostruggle, to not do it the right
way, to not do it the same wayas you, to not calm down your
child as quickly as you, to notget to regulation as effectively
(29:01):
as you, is better for both yourchild yourself and your
caregiver, your co-caregiver, inevery case.
Now I'm not saying that youshould set your partner up to
fail.
Right, if there's good advicethat you can present your
partner with of hey after thefact.
Oh yeah, we were going throughthis.
It was really hard.
I couldn't figure out what theywanted.
Oh, he probably just wantedwater.
(29:21):
Oh, I didn't know that.
Okay, I'll.
I'll remember that for nexttime.
Right, we'll talk about thatwith the non-preferred parents
in a moment.
But that experience ofproviding that feedback later,
totally fine.
What's less fine, what'sactually, I think,
counterproductive and countereffective, is what's going to
(29:41):
happen if you hear from theother room that your child needs
water.
Again, in this circumstance,your child ideally doesn't even
think that you're available andyou have no ability to control
your own impulse to save and tohelp and walk into that room and
fix.
That is not going to lead tosuccess, and there's two reasons
(30:02):
.
One, when you save your otherpartner out of a situation that
you feel they cannot handle andthis is different, by the way,
when the partner isdemonstrating that they are not
okay.
So it's very different whenyour partner is screaming at
(30:22):
your child, raising their fistslike they're going to harm
somebody.
They're losing it and you needto step in because, for their
own good, this is a differentscenario.
This is they're not doingthings the way that you wish
that they would do them and youinsert yourself in order to fix,
or intervene in order to fixthe problem.
(30:43):
When you do that, two thingshappen.
One, your partner believes.
My partner does not trust me todo this.
My partner does not think thatI'm a good, effective caregiver.
Their confidence is shot as aresult.
They're way less likely to beeffective in the future if they
think that you're going to comeand save them, because they're
just waiting for you to savethem.
(31:03):
But you know, who else learns tobelieve that your child, your
child, has to believe.
Ultimately, in order to be ableto be settled, comforted by
another adult other than you,the preferred caregiver, they
have to believe that that personis capable and able and
reliable.
And if they don't believe thatthat person's capable, able,
(31:23):
able and reliable, then they arenot going to develop a
relationship with that caregiverthat allows that caregiver to
be able to intervene and help inmoments of deep dysregulation.
Intervene and help in momentsof deep dysregulation.
And so when you don't believein your caregiver, you're
sending your co-parent or theother person who's parenting
(31:44):
alongside you when you don'tbelieve in them, that message is
very clearly sent.
And when your toddler thenbelieves my mom, my dad, does
not think that their partner orthis person trying to take care
of me, is capable, able, isreliable, is safe, that they can
do it, why should they believethat they're looking to
(32:07):
primarily they're securelyattached parents to decide what
in the world is good and what inthe world is bad and what in
the world is safe?
Children do not have an innateability to identify danger
effectively, and so they look tous to tell them what is good
and what is not good, and whatis safe and what's not safe, and
(32:28):
so they look to our actionsmore than anything.
And so when your actionsdemonstrate that you do not feel
that this person is good enough, your child will similarly
internalize that this person isnot good enough.
So that's one, that's two.
We'll summarize those two piecesas one try and remove yourself
entirely.
And, by the way, it's going tobe a lot easier to not try and
step in and save your partnerwhen they're struggling if
(32:51):
you're not even in the house tohear it.
Number one.
Number two is don't save right,don't rescue.
Allow your partner to struggle.
Thing number three is.
You have to realize that inorder to be your best self or
the best parent to your child,you also have to be take
impeccable care of yourself.
This is something that mostpreferred parents just do not
(33:15):
seem to get until we explicitlysay it.
If you want to be thereeffectively for your kid, you
have to take care of yourself,and I would challenge any parent
who says I can totally do allof my self-care in the hours
where my child is asleep.
I would challenge that person.
