Attachment Rituals: the key to connecting with kiddos

Every morning when my kiddos wake up, the first thing they hear from me is this:

“I love you with all my heart, to the end of the universe and beyond and back again. No matter where you are, no matter where I am, forever and always, I love you.”

It’s also the last thing they hear from me before they fall asleep. It’s what they hear every time I drop them off at school, swimming lessons, their mom’s house, summer camp. Any time we will be apart for any length of time I repeat this ritual.

This is the Attachment Ritual I created six years ago when my kiddos’ mom and I divorced. I knew kiddos and I were going to be apart for days at a time, and I wanted to develop a strategy to strengthen and maintain our Attachment relationship during our time apart.

And judging by the close connection I have with my kiddos, and how easy it is (usually) to manage their behavior, this Attachment Ritual has served VERY well in strengthening the Attachment bond between my kiddos and me.

You might be thinking to yourself: What is Attachment? and Why does it matter?

Attachment is the feeling of closeness and connection a child has to a parent or caregiver, and this is important because Attachment sets up a hierarchy in the sense of caregiving and care-seeking, dominant and dependent, one who provides and one who receives. And when kiddos are PROPERLY placed in this hierarchy of attachment as dependent, they instinctively WANT to be cared for, nurtured, AND directed¹. This is also one of the reasons why I always say to my kiddos, “Can I give you a hug?” If we give our kiddos hugs, rather than get hugs from them, they are always on the receiving end of care.

And Attachment is important because without it, it’s MUCH harder to be a parent, and a kiddos’ behavior is MUCH more difficult to manage. If your kiddos see YOU as the giver of care, the person who provides love and affection, they will be much more open to being directed, BECAUSE they feel connected.

Sometimes people say to me, “Just wait until they’re teenagers, and they’ll become soooooo much more difficult to manage!” This may be true, to a degree; however, if I’m able to maintain the Attachment relationship leading into the teenage years, I have faith the difficulty in managing behavior will be greatly reduced. But I reckon time will tell.

My kiddos are seven and nine-years old, and I intend to consistently practice my Attachment rituals, adapting them as needed to account for my kiddos’ needs. And I plan to provide honest updates here regularly, so check in from time to time, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Some of these ideas on Attachment are graciously borrowed from Drs. Gabor Mate & Gordon Neufeld’s book “Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents NEED to Matter More Than Peers,” an excellent resource I recommend ALL parents read no matter how old their kiddos are, whether they’re infants or raising kiddos themselves.