I would say you are not.
There's something missing.
You are not living your mosteffective, flourishing life if
(33:40):
you are only able to care foryourself while your child's
asleep.
So taking impeccable care ofyourself is a way of becoming a
better parent.
I'll tell you this straight upfor me, if I am hungry, if I am
tired, if I have not exercised,if I am not going to therapy, if
I am not spending time being,you know, with with friends,
(34:03):
with my wife, if I'm not havinggood conversations, if I'm
socially depleted, if I'mstressed out from work, those
are not the moments when I'm thebest parent, the moments when I
am my best, most ideal versionof parenting, when I, when I
live into the majority of theparenting principles that I
would like to live by all thetime are the moments when I have
(34:23):
taken care of myself, and sothat is true, more so for
preferred parents.
You have to take impeccablecare of yourself, and that is
going to require for your childto be able to be in the care of
others when you're not around,and so understanding that that's
just a reality and it's goodfor your child to be able to be
in the care of others whenyou're not around, and so
understanding that that's just areality and it's good for your
kid I shouldn't say that, too,it's good for your kid.
As I've already said, beingattached to more than one person
(34:45):
is good for your kid, not justbecause you won't be around
someday when they need you, butbecause the process of learning
to build secure attachment,beyond just the secure
attachment that they may havefrom birth with you, is a good
process.
Okay, last section here, andI'm not going to give a call out
to join the email list so thatyou can get all the updates, or
(35:07):
you know, I guess I'm doing itright now.
Yeah, rate and review thepodcast.
Yeah, all that Last section.
Let me talk to not preferredparents, not preferred parents.
This entire episode I've beencalling you not preferred
parents.
It probably doesn't feel verygood.
I'm just trying to be honest.
I get you, I get you, Iunderstand, I am there.
You know what's crazy.
When I talk to other parentingauthors some of your I'm not
(35:30):
going to out them on thispodcast some of your favorite
voices in parenting they willoften tell me that they are the
non-preferred parent too.
When you think about some ofyour most effective thought
leaders, they are thenon-preferred parent.
It's not better to be thenon-preferred parent or to be
the preferred parent, but if youthink that you're doing
something wrong and that'swhat's causing you to be the
(35:51):
non-preferred parent, stop.
You're not.
This is a feature, not afailure, in your child.
This is a feature of their ownevolutionary biology.
It's good that they're attachedto your partner or to whomever
they're attached to, right,that's good.
Even if you're not number oneon the call sheet, you still
have a place.
(36:12):
And if you constantly feelundermined, I would really
encourage you to take off thetraining wheels and do it on
your own, because almostinstantly you will realize that
your children responddifferently to your compassion
and care and empathy, when theydon't feel like they're being
outed by their other parent orput out by their other parent in
(36:34):
order to do so.
When your child falls andscrapes their knee, when mom or
dad is at work and you're thequote backup quarterback here,
it's amazing how they will flockto you and run to you and cry
into your shoulder, just thesame as they do to your partner,
and they may say in thosemoments I wish that dad was here
, I wish that mom was here, butthey're going to let you do your
(36:57):
job.
So you're not wrong, you're notbad.
And and I want is as much as Isaid to the preferred parents
how emotionally taxing it is tobe on all the time First of all,
remember that if you're jealousof them which I sometimes am
jealous of my wife for thisreason, like just remember how
hard it is to be them too.
To those preferred parents, whoare hopefully still listening,
(37:17):
it's hard to not feel likeyou're loved and liked.
It's hard for the person or forthe tiny people who you love
most in the world to picksomebody over.
You Just imagine that it's yourpartner for a moment.
Right, for the preferredparents listening.
For the non-preferred parents,you can just say amen when I say
this.
Imagine that your partner wasjust picking somebody else over
(37:37):
you, over and over.
It would be emotionallyexhausting.
You would feel jealous of thatrelationship if your partner was
getting really close withsomebody else.
Yeah, it's hard to watch yourkids seemingly not like you to
scream because you're the wrongperson walking in after nap time
which, by the way, has happenedto me more times than I can
(37:58):
count.
All three of my kids havescreamed because I'm not mom
walking in after nap time.
I the look of disappointmentwhen dad's doing bedtime instead
of mom and I do bedtime for oneof my kids every single night.
Like it gets better.
But if mom does bedtime for twodays in a row with a kid that
I'm typically doing bedtime with, we switch with which kid we're
typically doing.
But if, if I, if all of asudden I'm doing it when mom did
(38:21):
it, who are you?
I don't want you.
It's hard, it's emotionallytaxing.
If you're not sharing this withsomebody, please do.
Please be willing to at leastput down in a journal.
Like man, this sucks sometimesbecause it does Like it seems
like you know, I put in as muchwork to parent as well as I can,
as almost anybody else Right, Ispend at least 50% of my kids
(38:44):
waking hours with one of them.
Like, I'm not saying my wifedoesn't do the same.
I'm not knocking anything thatshe does as a parent.
I'm just saying I put in awhole heck of a lot of work and
it sometimes it feels like itdoesn't amount to a hill of
beans.
The only reason that I feelthat way is because I am in a
constant battle of comparisonNon-preferred parents listen to
me very carefully Comparingyourself to the non-preferred
(39:05):
parent, to the preferred parentSorry, let me say that again
self, especially to therelationship between your
child's preferred parent, yourpartner and you.
No good will come of that.
No good, you will onlyexperience pain as a result.
(39:27):
You will not get better, youwill not parent better, you will
only feel shame, and when youfeel shame, dollars to donuts
you're going to feel worse.
You're going to parent worse.
You're going to be way harderon your partner than you need to
be.
Who didn't do anything to putthemselves in this position, by
the way, except for maybe saveyou a couple times, which we've
(39:47):
just?
We've just told them thatthey're not supposed to do that,
and so remind them of thisepisode, remind them how they
need to let you struggle andstop comparing yourself to them.
Stop Comparison and parenting isnot just the thief of joy, like
comparison is the thief of joy.
If you've ever heard thatcomparison and parenting is a
(40:07):
path to destruction.
If you find yourself comparingyourself to me or to anybody who
I've interviewed on thispodcast or anyone else you see
on social media, or even yourown partner stop.
No good will come of that.
You can try to be the bestparent you can be and if you're
listening to this podcast,chances are that's what you're
trying to do.
If you're reading the booksthat you're supposed to be
(40:29):
reading whenever you can, ifyou're spending time actually
investing in this area of yourlife, you're probably doing a
pretty good job.
Stop comparing yourself, becauseyou can't win against the
preferred parent anyway.
Like I know that that's maybe ahard thing to say you can be a
quote unquote better parent.
You can be more empathetic.
You can be more caring.
(40:49):
You can lose your cool.
Less you can.
You can be the one who takesthem out for ice cream.
You can do all of the positivethings right, and even then you
will never.
It's not.
It's not a choice that yourchild's making.
So stop comparing yourself.
Number two be willing and opento struggle period.
You're going to struggle.
It's going to be harder for yousometimes, seemingly, than your
(41:12):
partner.
Remember that their labor,their burden, is not in the
individual experiences, it's inthe, it's in the piling up of
the experiences.
Your burden may be in the moreindividual experiences, and you
had a really hard interactionwith your child where they just
wanted their, your partner, andnot you.
They just don't.
You just don't know yet how tocalm them down when they're
really losing it or they justdon't let you right,
(41:35):
co-regulation is a two-waystreet.
Really losing it or they justdon't let you right,
co-regulation is a two-waystreet.
You can't make your child do it.
You're doing your best and it'sstill hard.
You got to give yourself somegrace and you got to let
yourself struggle.
Don't throw your hands up andgive up and say, well, I'm just
not the way, I just I'm a badparent and everybody hates me.
If you do that, you areguaranteeing failure.
(41:59):
So don't go down that road.
Keep struggling, keep fightingand, you know, maybe talk to
your partner and say, hey, it'shard for me to struggle with you
in the room.
If you don't think that yourkids are going to respond to you
differently when your partnertheir preferred parent is is
watching, you're wrong.
I can't regulate my kids downhalf as well If mom's even in
(42:19):
the house.
Are you kidding me?
I just went through this.
I kid you not.
An hour before this momentrecording this podcast, just
went through this two of my kids.
Mom is putting the third onedown for a nap.
Why does she have to do it?
Because he saw her before nap,so he's never going to tolerate
me.
So now I got to go put down.
I got to go deal with theseother two.
(42:39):
Somebody threw something behindthem they weren't thinking it
was a dumb move Hit the otherone in the face.
Everybody's screaming,everybody's crying, everybody's
losing it.
Neither of them wanted me toco-regulate.
Now, if mom was at a photoshoot, gone, whatever probably
could have done it.
She was in the house somewhere.
We know she is.
Give us mom.
It's hard, and so you may haveto have a conversation with your
(43:00):
partner and say, look, I needyou to be a little bit less
available for our kids.
I'm not saying that you have tobe absent when you're here.
I'm saying, maybe just be alittle bit more absent in
general, that might be morehelpful for you.
You need as with anything inlife, you need reps in order to
get good at anything and chancesare, most of us spend a lot of
(43:22):
our time that we're with ourkids, also with their preferred
parent.
If we're the non-preferredparent, it means that we have a
whole lot less reps than ourpreferred parent partner.
We have a whole lot less repsand we're going to need to get
those reps if we're going to beeffective.
We're probably never going tohave as many reps as them, but
we are going to need to haveenough to feel effective and to
feel like I can take my kids out, go do this, go do that.
(43:43):
Really, really important to getthose in to do that work.
Okay, number three I want you toswallow your pride and debrief
with your preferred parentpartner when you're actually
going through the process ofgetting these reps.
One it's going to make themfeel so much better if you are
honest with them, if you tellthem about the struggle, if they
(44:08):
don't feel like they'reabandoning their child and then
they're never going to find outwhat happened.
They're going to feel so muchbetter about it if you're
willing to debrief with them.
And, number two, you're goingto be able to ask them what was
going on in those moments.
Because, guess what, they'vedone it more than you.
In all likelihood, it's notbecause they're better than you,
it's not because they're morekind than you, it's because your
child has demanded that they doit more, and so they have done
it more.
(44:28):
And just to keep the peace,they've done it more than you
and they probably have someinsight that would be valuable
to you.
And so, with that being said,be willing to debrief, be
willing to own it up.
If your preferred parentpartner has listened to this
episode, they are not going tojudge you for your struggle, or
(44:49):
they better not.
That's not the goal Processwith them.
And if they go, you know what?
I think you probably justwanted water Go.
Okay, you didn't know.
Mistakes are not the enemy.
Mistakes are how we learn.
You didn't know that you didn'thave the right blanket in the
right place.
You didn't know that when theyscream like that, what they
really want is to go outside, orthat that's a helpful tool.
Or I just take them into thebathroom and turn on the water,
and then they just play.
(45:10):
You don't know all of the tipsand tricks.
You haven't had the reps.
Be willing to learn from theperson who has with your
specific kids Doesn't mean thatthey're a better parent than you
.
It just means that they havemore reps.
Swallow your pride.
You're not comparing to themanymore.
Just be willing to own it.
I would not be whole parent if Ihad not done this with my own
wife.
I'm just telling you thatstraight up.
(45:31):
I would still be languishing inbitterness that my kids didn't
like me, which is nonsense.
My kids love the absolute messout of me.
Just because they don't want mewhen they fall and scrape their
knee and I'm standing next tomy wife does not mean my kids
don't like me.
They love me, they want to bearound me, they they have fun
with me.
We laugh more than we cry.
It's a fantastic life that Ilive.
(45:52):
Do not feel bad for me.
That said, if I was still tryingto compare myself and if I was
not taking good advice when itwas offered, I would not be
where I am.
I would not be parenting in theway that I am.
I certainly would not be on apodcast talking about parenting
period.
I read the books that my wifetold me to read.
I went to the courses that mywife told me to go to.
It just so happened that at thesame time I happened to be
(46:13):
going through some counselingtraining and realized that this
is apples and apples parentingand therapy, and emotional
health and neuroscience.
But you have to be willing togo there, and so that's what I
have for you on this episode.
I hope this has helped you tolearn a little bit more about
being a preferred parent and ifyou're a not preferred parent,
(46:34):
being a not preferred parent, Ihope that you walk away with
this understanding that you arenot bad just because your child
has attachment hierarchy, thatit is normal, that it is natural
that it is even expected.
And last note, before we endand I saved this one for the end
, it's a golden nugget at theend the last thing I want you to
know is that it's temporaryAttachment hierarchy tends to go
(46:56):
away or balance out when achild enters a phase in which
they feel safer, more autonomousin the world, and so giving
your kid freedom within healthyboundaries, giving your kid
unsupervised time to play withfriends to you know, play at the
park without you constantlyfollowing them around, whatever
you have to do.
(47:16):
When your child's seven, eight,nine years old and they feel
more stable, resilient,confident in and of themselves,
the preference hierarchy thingjust dissipates.
Now.
It may be that they always goto one partner for one thing,
one partner for another thing.
(47:36):
That's okay, kids do that.
But the hierarchy is going togo away.
This, too, shall pass.
This is how we're going tosurvive the early years and if
we do this right 10 years old,11 years old we're going to be
securely attached to two adultswho feel confident in the
raising of that child, or threeor four, or even five, and that
(47:59):
process is going to be betterfor you, better for your child,
better for your partner, nomatter which side you're on on,
the preferred not preferredthing or their other caregiver.
If the preferred not preferredis if you're a single parent and
this whole episode you've beenthinking about the not preferred
parent is your mother or yourfather who's helping you, or or
(48:19):
a caregiver or a nanny, that'sokay, whatever it is.
If you're in a situation whereyou live in two separate homes,
right from your, your ex partnerand and you're co-parenting
with a person who you're nolonger in a relationship with
and you're the not preferred orthe preferred.
Some of this stuff's gonna berelevant At 10,.
If you do your work, we'regonna get back to some balance,
(48:40):
and so understanding this, thatit's temporary, that we're
moving through this is gonnamake this so much easier on you,
on everyone else.
That's what I have for youtoday.
On the Whole Parent Podcast,I've already gone way longer
than I wanted to for thisepisode.
I'm gonna have to figure outhow to trim these down, but this
is a really important topic andI hope you feel better as a
result of listening to it.
As I said at the beginning ofthe episode, you can go to the
(49:02):
first link in the show notes.
You can click there, enter youremail and your first name and
you will be added to the list ofpeople who get the podcast.
If you're already on the emaillist and you do that, you will
not get two emails from me.
You'll just automatically beadded also to the podcast list.
If not if you're not gettingemails from me yet and you just
like the podcast, you're not sosure about the email list get
(49:23):
ready, you're going to love thatas well.
So that's all I have for youtoday.
I really hope that this episodehas helped you.
Don't forget to rate and review, to share this with parents in
your life.
Probably so many parents arestruggling with this exact same
thing right now in your friendgroup.
Be willing to share it.
Be willing to be vulnerable andsay, hey, I'm struggling.
(49:43):
I hope this helps you.
Maybe you are too.
Until next time.
This has been the Whole ParentPodcast.
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